o virtue is to avoid temptation; let us, therefore,
withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud,
violence, cruelty, and injustice which the slave-trade furnishes.
Wherever the sun shines let us go round the world with him, diffusing
our beneficence; but let us not traffic only that we may set kings
against their subjects, and subjects against their kings, sowing discord
in every village, fear and terror in every family, urging millions of
our fellow-creatures to hunt each other for slaves, creating fairs and
markets for human flesh through one whole continent of the world,
and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the base
iniquity of such a traffic." Mr. Pitt expressed his warm approbation of
the manner in which the subject had been brought before the house, and
confessed that the slave-trade must be abolished: and he consented that
the resolutions should be entered on the journals; conceiving that such
a step might produce the effect of causing foreign nations to concur
with England in the proposed abolition. Fox and Burke also applauded the
orator; the latter declaring that not only England, but all Europe was
indebted to him for exposing the iniquity of a trade "which began with
savage war, was prosecuted with unheard-of cruelty, continued, during
the middle passage, with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ended in
perpetual exile and unremitting slavery." The feeling of the house and
the nation at large was so manifestly, at this period, in favour of the
abolition of the slave-trade, that Lord Penryn, one of its advocates,
asserted that, to his knowledge, the planters were now willing to assent
to any regulation of the trade short of its abolition; to which remark
Fox replied, with much animation, that he knew nothing of such a thing
as a regulation of robbery and restriction of murder; there was no
medium; the legislature must either abolish the trade, or plead guilty
to all the iniquity with which it was attended. Finally, Pitt conceded,
with the consent of Mr. Wilberforce, to the examination of witnesses on
the part of the slave-merchants and planters, trusting that unnecessary
delays would not be introduced, as he could not submit to the ultimate
procrastination of so important a measure. Evidence was heard at the bar
for several successive weeks; and the session being far advanced, the
friends of abolition consented, on the 23rd of June, to an adjournment
of the question