was worth any thing when opposed to moral rectitude, or if it were to supersede the precepts of Christianity, where was a man to stop, or what line was he to draw? For any thing he knew it might be physically true, that human blood was the best manure for the land; but who ought to shed it on that account? True expediency, however, was, where it ever would be found, on the side of that system, which was most merciful and just.

The condition of the negroes in the West Indies had been lately compared with that of the Hindoos. But no barbarous sounds of cracking whips reminded him, that with the form and image of a man, his destiny was that of a beast of the field. Let the advocates for the bloody traffic state what they had to set off on their side of the question against the comforts and independence of the man, with whom they compared the slave.

SAMUEL WHITBREAD.

No eloquence could persuade him, that the Africans were torn from their country and their dearest connexions, merely that they might lead 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 fetched less than the common price, because they were damaged! Damaged! What! were they goods and chattels? What an idea was this to hold out to our fellow creatures! 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, and who had made a calculation of their vitals accordingly.

THOMAS ERSKINE.

The Lord Chancellor (Erskine) said, "From information which he could not dispute, he was warranted in saying, that on this continent [Africa] husbands were fraudulently and forcibly severed from their wives, and parents from their children; and that all the ties of blood and affection were torn up by the roots. He had himself seen the unhappy natives put together in heaps in the hold of a ship, where, with every possible attention to them, their situation must have been intolerable. He had also heard proved in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful than those which he had seen. One of these he would just mention. The slaves on board a certain ship rose in a mass to liberate themselves; and having far advanced in the pursuit of their object, it became necessary to repel them by force. Some of them yielded; some of them were killed in the scuffle; but many of them actually jumped into the sea and were drowned; thus preferring death to the misery of their situation; while others hung to the ship, repenting of their rashness, and bewailing with frightful noises their horrid fate. Thus the whole vessel exhibited but one hideous scene of wretchedness. They, who were subdued, and secured in chains, were seized with the flux, which carried many of them off. These things were proved in a trial before a British jury, which had to consider, whether this was a loss, which fell within the policy of insurance, the slaves being regarded as if they had been only a cargo of dead matter. He could mention other instances, but they were much too shocking to be described. Surely their lordships could never consider such a traffic to be consistent with humanity or justice."

CARYSFORT.

Lord Carysfort rose, and said, "that the great cause of abolition had flourished by the manner in which it had been opposed. No one argument of solid weight has been adduced against it. It had been shown, but never disproved, that the colonial laws were inadequate to the protection of the slaves; that the punishments of the latter were most unmerciful; that they were deprived of the right of self-defence against any white man, and, in short, that the system was totally repugnant to the principles of the British constitution."

GEORGE GRENVILLE.

Lord Grenville then read a resolution of the Commons. "This resolution, he said, stated first, that the slave-trade was contrary to humanity, justice, and sound policy. That it was contrary to humanity was obvious; for humanity might be said to be sympathy for the distresses of others, or a desire to accomplish benevolent ends by good means. But did not the slave-trade convey ideas the very reverse of the definition? It deprived men of all those comforts, in which it pleased the Creator to make the happiness of his creature to consist, of the blessings of society, of the charities of the dear relationships of husband, wife, father, son, and kindred; of the due discharge of the relative duties of these, and of that freedom, which in its pure and natural sense, was one of the greatest gifts of God to man. "It was impossible to read the evidence, as it related to this trade, without ac

knowledging the inhumanity of it and our own disgrace.

"Another way of keeping up the slave-trade was by the practice of man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head. This practice included violence, and often bloodshed. The inhumanity of it therefore could not be doubted.

"The unhappy victims, being thus procured, were conveyed, he said, across the Atlantic in a manner which justified the charge of inhumanity again. Indeed the suffering here was so great, that neither the mind could conceive nor the tongue describe it. He had said on a former occasion, that in their transportation there was a greater portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had ever existed in the known world. He would repeat his words, for he did not know, how he could express himself better on the subject. And, after all these horrors, what was their destiny? It was such, as justified the charge in the resolution again: for, after having survived the sickness arising from the passage, they were doomed to interminable slavery.

