Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/205

 annually, and therefore could sell 20,000 to other nations; that in the prosecution of this trade, English manufactures to the amount of above £800,000 sterling were exported, and above £1,400,000 in value obtained in return, and that the government received £256,000 annually by the slave tax.

The report of the privy council, consisting of the examinations before mentioned, was laid before the house, and that all might have a chance to examine it, Mr. Fitt moved that the consideration of the subject be postponed from the 29th of April to the 12th of May.

At length the 12th of May arrived. Mr. Wilberforce rose up in the commons, and moved the order of the day for the house to resolve itself Into a committee of the whole house, to take into consideration the petitions which had been presented against the slave-trade.

This order having been read, he moved that the report of the committee of privy council; that the acts passed in the islands relative to slaves; that the evidence adduced last year on the slave-trade; that the petitions offered in the last session against the. slave-trade; and that the accounts presented to the house, in the last and present session, relative to the exports and imports to Africa, be referred to the same committee.

These motions having been severally agreed to, the house immediately resolved itself into a committee of the whole house, and Sir William Dolben was put into the chair.

Mr. Wilberforce began by declaring that when he considered how much discussion the subject, which he was about to explain to the committee, had occasioned not only in that house but throughout the kingdom, and throughout Europe; and when he considered the extent and importance of it, the variety of interests involved in it, and the consequences which might arise, he owned he had been filled with apprehensions, lest a subject of such magnitude and a cause of such weight should suffer from the weakness of its advocate but when he recollected that in the progress of his inquiries he had every where been received with candor, that most people gave him credit for the purity of his motives, and that, however many of these might then differ from him, they were all likely to agree in the end, he had dismissed his fears and marched forward with a firmer step in this cause of humanity, justice and religion. He could not, however, but lament that the subject had excited so much warmth. He feared that too many on this account were but ill prepared to consider it with impartiality-He entreated all such to endeavor to be calm and composed. A fair and cool discussion was essentially necessary. The motion he meant to offer was as reconcileable to political expediency as to national humanity. It belonged to no party question. It would in the end be found serviceable to all parties; and to the best interests of the country. He did not come forward to accuse the West India planter, or the Liverpool merchant, or indeed any one concerned in this traffic; but, if blame attached any where, to take shame to himself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, who, having suffered it to be carried on under their own authority were all of them participators in the guilt.