Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/256

 great part of these journeys in the night. All this time my mind had been on the stretch. It had been bent, too, to this one subject; for I had not even leisure to attend to my own concerns. The various instances of barbarity which had come successively to my knowledge, within this period, had vexed, harassed, and afflicted it. The wound which these had produced was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from the reiterated refusal of persons to give their testimony, after I had traveled hundreds of miles in quest of them. But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the persecution begun and pursued by persons interested in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined against them; and whom, on account of their dependent situations in life, it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and ungrateful to have fled. The late Mr. Whitbread, to whom one day in deep affliction on this account I related accidentally a circumstance of this kind, generously undertook, in order to make my mind easy upon the subject, to make good all injuries which should in future arise to individuals from such persecution; and he repaired these, at different times, at a considerable expense. I feel it a duty to divulge this circumstance, out of respect to the memory of one of the best of men, and of one whom, if the history of his life were written, it would appear to have been an extraordinary honor to the country to have produced."

In the session of 1195, Mr. Wilberforce moved for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade. The motion was lost by a small majority. In 1796, Mr. Wilberforce resolved to try the question in a new shape. He moved that the trade be abolished in a limited time, but without assigning to its duration any specific date. He wished the house to agree to this as a general principle. After much opposition, the principle was acknowledged; but when, in consequence of this acknowledgment of it, he brought in a bill and attempted to introduce into one of its clauses, the year IT 97, as the period when the trade should cease, he lost it by a majority of 74 to 70. He allowed the next session to pass without any parliamentary notice of the subject, but in 179S he renewed his motion for a limited time, which was lost.

In the year 1799, undismayed by these different disappointments, he again renewed his motion. Colonel M. Wood, Mr. Petrie, and others, among whom were Mr. Windham and Mr. Dundas, opposed it. Messrs. Pitt, Fox, W. Smith, Sir William Dolben, Sir P. Milbank, Mr. Hobhouse, and Mr. Canning, supported it. Sir R. Milbank contended that modifications of a system fundamentally wrong ought not to be tolerated by the legislature of a free nation. Mr. Hobhouse said that nothing could be so nefarious as this traffic in blood. It was unjust in its principle. It was cruel in its practice. It admitted of no regulation whatever. The abolition of it was called for equally by morality and sound policy.

Mr. Canning exposed the folly of Mr. Dundas, who had said that as