Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/7

 acts of great benevolence; but the wealth and party influence of those fed by the negroes' unrewarded labour, was so commanding, that the Abolition Act could not be passed until that great statesman, Mr. Fox (carrying his purity of principle and consistent integrity into place and power,) effected it by the assistance of government. Forfeitures and confiscations were found inadequate for abolition; and the same philanthropy continuing to illumine the British senate, an act constituting the slave trade felony was passed, to render former acts more effective, and the abolition complete. The first time of making this valuable act operative has devolved on you; the principles of British jurisprudence will not tolerate slavery; liberty does not depend on complexion; it is dispensed, it is secured by law, in the administration of which, distinction, of person is not acknowledged. Even in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it was emphatically said, “the air of a British government was too pure for a slave to breathe.” It has been said to me by one, that “this cargo of slaves is the property of such an individual, or these slaves are national property." I know of no property in humanity, nor of any law, divine or human, that bestows it! Man, formed after the image of God, created and made by his ordinance, is the property of God, and his only! Another has audaciously said to me, “these blacks are only fitted for slavery."” I have answered, “suppose you were in a kingdom of blacks, where some white man might be chained to an oak, or toiling in a fort, and to your plea for his liberation, it was replied, these white fellows are only fitted for such servitude. How much philanthropy or philosophy would you allow this contained? Yet there it might be only individual calamity fortuitously entailed, while here we have national misery systematically established!

This act is uncommonly strong and wide in its reach, [here the learned Judge read the greatest part of the first