emned unheard. The merchants would have said, that they had had no
notice of such an event, that they might prepare a way for their vessels in
other trades. The planters would have said, that they had had no time
allowed them to provide such supplies from Africa as might enable them to
keep up their respective stocks. They would, both of them, have called
aloud for immediate indemnification. They would have decried the policy of
the measure of the abolition;--and where had it been proved? They would
have demanded a reverse of it; and might they not, in cooler moments, have
succeeded? Whereas, by entering into a patient discussion of the merits of
the question; by bringing evidence upon it; by reasoning upon that evidence
night after night, and year after year, land thus by disputing the ground
inch as it were by inch, the Abolition of the Slave-trade stands upon a
rock, upon which it never can be shaken. Many of those who were concerned
in the cruel system have now given up their prejudices, because they became
convinced in the contest. A stigma too has been fixed upon it, which can
never be erased: and in a large record, in which the cruelty and injustice
of it have been recognised in indelible characters, its impolicy also has
been eternally enrolled.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_Continuation to the middle of July--Anxiety of Sir William Dolben to
lessen the horrors of the Middle Passage till the great question should be
discussed--brings in a bill for that purpose--debate upon it--Evidence
examined against it--its inconsistency and falsehoods--further debate upon
it--Bill passed, and carried to the Lords--vexatious delays and opposition
there--carried backwards and forwards to both houses--at length finally
passed--Proceedings of the commitee in the interim--effects of them.--End
of the first volume_.

It was supposed, after the debate, of which the substance has been just
given, that there would have been no further discussion of the subject till
the next year: but Sir William Dolben became more and more affected by
those considerations which be had offered to the house on the ninth of May.
The trade, he found, was still to go on. The horrors of the transportation,
or Middle Passage, as it was called, which he conceived to be the worst in
the long catalogue of evils belonging to the system, would of course
accompany it. The partial discussion of these, he believed, would be no
infringement of the late resolution of th