Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/237

 and unintelligible. Personal freedom was the first right of every human being. It was a right, of which he who deprived a fellow-creature was absolutely criminal in BO depriving him, and which he who withheld was no less criminal in withholding, lie could not therefore retract his words with respect to any, who (whatever regard he might otherwise have for them) should, by their vote of that night, deprive their fellow-creatures of so great a blessing. Nay, he would go further. He would say, that if the house, knowing what the trade was by the evidence, did not by their vote mark to all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enormous, so repugnant to all laws, human and divine, they would consign their character to eternal infamy.

That the pretense of danger to our West Indian islands, from the abolition of the slave-trade, was totally unfounded, Mr. Wilberforce had abundantly proved: but if there were those who had not been satisfied with that proof, was it possible to resist the arguments of Mr. Pitt on the same subject? It had been shown, on a comparison of the births and deaths in Jamaica, that there was not now any decrease of the slaves. But if there had been, it would have made no difference to him in his vote; for, had the mortality been ever so great there, he should have ascribed it to the system of importing negroes, instead of that of encouraging their natural increase. Was it not evident that the planters thought it more convenient to buy them fit for work than to breed them? Why, then, was this horrid trade to be kept up? To give the planters, truly, the liberty of misusing their slaves, so as to check population: for it was from ill usage only that in a climate so natural to them, their numbers could diminish. The very ground, therefore, on which the planters rested the necessity of fresh importations, namely, the destruction of lives in the West Indies, was itself the strongest argument that could be given, and furnished the most imperious call upon parliament for the abolition of the trade.

Against this trade innumerable were the charges. An honorable member, Mr. Smith, had done well to introduce those tragical stories, which had made such an impression upon the house. No one of these had been yet controverted. It had indeed been said that the cruelty of the African captain to the child was too bad to be true; and we had been desired to look at the cross-examination of the witness, as if we should find traces of the falsehood of his testimony there. But his cross-examination was peculiarly honorable to his character; for after he had been pressed, in the closest manner, by some able members of the house, the only inconsistency they could fix upon him was, whether the fact had happened on the same day of the same month of the year 1164, or the year 1765.

But it was idle to talk of the incredibility of such instances. It was not denied that absolute power was exercised by the slave captains; and if this was granted, all the cruelties charged upon them would naturally follow. Never did he hear of charges so black and horrible as those contained in the evidence on the table. They unfolded such a scene of cruelty, that if the house, with all their present knowledge of the circumstances, should dare to vote for its