Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/58

50 them are now upon their deadly passage? Have you inquired why and how that trade is carried on? I do not mean alone that in your public negociations [sic] you tamper with it from year to year, and rest in the feeblest and most ineffectual measures, instead of declaring that trade to be a piracy, or of letting the world know, at all events, who are the nations and the governments that prevent its being so declared: not this alone, but I ask, are not the manufacturers of this country they who supply the means of supporting this monstrous traffic? The British manufacturer sends his goods in British ships to the Brazils, and receives for them cotton, the produce of slave labour. But a portion of those goods are made for an ulterior purpose; they are adapted to the African market; they are reshipped from the Brazils to the coast of Africa, and there exchanged for the human ware that passes from Africa to Brazil.

And have you, who are so exasperated with the West Indian apprenticeship, that you will not wait two years for its natural expiration, have you inquired what responsibility lies upon every one of you, at the moment when I speak, with reference to the cultivation of cotton in America? In that country there are near three millions of slaves. You hear not from that land of the abolition—not even of the mitigation—of slavery. It is a domestic institution, and is to pass without limit, we are told, from age to age; and we, much more than they, are responsible for this enormous growth of what pur-