safe which
could fall within the power of the Legislature." He even made it an
argument against the bill that its principle, if carried to its
legitimate logical end, must tend to the abolition of slavery as well as
of the slave-trade. He objected especially to the assertion in the
preamble that the trade was "contrary to justice and humanity,"
declaring that those words were only inserted in the hope that by them
"foreign powers might be humbugged into a concurrence with the
abolition," and wound up his harangue by a declaration that, though he
should "see the Presbyterian and the prelate, the Methodist and
pew-preacher, the Jacobin and the murderer, unite in support of it, he
would still raise his voice against it." It must have been more painful
to the minister to be opposed by so distinguished an officer as Lord St.
Vincent, who resisted the bill chiefly on the ground that "its effect
would be to transfer British capital to other countries, which would not
be disposed to abandon so productive a trade," and declared that he
could only account for Lord Grenville's advocacy of it "by supposing
that some Obi man had cast his spell upon him." But the case was too
strong for any arguments to prevail which were based solely on the
profits of a trade which no one pretended to justify. The bill passed
the Lords by a majority of nearly three to one; in the House of Commons,
where the opposition was much feebler, by one infinitely larger;[161]
and, by a somewhat remarkable coincidence, it received the royal assent
on the same day on which Lord Grenville announced to his brother peers
that his administration was at an end.

Even before the abolition had thus become law, the member for
Northumberland, Earl Percy, endeavored to give practical effect to Lord
Westmoreland's view, that emancipation of the slaves was its inevitable
corollary, by moving for leave to bring in a bill for the gradual
abolition of slavery in the British settlements of the West Indies. But
he was opposed by Lord Howick,[162] though he had been among the earnest
advocates of abolition, partly for the sake of the negroes themselves,
and partly on the ground that the Legislature had no "right to interfere
with the property of the colonists;" little foreseeing that the measure
which he now opposed was reserved for his own administration, and that
its accomplishment would be one of its chief titles to the respectful
recollection of posterity. And, as the House