Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/218

 into, the more it would be found that nothing short of abolition would cure the evil. With respect to certain assertions of the members for Liverpool, and certain melancholy predictions about the consequences of such an event, which others had held out, he desired to lay in his claim for observation upon them, when the great question should come before the house.

Soon after this the house broke up; and the discussion of the propositions, which was the next parliamentary measure intended, was postponed to a future day, which was sufficiently distant to give all the parties concerned time to make the necessary preparations for it.

Of this interval the committee for the abolition availed themselves to thank Mr. Wilberforce for the very able and satisfactory manner in which he had stated to the house his propositions for the abolition of the slave-trade, and for the unparalleled assiduity and perseverance with which he had all along endeavored to accomplish this object, as well as to take measures themselves for the further promotion of it. Their opponents availed themselves of this interval also. But that which now embarrassed them, was the evidence contained in the privy council report, They had no idea, considering the number of witnesses they had sent to be examined, that this evidence, when duly weighed, could by right reasoning have given birth to the sentiments which had been displayed in the speeches of the most distinguished members of the house of commons, or to the contents of the propositions which had been laid upon their table. They were thunder-struck as it were by their own weakness: and from this time they were determined, if possible, to get rid of it as a standard for decision, or to interpose every parliamentary delay in their power.

On the twenty-first of May, the subject came again before the attention of the house. It was ushered in, as was expected, by petitions collected in the interim, and which were expressive of the frightful consequences which would attend the abolition of the slave-trade.

Mr. Wilberforce moved the order of the day, for the house to go into a committee of the whole house on the report of the privy council, and the several matters of evidence already upon the table relative to the slave-trade.

Mr. Alderman Sawbridge immediately arose, and asked Mr. Wilberforce if he meant to adduce any other evidence besides that in the privy council report in behalf of his propositions, or to admit other witnesses, if such could be found, to invalidate them. Mr. Wilberforce replied, that he was quite satisfied with the report on the table. It would establish all his propositions. He should call no witnesses himself: as to permission to others to call them, that must be determined by the house.

This question and this answer gave birth immediately to great disputes upon the subject. Aldermen Sawbridge, Wewnham, and Watson; Lords Penrhyn and Maitland; Messrs. Gascoyne, Marsham, and others spcke against the admission of the evidence which had been laid upon the table. They contended that it was insufficient, defective, and contradictory; that it was ex parte evidence; that it had been manufactured by ministers; that it was founded chiefly on hearsay, and that the greatest part of it was false; that it had undergone