SLAVE-TRADE QUESTION.
Since the last session the privy-council had been employed in investigating facts concerning the slave-trade; and on the 12th of May an elaborate report was laid upon the table of the house of commons, together with petitions for and against that traffic. Mr. Wilberforce had recovered from his illness; and on his motion it was voted that the report, with the petitions, should immediately be taken into consideration by a committee of the whole house. In committee, Wilberforce moved twelve resolutions, condemnatory of the traffic and the barbarous treatment of the African slaves, which he enforced by a long and excellent speech; in which he considered the subject, first, on the question of humanity, and next, on that of policy. From the evidence before the council, it appeared that the number of slaves carried away annually from Africa, on an average of four years, amounted 38,000. These were chiefly brought from the interior of the country; and they consisted of four classes: prisoners taken in war; persons seized for debt or imputed crimes; domestic slaves, sold for the emolument of their masters; and persons seized by violence or fraud. Mr. Wilberforce showed that the trade thus carried on had a natural tendency to cause frequent and cruel wars; to produce unjust convictions and aggravated punishments for pretended crimes; to encourage fraud and oppression; and to obstruct the natural course of civilization and improvement. He also showed that an extensive commerce in articles peculiar to Africa and important to our manufactures, might be substituted for this inhuman traffic; a commerce which would at once equal the profits of the slave-trade, and would probably increase with the civilization that would follow its abolition. The orator dwelt very forcibly on the grievous sufferings which the slaves endured on the passage from Africa to the West Indies, and the horrid treatment they received on their arrival. He also dwelt emphatically on the dissoluteness and other causes which prevailed among them in the West Indies, and which prevented the natural increase of population among them; arguing, that if the causes which had hitherto obstructed the natural increase of negroes in our plantations, and if good regulations were established among them, there would be no need of an annual importation from Africa. At all events, he said, a trade founded in iniquity, and carried on with so many circumstances of horror, must be abolished, let its policy be what it will. The wickedness of the trade was so enormous, so dreadful, and irremediable; that he could stop at no alternative short of its abolition. His mind had been harassed with the objections of the West India planters, who had asserted that the ruin of their property would be involved in such a step; but he could not help distrusting their arguments; he could not believe that the Almighty, who forbade the practice of rapine and blood, had made rapine and blood necessary to any part of his creation. He felt a confidence in that persuasion; he took the resolution to act on it, and light soon broke in upon his mind; his suspicion was daily confirmed by increasing information; and the evidence he had now to offer on this point was decisive and complete. He was prepared to prove that the number of negroes in our colonies might be kept up without the introduction of slaves from Africa. He added, in a fine spirit of Christian philanthropy:—“Let us then make such amends as we can for the mischief we have clone to that unhappy continent; let us put an end at once to this inhuman traffic, and stop this effusion of human blood. The true way to virtue is to avoid temptation; let us, therefore, withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud, violence, cruelty, and injustice which the slave-trade furnishes. Wherever the sun shines let us go round the world with him, diffusing our beneficence; but let us not traffic only that we may set kings against their subjects, and subjects against their kings, sowing discord in every village, fear and terror in every family, urging millions of our fellow-creatures to hunt each other for slaves, creating fairs and markets for human flesh through one whole continent of the world, and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the base iniquity of such a traffic.” Mr. Pitt expressed his warm approbation of the manner in which the subject had been brought before the house, and confessed that the slave-trade must be abolished: and he consented that the resolutions should be entered on the journals; conceiving that such a step might produce the effect of causing foreign nations to concur with England in the proposed abolition. Fox and Burke also applauded the orator; the latter declaring that not only England, but all Europe was indebted to him for exposing the iniquity of a trade “which began with savage war, was prosecuted with unheard-of cruelty, continued, during the middle passage, with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ended in perpetual exile and unremitting slavery.” The feeling of the house and the nation at large was so manifestly, at this period, in favour of the abolition of the slave-trade, that Lord Penryn, one of its advocates, asserted that, to his knowledge, the planters were now willing to assent to any regulation of the trade short of its abolition; to which remark Fox replied, with much animation, that he knew nothing of such a thing as a regulation of robbery and restriction of murder; there was no medium; the legislature must either abolish the trade, or plead guilty to all the iniquity with which it was attended. Finally, Pitt conceded, with the consent of Mr. Wilberforce, to the examination of witnesses on the part of the slave-merchants and planters, trusting that unnecessary delays would not be introduced, as he could not submit to the ultimate procrastination of so important a measure. Evidence was heard at the bar for several successive weeks; and the session being far advanced, the friends of abolition consented, on the 23rd of June, to an adjournment of the question to the succeeding session of parliament. Before this session was closed, however, the temporary regulation act of Sir William Dolben was renewed till August, 1790.