St. Domingo, in consequence of the revolution which had been effected there, and an insurrection had broken out in the British island of Dominica. All these had been industriously exaggerated in print, and produced a terrific effect upon many members. In this unfavorable frame of mind they went into the house on the day appointed.

On the eighteenth of April, 1791, Mr. Wilberforce made his motion. He began by expressing a hope that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction o. the truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the slavetrade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and religion, but by sound policy. He stated that he should argue the matter from the evidence. He adverted to the character, situation, and means of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner:

He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade.. Captain Wilson and Captain Hills, of his majesty's navy, and Mr. Dalrymple of the land service, had concurred in stating, that in the country contiguous to the river Senegal, when slave-ships arrived there, armed parties were regularly sent out in the evening, who scoured the country, and brought in their prey. The wretched victims were to be seen in the morning bound back to back in the huts on shore, whence they were conveyed, tied hand and foot, to the slave ships. The design of these ravages was obvious, because, when the slave-trade was stopped, they ceased. Mr. Kiernan spoke of the constant depredations by the Moors to procure slaves. Mr. Wadstrom confirmed them. The latter gentleman showed also that they were excited by presents of brandy, gunpowder, and such other incentives; and that they were not only carried on by one community against another, but that the kings were stimulated to practice them in their own territories, and on their own subjects: and in one instance a chieftain, who, when intoxicated, could not resist the demands of the slave-merchants, had expressed, in a moment of reason, a due sense of his own crime, and had reproached his christian seducers. Abundant also were the instances of private rapine. Individuals were kidnapped whilst in their fields and gardens. There was an universal feeling of distrust and apprehension there. The natives never went any distance from home without arms; and when Captain Wilson asked them the reason of it, they pointed to a slave ship then lying within sight.

On the windward coast, it appeared from Lieutenant Story and Mr. Bowman, that the evils just mentioned existed, if possible, in a still higher degree. They had seen the remains of villages which had been burned, whilst the fields of corn were still standing beside them, and every other trace of recent desolation. Here an agent was sent to establish a settlement in the country, and to send to the ships such slaves as he might obtain. The orders he received from the captain were, that "he was to encourage the chieftains by brandy and gunpowder to go to war, to make slaves." This he did. The chieftains perform

ed their part in return. The neighboring villages were surrounded and set on fire in the night. The inhabitants were seized when making their escape; and, being brought to the agent, were by him forwarded to his principal on the coast. Mr. How, a botanist in the service of government, stated that on the arrival of an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, while he was there, a native chief immediately sent forth armed parties, who brought in a supply of all descriptions in the night.

All these atrocities, he said, were fully substantiated by the evidence; and here he should do injustice to his cause if he were not to make a quotation from the speech of Mr. Bryan Edwards in the assembly of Jamaica, who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candor to deliver himself in the following manner there: "I am persuaded," says he, "that Mr. Wilberforce has been rightly informed as to the manner in which slaves are generally procured. The intelligence I have collected from my own negroes abundantly confirms his account; and I have not the smallest doubt, that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely such as he has represented them. The whole, or the greatest part of that immense continent, is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other. That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the slavetrade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the sugar islands may be convincedthat it is so, who will inquire of any African negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. The assertion that it is otherwise is mockery and insult."

It was another effect of this trade that it corrupted the morals of those who carried it on. Every fraud was used to deceive the ignorance of the natives by false weights and measures, adulterated commodities, and other impositions of a like sort. These frauds were even acknowledged by many who had themselves practiced them in obedience to the orders of their superiors. For the honor of the mercantile character of the country, such a traffic ought immediately to be suppressed.

With respect to the miseries of the middle passage, he had said so much on a former occasion, that he would spare the feelings of the committee as much as he could. He would therefore state that the evidence which was before them confirmed all those scenes of wretchedness, which he had then described; the same suffering from a state of suffocation by being crowded together; the same dancing in fetters; the same melancholy singing; the same eating by compulsion; the same despair; the same insanity; and all the other abominations which characterized the trade. New instances, however, had occurred, where these wretched men had resolved on death to terminate their woes. Some had destroyed themselves by refusing sustenance, in spite of threats and punishments. Others had thrown themselves into the sea; and more than one, when in the act of drowning, were seen to wave their hands in triumph, “exulting (to use the words of an eye-witness) that they had escaped." Yet these and similar things, when viewed through the African medium he had mention

ed, took a different shape and color. Captain Knox, an adverse witness, had maintained that slaves lay during the night in tolerable comfort. And yet he confessed that in a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, in which he had carried two hundred and ninety slaves, the latter had not all of them room to lie on their backs. How comfortably, then, must they have lain in his subsequent voyages, for he carried afterwards, in a vessel of one hundred and eight. tons, four hundred and fifty, and in a vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, no less than six hundred slaves. Another instance of African deception was to be found in the testimony of Captain Frazer, one of the most humane captains in the trade. It had been said of him that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a slave to compel him to eat.

But upon whom did the cruelties thus arising out of the prosecution of this barbarous traffic fall? Upon a people with feeling and intellect like ourselves. One witness had spoken of the acuteness of their understanding; another of the extent of their memories; a third of their genius for commerce; a fourth of their proficiency in manufactures at home. Many had admired their gentle and peaceable disposition, their cheerfulness, and their hospitality. Even they, who were nominally slaves in Africa, lived a happy life. A witness against the abolition had described them as sitting and eating with their masters in the true style of patriarchal simplicity and comfort. Were these, then, a people incapable of civilization? The argument that they were an inferior species had been proved to be false.

Mr. Wilberforce, after showing in a very lucid manner, and by incontestable arguments, that the abolition of the trade in question, instead of being an injury, would be a lasting benefit to the West India islands, concluded by declaring that, interested as he might be supposed to be in the final event of the question, he was comparatively indifferent as to the present decision of the house upon it. Whatever they might do, the people of Great Britain, he was confident, would abolish the slave-trade when, as would soon happen, its injustice and cruelty should be fairly laid before them. It was a nest of serpents, which would never have existed so long, but for the darkness in which they lay hid. The light of day would now be let in on them, and they would vanish from the sight. For himself, he declared that he was engaged in a work which he would never abandon. The consciousness of the justice of his cause would carry him forward, though he were alone; but he could not but derive encouragement from considering with whom he was associated. Let us not, he said, despair. It is a blessed cause; and success ere long will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory. We have obtained for these poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which for a while was most shamefully denied them. This is the first fruit of our efforts. Let us persevere, and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we disist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name; till we have released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labor; and till we have extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, which our posterity, looking back to the his