Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/4

 at the mere contemplation of which, every mind not hardened by the profits accruing from it involuntarily shudders. The facts here developed cannot fail to originate many important reflections. The legislator will consider whether something is not still necessary to be done, though he may exultingly own much has been achieved in behalf of the poor African. He will consider whether the energy of this nation, foremost in power and knowledge beyond all others on earth, cannot render more perfect that system of African melioration, which it hath already attempted with such signal success.

The executive government will congratulate themselves that one of the most benignant laws which it is their glory and their happiness to be instrumental in dispensing, hath been promptly acted upon in the best possible manner (where discretion is allowed) by those to whose charge they are committed abroad; and the people of England will feel a glow of sincere and unmingled delight, that though they live in a day of war unparalleled in extent against them, a war waged by the slaves of almost all nations, who for them are striving to forge fetters, while they are kindly breaking the bolts which bind, and loosening the chains that torture, their fellow-creatures in the distant climes of Africa.

The Letters which follow the Trials will be found to contain many facts and opinions, and to treat on subjects relative to the slave-trade which