which had covered them. In the year 1794,
when the bill for the abolition of the foreign Slave-trade was introduced,
Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Barham supported it. They called upon the planters in
the House to give way to humanity, where their own interests could not be
affected by their submission. This indeed may be said to have been no
mighty thing; but it was a frank confession of the injustice of the
Slave-trade, and the beginning of the change which followed, both with
respect to themselves and others.

With respect to the old friends of the cause, it is with regret I mention,
that it lost the support of Mr. Windham within this period; and this regret
is increased by the consideration, that he went off on the avowed plea of
expediency against moral rectitude; a doctrine, which, at least upon this
subject, he had reprobated for ten years. It was, however, some
consolation, as far as talents were concerned, (for there can be none for
the loss of virtuous feeling,) that Mr. Canning, a new member, should have
so ably supplied his place.

Of the gradual abolitionists, whom we have always considered as the most
dangerous enemies of the cause, Mr. Jenkinson (now Lord Hawkesbury), Mr.
Addington (now Lord Sidmouth), and Mr. Dundas (now Lord Melville),
continued their opposition during all this time. Of the first two I shall
say nothing at present; but I cannot pass over the conduct of the latter.
He was the first person, as we have seen, to propose the gradual abolition
of the Slave-trade; and he fixed the time for its cessation on the first of
January 1800. His sincerity on this occasion was doubted by Mr. Fox at the
very outset; for he immediately rose and said, that "something so
mischievous had come out, something so like a foundation had been laid for
preserving, not only for years to come, but for any thing he knew for ever,
this detestable traffic, that he felt it his duty immediately to deprecate
all such delusions upon the country." Mr. Pitt, who spoke soon afterwards,
in reply to an argument advanced by Mr. Dundas, maintained, that "at
whatever period the House should say that the Slave-trade should actually
cease, this defence would equally be set up; for it would be just as good
an argument in seventy years hence, as it was against the abolition then."
And these remarks Mr. Dundas verified in a singular manner within this
period: for in the year 1796, when his own bill, as amended in the Commons,
was to take place,