Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/262

 that which he in vain attempted to show was an equivalent to the thing he took, it being a thing for which there was no equivalent; and which, if he had not obtained by force, he would not have possessed at all. Nor could there be any answer to this reasoning, unless it could be proved that it had pleased God to give to the inhabitants of Britain a property in the liberty and life of the natives of Africa. But he would go further on this subject. The injustice complained of was not confined to the bare circumstance of robbing them of the right to their own labor. It was conspicuous throughout the system. They who bought them, became guilty of all the crimes which had been committed in procuring them; and, when they possessed them, of all the crimes which belonged to their inhuman treatment. The injustice, in the latter case, amounted frequently to murder. For what was it but murder to pursue a practice which produced untimely death to thousands of innocent and helpless beings? It was a duty which their lordships owed to their Creator, if they hoped for mercy, to do away this monstrous oppression.

With respect to the impolicy of the trade (the third point in the resolution) he would say at once, that whatever was inhuman and unjust must be impolitic. He had, however, no objection to argue the point upon its own particular merits; and, first, he would observe that a great man, Mr. Pitt, now no more, had exerted his vast powers on many subjects to the admiration of his hearers; but on none more successfully than on the subject of the abolition of the slavetrade, lie proved, after making an allowance for the price paid for the slaves in the West Indies, for the loss of them in the seasoning, and for the expense of maintaining them afterwards, and comparing these particulars with the amount in value of their labor there, that the evils endured by the victims of the traffic were no gain to the master in whose service they took place. Indeed, Mr. Long had laid it down in his history of Jamaica, that the best way to secure the planters from ruin would be to do that which the resolution recommended. It was notorious that when any planter was in distress and sought to relieve himself by increasing the labor on his estate by means of the purchase of new slaves, the measure invariably tended to his destruction. What, then, was the importation of fresh Africans but a system tending to the general ruin of the islands?

To expose the impolicy of the trade further, he would observe that it was an allowed axiom, that as the condition of man was improved, he became more useful. The history of our own country, in very early times, exhibited instances of internal slavery, and this to a considerable extent. But we should find that precisely in proportion as that slavery was ameliorated, the power and prosperity of the country flourished. This was exactly applicable to the case in question. There could be no general amelioration of slavery in the West Indies while the slave-trade lasted; but, if we were to abolish it, we should make it the interest of every owner of slaves to do that which would improve their condition; and which, indeed, would lead, ultimately, to the annihilation of slavery itself. This great event, however, could not be accomplished at. once. It could only be effected in a course of time.