Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/215

 the general dissoluteness of manners among the slaves, and the want of proper regulations for the encouragement of marriages and of rearing children among them. Thirdly, by the particular diseases which were prevalent among them, and which were in some instances to be attributed to too severe labor, or rigorous treatment, and in others to insufficient or improper food. Fourthly, by those diseases which affected a large proportion of negro children in their infancy, and by those to which the negroes newly imported from Africa had been found to be particularly liable.

These propositions having been laid upon the table of the house, lord Penrhyn rose in behalf of the planters, and next after him, Mr. Gascoyne, (both members for Liverpool,) in behalf of the merchants concerned in the latter place. They both predicted the ruin and misery which would inevitably follow the abolition of the trade. The former said that no less than seventy millions were mortgaged upon lands in the West Indies, all of which would be lost. Mr. Wilberforce therefore should have made a motion to pledge the house to the repayment of this sum before he had brought forward his propositions. Compensation ought to have been agreed upon as a previously necessary measure. The latter said that in consequence of the bill of last year, many ships were laid up and many seamen out of employ. His constituents had large capitals engaged in the trade, and if it were to be wholly done away, they would suffer from not knowing where to employ them. They both joined in asserting that Mr. Wilberforce had made so many misrepresentations in all the branches of this subject, that no reliance whatever was to be placed on the picture which he had chosen to exhibit. They should speak, however, more fully to this point when the propositions were discussed.

The latter declaration called up Mr. Wilberforce again, who observed that he had no intention of misrepresenting any fact. He did not know that he had done it in any one instance; but, if he had, it would be easy to convict him out of the report upon the table.

Mr. Burke then arose: He would not, he said, detain the committee long Indeed he was not able, weary and indisposed as he then felt himself, even if he had an inclination to do it; but as, on account of his other parliamentary duty, he might not have it in his power to attend the business now before them in its course, he would take that opportunity of stating his opinion upon it.

And, first, the house, the nation, and all Europe w r ere under great obligations to Mr. Wilberforce for having brought this important subject forward. He had done it in a manner the most masterly, impressive, and eloquent. He had laid down his principles so admirably, and with so much order and force, that his speech had equaled any thing he had ever heard in modern oratory, and perhaps it had not been excelled by any thing to be found in ancient times. As to the slave-trade itself, there could not be two opinions about it where men were not interested. A trade, begun in savage war, prosecuted with unheard of barbarity, continued during the transportation with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ending in perpetual exile and slavery, was a trade so horrid in all its circumstances that it was impossible to produce a single argument in its