"He intreated their lordships, to endeavor to conceive the hard case of the unhappy victims of it; and as he had led them to the last stage of their miserable existence, which was in the colonies, to contemplate it there. They were there under the arbitrary will of a cruel task-master from morning till night. When they went to rest, would not their dreams be frightful? When they awoke, would they not awake

-"only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges?"-

"They knew no change, except in the humor of their masters, to whom their whole destiny was entrusted. We might perhaps flatter ourselves with saying, that they were subject to the will of Englishmen. But Englishmen were not better than others, when in possession of arbitrary power. The very fairest exercise of it was a never never-failing corrupter of the heart. But suppose it were allowed, that selfinterest might operate some little against cruelty; yet where was the interest of the overseer or the driver? But he knew it would be said, that the evils complained of in the colonies had been mitigated. There might be instances of this; but they could never be cured, while slavery existed. Slavery took away more than half of the human character. Hence the practice, where it existed, of rejecting the testimony of the slave: but, if his testimony was rejected, where could be his redress against his oppressor?

"Having shown the inhumanity, he would proceed to the second point in the resolution, or the injustice, of the trade. We had two ideas of justice; first, as it belonged to society by virtue of a social compact; and secondly, as it belonged to men, not as citizens of a community, but as beings of one common nature. In a state of nature, man had a right to the fruit of his own labour absolutely to himself; and one of the main purposes, for which he entered into society, was, that

he night be better protected in the possession of his rights. In both cases, therefore, it was manifestly unjust, that a man should be made to labor during the whole of his life, and yet have no benefit from his labor. Hence the slave-trade and the colonial slavery were a violation of the very principle, upon which all law for the protection of property was founded. Whatever benefit was derived from that trade to an individual, it was derived from dishonor and dishonesty. He forced from the unhappy victim of it that, which the latter did not wish to give him; and he gave to the same victim 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. 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."

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,*
Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them:-shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? you will answer,
The slaves are ours:-so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it;
If you deny me, fie upon your law!

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

:

* This argument, considered as used to the particular persons, seems conclusive. I see not how Venitians or Englishmen, while they practice the purchase and sale of slaves, can much enforce or demand the law of doing to others as we would that they should do to us.

JOHN MILTON.

O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brethren, he himself assuming
Authority usurped from God, not given.
-Man over men

He made not lord; such title to Himself
Reserving, human left from human free,

In all things that have beauty, there is nothing to man more comely than liberty. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, above all liberties.

reason.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

O. Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eas'd of her load, subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.

Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less rectified or swayed by When one hears of negroes, who, upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it sometimes happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner? What might not that savage greatness of soul, which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what color of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospects of happiness in another world as well as in this; and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it? Spectator, and Murray's English Reader.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it shall for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er all the earth
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet, for a' that;
When man to man, the warld all o'er,
Shall brothers be, an' a' that.

Here's Freedom to them that would read,

Here's Freedom to them that would write, There's none ever feared that the truth should be heard, But they whom the truth would indict.

May Liberty meet with success,

May Prudence protect it from evil,

May tyrants and tyranny tine in their mist,
And wander their way to the devil.

WILLIAM COWPER.

Man finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and having pow'r
T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No! dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

The tender ties of parent, husband, friend,
All bonds of Nature, in that moment end.
O most degrading of all ills that wait
On man, (a mourner in his best estate!)
All other sorrows virtue may endure,
And find submission more than half a cure;
But SLAVERY!! Virtue dreads it as her grave,
Patience itself is meanness in a slave.

Wait, then, the dawning of a brighter day,
And snap the chain the moment when you may.
Nature imprints upon whate'er we see
That has a heart and life in it, "BE FREE!"

Why did all-creating Nature

Make the plant for which we toil?