Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/229

 The slave-trade was certainly not an amiable trade. Neither was that of a butcher; but yet it was a very necessary one.

There was great reason to doubt the propriety of the present motion. He had twenty reasons for disapproving of it. The first was, that the thing was impossible. lie needed not, therefore, to give the rest. Parliament, indeed, might relinquish the trade. But to whom? To foreigners, who would continue it, and without the humane regulations which were applied to it by his countrymen.

He would give advice to the house on this subject in the words which the late Alderman Beckford used on a different occasion: "Meddle not with troubled waters; they will be found to be bitter waters, and waters of affliction." He again admitted that the slave-trade was not an amiable trade; but he would not gratify his humanity at the expense of the interests of his country; and he thought we should not too curiously inquire into the unpleasant circumstances which attended it.

Mr. James Martin succeeded Mr. Grosvenor. He said he had been long aware how much self-interest could pervert the judgment; but he was not apprised of the full power of it till the slave-trade became a subject of discussion. He had always conceived that the custom of trafficking in human beings had been incautiously begun, and without any reflection upon it; for he never could believe that any man, under the influence of moral principles, could suffer himself knowingly to carry on a trade replete with fraud, cruelty, and destruction; with destruction, indeed, of the worst kind, because it subjected the sufferers to a lingering death. But he found now that even such a trade as this could be sanctioned.

It was well observed in the petition from the university of Cambridge against the slave-trade, "that a firm belief in the providence of a benevolent Creator assured them that no system, founded on the oppression of one part of mankind, could be beneficial to another." He felt much concern, that in an assembly of the representatives of a country, boasting itself zealous, not only for the preservation of its own liberties, but for the general rights of mankind, it should be necessary to say a single word upon such a subject; but the deceitfulness of the human heart was such as to change the appearances of truth, when it stood in opposition to self-interest. And he had to lament that even among those whose public duty it was to cling to the universal and eternal principles of truth, justice, and humanity, there were found some who could defend that which was unjust, fraudulent and cruel.

The doctrines he had heard that evening, ought to have been reserved for times the most flagrantly profligate and abandoned. He never expected then to learn that the everlasting laws of righteousness were to give way to imaginary, political, and commercial expediency; and that thousands of our fellow-creatures were to be reduced to wretchedness, that individuals might enjoy opulence, or government a revenue.

This motion, he said, came strongly recommended to them. The honorable member who had introduced it, was justly esteemed for his character. He was