Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/228

 of these enlightened times, will scarcely believe had been suffered to exist so long, a disgrace and a dishonor to our country.

He then moved that the chairman be instructed to move for leave to bring in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into the British colonies in the West Indies.

Colonel Tarleton immediately rose up and began by giving an historical account of the trade from the reign of Elizabeth to the present time. He then proceeded to the sanction which parliament had always given it. Hence it could not be withdrawn without a breach of faith. Hence, also, the private property embarked in it was sacred; nor could it be invaded unless an adequate compensation were given in return. They who had attempted the abolition of the trade were led away by a mistaken humanity. The Africans themselves had no objection to its continuance. With respect to the middle passage, he believed the mortality there to be on an average only five in the hundred; whereas in regiments sent out to the West Indies, the average loss in the year was about ten and a half per cent. The slave-trade was absolutely necessary, if we meant to carry on our West India commerce; for many attempts had been made to cultivate the lands in the different islands by white laborers, but they had always failed. It had also the merit of keeping up a number of seamen in readiness for the state. Lord Rodney had stated this as one of its advantages on the breaking out of a war. Liverpool alone could supply nine hundred and ninety-three seamen annually.

He would now advert to the connections dependent upon the African trade. It was the duty of the house to protect the planters, whose lives had been, and were then exposed to imminent dangers, and whose property had undergone an unmerited depreciation, and to what could this depreciation, and to what could the late insurrection at Dominica be imputed, which had been saved from horrid carnage and midnight butchery only by the adventitious arrival of two British regiments? They could only be attributed to the long delayed question of the abolition of the slave-trade; and if this question were to go much longer unsettled, Jamaica would be endangered also. To members of landed property he would observe, that the abolition would lessen the commerce of the country, and increase the national debt and the number of their taxes. The minister, he hoped, who patronized this wild scheme, had some new pecuniary resource in store to supply the deficiencies it would occasion.

Mr. Grosvenor then rose: He complimented the humanity of Mr. Wilberforce, though he differed from him on the subject of his motion. He himself had read only the privy council report; and he wished for no other evidence. The question had been delayed two years. Had the abolition been so clear a point as it was said to be, it could not have needed either so much evidence or time.

He had heard a good deal about kidnapping and other barbarous practices. He was sorry for them. But these were the natural consequences of the laws of Africa: and it became us as wise men to turn them to our own advantage