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"In two years and a half," says he, " 27,000 negroes have been imported."-"No wonder we have rebellions! Twenty-seven thousand in two years and a half!" Why, Sir, I believe that in some late years there have been as many imported into the same island within the same period! Surely, Sir, when gentlemen talk so vehemently of the safety of the islands, and charge us with being so indifferent to it; when they speak of the calamities of St. Domingo, and of similar dangers impending over their own heads at the present hour, it ill becomes them to be the persons who are crying out for further importations. It ill becomes them to charge upon us the crime of stirring up insurrections-upon us who are only adopting the very principles, which Mr. Long-which in part even the legislature of Jamaica itself, laid down in the time of danger, with an avowed view to the prevention of any such calamity.

The house, I am sure, will easily believe it is no small satisfaction to me, that among the many arguments for prohibiting the slave-trade which crowd upon my mind, the security of our West-India possessions against internal commotions, as well as foreign enemies, is anong the most prominent and most forcible. And here let me apply to my two right honourable friends, and ask them, whether in this part of the argument they do not see reason for immediate abolition! Why should you any longer import into those countries that which is the very seed of insurrection and rebellion? Why should you persist in introducing those latent principles of conflagration, which, if they should once burst forth, may annihilate in a single day the industry of an hundred years? Why will you subject yourselves, with open eyes, to the evident and imminent risk of a calamity, which may throw you back a whole century in your profits, in your cultivation, in your progress to the emancipation of your slaves? and disappointing at once every one of these golden expectations, may retard not only the accomplishment of that happy system which I have attempted to describe, but may cut off even your opportunity of taking any one introductory step? Let us begin from this time! Let us not commit these important interests to

any further hazard! Let us prosecute this great object from this very hour! Let us vote that the abolition of the slave-trade shall be immediate, and not left to I know not what future time or contingency! Will my right honourable friends answer for the safety of the islands during any imaginable intervening period? Or do they think that any little advantages of the kind which they state, can have any weight in that scale of expediency in which this great question ought undoubtedly to be tried?

Thus stated, and thus alone, Sir, can it be truly stated, to what does the whole of my right honourable friend's arguments, on the head of expediency, amount? It amounts but to this :The colonies on the one hand would have to struggle with some few difficulties and disadvantages at the first, for the sake of obtaining on the other hand immediate security to their leading interests; of ensuring, Sir, even their own political existence; and for the sake also of immediately commencing that system of progressive improvement in the condition of the slaves, which is necessary to raise them from the state of brutes to that of rational beings, but which never can begin until the introduction of these new disaffected and dangerous Africans into the same gangs, shall have been stopped.

If any argument can in the slightest degree justify the severity that is now so generally practised in the treatment of the slaves, it must be the introduction of these Africans. It is the introduction of these Africans that renders all idea of emancipation for the present so chimerical; and the very mention of it so dreadful. It is the introduction of these Africans that keeps down the condition of all plantation negroes. Whatever system of treatment is deemed necessary by the planters to be adopted towards these new Africans, extends itself to the other slaves also instead therefore of deferring the hour when you will finally put an end to importations, vainly purposing that the condition of your present slaves should previously be mended, you must, in the very first instance, stop your impor tations, if you hope to introduce any rational or practicable

plan, either of gradual emancipation, or present general improvemnent.

Having now done with this question of expediency as affecting the islands, I come next to a proposition advanced by my right honourable friend*, which appeared to intimate, that on account of some patrimonial rights of the West-Indians, the prohibition of the slave-trade might be considered as an invasion on their legal inheritance.

