Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/248

 which opposed itself to him in innumerable ways; it created more embarrassments than all the natural impediments of the country; and it was more hard to contend with, than any difficulties of climate, soil, or natural disposition of the people.

Colonel Tarleton repeated his arguments of the last year. In addition to these, he inveighed bitterly against the abolitionists, as a junto of sectaries, sophists, enthusiasts, and fanatics. He condemned the abolition as useless, unless other nations would take it up. He brought to the recollection of the house the barbarous scenes which had taken place in St. Domingo, all of which, he said, had originated in the discussion of this question. He described the alarms in which the inhabitants of the islands were kept, lest similar scenes should occur from the same cause. He ridiculed the petitions on the table. Itinerant clergymen, mendicant physicians, and others had extorted signatures from the sick, the indigent and the traveler. School-boys were invited to sign them, under the promise of a holiday. He had letters to produce which would prove all these things, though he was not authorized to give up the names of those who had written them.

Mr. Whitbread said, that even if he could conceive that the trade was, as some had asserted it to be, founded on principles of humanity; that the A Means were rescued from death in their own country; that, upon being carried to the West Indies, they were put under kind masters; that their labor there was easy; that at evening they returned cheerful to their homes; that in sickness they were attended with care; and that their old age was rendered comfortable; even then he would vote for the abolition of the slave-trade, inasmuch as he was convinced that that which was fundamentally wrong, no practice could justify.

No eloquence could persuade him that the Africans were torn from their country and their dearest connexions, merely that they might live a happier life; or that they could be placed under the uncontrolled dominion of others without suffering. Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best. Hence would arise tyranny on the one side, and a sense of injury on the other. Hence the passions would be let loose, and a state of perpetual enmity would follow.

He needed only to go to the accounts of those who defended the system of slavery, to show that it was cruel. He was forcibly struck last year by an expression of an honorable member, an advocate for the trade, who, when he came to speak of the slaves, on selling off the stock of a plantation, said that they brought less than the common price, because they were damaged. Damaged! What 1 were they goods and chattels? What an idea was this to hold out of our fellow-creatures 1 We might imagine how slaves were treated, if they could be spoken of in such a manner. Perhaps these unhappy people had lingered out the best part of their lives in the service of their master. Able then to do but little, they were sold for little; and the remaining substance of their sinews was to be pressed out by another, yet more hardened than the former, who had made a calculation of their vitals accordingly.

Mr. Dundas declared that he had always been a warm friend to the abolition