XXIII. 1788. concluding however, as usual, with a motion to BOOK empower the Company to raise the sum of one million, by way of increase of capital, to be subscribed by the present proprietors of East-India stock; and the bill founded on this motion passed both houses with trivial opposition. berforce's the slave The session was far advanced, when Mr. Wil- Mr. Wil berforce brought forward his long-expected rno-motion respectingthe tion, relating to the abolition of the African slave- abolition of trade, which was now become the theme of public trade. execration. Mr. Wilberforce divided his subject into three parts-the nature of the trade as it af fected Africa itself; the appearance it assumed in the transportation of the slaves; and the considerations suggested by their actual state in the West Indies. What must be the natural consequence of a slave-trade with Africa, with a country vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Was it not plain that she must suffer from it? that her savage manners must be rendered still more ferocious, and that a slave-trade carried on round her coasts must extend violence and desolation to her very centre? Such were precisely the circumstances proved by the evidence before the privy-council. As to the mode in which the slaves were transported from Africa to the West Indies, he affirmed that so much misery condensed into so small a compass was more than human imagination had ever before XXIII. 1788, BOOK conceived. It was the constant practice to set sail in the night, that the slaves, wrung with distress at quitting for ever their native country, might not be sensible of the moment of departure. This dreadful event was marked with songs and tears of lamentation. It appeared in evidence, that a captain more susceptible than the rest had threatened a woman with the terrors of the lash, because her song was too painful for his feelings. The mortality on board the ships was prodigious; and, including the subsequent seasoning, it did not amount to less than 50 per cent. On their arrival in the West Indiés, astringents and washes were employed to hide their wounds, and make them up for sale-artifices at once fraudulent and fatal. This infamous traffic was also known to be the grave of sailors employed in it. Of 3170 seamen who sailed from Liverpool in 1787, only 1428 had returned. Mr. Wilberforce said he felt the wickedness of the slave-trade to be so enormous, so dreadful, and irremediable, that he could stop at no alternative short of its abolition. He acknowledged that his mind had indeed been harassed with the objections of the West-India planters, who had asserted that the ruin of their property must be the consequence of this regulation. He could not, however, help distrusting their arguments. He could not believe that the Almighty Being, who forbade the XXIII. 1788. practice of rapine and blood, had made rapine and BOOK bloodshed necessary to any part of his creation. Light soon broke in upon his mind. His suspicions were confirmed by daily information, and the evidence he had now to offer upon this point was decisive and complete. The principle upon which he founded the necessity of the act was not indeed policy but justice; but though justice were the principle of the measure, he would pledge himself to prove it reconcileable with our truest political interest. From an induction of authentic facts, he shewed that the number of slaves had rapidly increased by natural means on those plantations and many such he enumerated-where they had been treated on a plan of lenity and humanity; and that the enormous annual importation from Africa was rendered necessary merely by the prevalence of that system of cruelty and oppression which the abolition of the slave-trade must eventually subvert. But it was urged, that the interest of the masters would induce them, in the usual course of things, to treat their slaves with kindness and humanity, Mr. Wilberforce appealed to universal experience for the fallacy of this argument. It was certainly the true and ultimate interest of the planters to adopt the system of lenity. But they consulted their apparent and immediate interest in imposing rigorous tasks, and in circumscribing within the narrowest XXIII. 1788. BOOK limits their miserable allotments of food, of cloth ing, and of repose. To assert that men will of course act as their interest under the guidance of reason would dictate, is in effect to pronounce all men upright and virtuous; for virtue is the path to genuine happiness. But are not mankind enveloped in the mists of ignorance, of folly, and of passion? Was it not the grand and perpetual object of religion, of morality, and of all just and beneficent legislation, to enlighten the human mind, and to assist men in discerning their true interest; to warn them of the danger of departing from it, of being deceived by false and flattering sugges tions,—in a word, to incite them, though too oft in vain, to the practice of what is right, and to deter them from the commission of that which is wrong, by motives the most powerful, by sanctions the most sacred?"-Mr. Wilberforce concluded a long and excellent speech, equally addressed to the understanding and feelings of the house, and which produced a most sensible and powerful effect, by moving, not, as was generally expected, a general vote of censure and reprobation, which would have imposed an obligation on the house to have proceeded to strong and decisive measures, but an elaborate and tedious series of complex and somewhat dubious propositions, twelve in number, specifying the number of slaves imported from Africa into the British West Indies; the different XXIII. 1788. descriptions of persons included in this aggregate BOOK number; the injury sustained by the seamen employed in the African trade; the causes of the mortality of the negroes; and the different items of calculation respecting the increase of population in Jamaica and Barbadoes; and they concluded with declaring coldly, that no considerable or permanent inconvenience would result from dis. continuing the farther importation. Upon these propositions, Mr. Wilberforce said he did not mean to urge the house to come to any immediate vote. This afforded ample scope on the part of the anti-abolitionists, lord Penryn, lord Maitland, &c. &c., and they eagerly embraced the opportunity to create new difficulty and delay. Mr. Wilberforce declaring that he relied on the evidence contained in the report of the privycouncil, they insisted that the merchants and planters interested in this business were entitled to be heard by counsel. Mr. Pitt observed with some degree of indignation, and as a very extraordinary circumstance, that the report had lain many weeks on the table, and no argument against its sufficiency had been heard of, till the moment was arrived that the house was expected to come to an ultimate vote on the subject. At length, however, he conceded, with the too easy consent of Mr. Wilberforce, tò the examination of witnesses on the part of the |