Now, in answer to this proposition, I must make two or three remarks, which I think my right honourable friend will find some considerable difficulty in answering.-First, I observe that his argument, if it be worth any thing, applies just as much to gradual as immediate abolition. I have no doubt, that at whatever period he should be disposed to say the abolition should actually take place, this defence will equally be set up; for it certainly is just as good an argument against an abolition seven, or seventy years hence, as against an abolition at this moment. It supposes, we have no right whatever to stop the importations; and even though the disadvantage to our plantations, which some gentlemen suppose to attend the measure of immediate abolition, should be admitted gradually to lessen by the lapse of a few years, yet in point of principle, the absence of all right of interference would remain the same. My right honourable friend, therefore, I am sure will not press an argument not less hostile to his proposition than to ours. But let us investigate the foundation of this objection, and I will commence what I have to say, by putting a question to my right honourable friend. It is chiefly on the presumed ground of our being bound by a parliamentary sanction heretofore given to the African slavetrade, that this argument against the abolition is rested. Does then my right honourable friend, or does any man in this house think, that the slave-trade has received any such parliamentary sanction, as must place it more out of the jurisdiction of the legislature for ever after, than the other branches of our national *Mr. Dundas.

commerce? I ask, is there any one regulation of any part of our commerce, which, if this argument be valid, may not equally be objected to, on the ground of its affecting some man's patrimony, some man's property, or some man's expectations? Let it never be forgotten, that the argument I am canvassing would be just as strong, if the possession affected were small, and the possessors humble; for on every principle of justice, the property of any single individual, or small number of individuals, is as sacred, as that of the great body of West-Indians. Justice ought to extend her protection with rigid impartiality to the rich and to the poor, to the powerful and to the humble. If this be the case, in what a situation does my right honourable friend's argument place the legislature of Britain? What room is left for their interference in the regulation of any part of our commerce? It is scarcely possible to lay a duty on any one article, which may not, when first imposed, be said in some way to affect the property of individuals, and even of some entire classes of the community. If the laws respecting the slavetrade imply a contract for its perpetual continuance, I will venture to say, there does not pass a year without some act, equally pledging the faith of parliament to the perpetuating of some other branch of commerce. In short, I repeat my observation, that no new tax can be imposed, much less can any prohibitory duty be ever laid on any branch of trade, that has before been regulated by parliament, if this principle be once admitted.

Before I refer to the acts of parliament by which the public faith is said to be pledged, let me remark also, that a contract for the continuance of the slave-trade must, on the principles which I shall presently insist on, have been void, even from the beginning; for if this trade is an outrage upon justice, and only another name for fraud, robbery and murder, will any man urge that the legislature could possibly by any pledge whatever incur the obligation of being an accessory, or I may even say a principal; in the commission of such enormities, by sanctioning their continuance? As well might an individual think himself bound by a promise to commit an assassination. I am

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confident, gentlemen must see, that our proceedings on such grounds, would infringe all the principles of law, and subvert the very foundation of morality.

Let us now see, how far the acts themselves shew that there is this sort of parliamentary pledge to continue the African slave-trade. The act of 23d Geo. II. c. 31, is that by which we are supposed to be bound up by contract to sanction all those horrors now so incontrovertibly proved. How surprised then, Sir, must the house be to find, that by a clause of their very act, some of these outrages are expressly forbidden! It says, "No commander, or master of a ship trading to Africa, shall by fraud, force or violence, or by any indirect practice whatsoever, take on board or carry away from the coast of Africa, any negro, or native of the said country, or commit any violence on the natives, to the prejudice of the said trade, and that every person so offending shall for every such offence forfeit"—When it comes to the penalty, sorry am I to say, that we see too close a resemblance to the West-India law, which inflicts the payment of 301. as the punishment for murdering a negro. The price of blood in Africa is 100%.; but even this penalty is enough to prove that the act at least does not sanction, much less does it engage to perpetuate enormities; and the whole trade has now been demonstrated to be a mass, a system of enormities; of enormities which incontrovertibly bid defiance not only to this clause, but to every regulation which our ingenuity can devise, and our power carry into effect. Nothing can accomplish the object of this clause but an extinction of the trade itself.

But, Sir, let us see what was the motive for carrying on the trade at all? The preamble of the act states it, "Whereas the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for the supplying the plantations and colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of negroes at reasonable rates, and for that purpose the said trade should be carried on," &c.-Here then we see what the parliament had in view when it passed this act; and I have clearly shewn that

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