After a few observations by Lord Sheffield, Mr. Drake, Colonel Tarleton, and Mr. Rolle, the House adjourned.
On the twenty-fifth of April it resumed the consideration of the subject. Mr. Dundas then went over his former resolutions, and concluded by moving, "that it should not be lawful to import any African Negros into any British colonies, in ships owned or navigated by British subjects, at any time after the first of January 1800."
Lord Mornington (now Marquis Wellesley) rose to propose an amendment. He congratulated his countrymen, that the Slave-trade had received its death-wound. This traffic was founded in injustice; and between right and wrong there could be no compromise. Africa was not to be sacrificed to the apparent good of the West-Indies. He would not repeat those enormities out of the evidence, which had made such a deep impression upon the House. It had been resolved, that the trade should be abolished. The question then was, how long they were to persevere in the crime of its continuance. One had said, that they might be unjust for ten years longer; another, only till the beginning of the next century. But this diversity of opinion had proceeded from an erroneous statement of Mr. Dundas against the clear and irrefragable calculations of Mr. Pitt. The former had argued, that, because Jamaica and the ceded islands had retained almost all the slaves which had been imported into them, they were therefore not yet in a situation to support their population without further supplies from Africa. But the truth was, that the slaves, so retained, were kept, not to maintain the population there, but to clear new land. Now the House had determined, that the trade was not to be continued for this purpose. The population, therefore, in the islands was sufficient to continue the ordinary cultivation of them.
He deprecated the idea, that the Slave-trade had been so sanctioned by the acts of former parliaments, that the present could make no alteration in it. Had not the House altered the import of foreign sugar into our islands? a measure, which at the time affected the property of many. Had they not prohibited the exports of provisions from America to the same quarter? Again, as to compacts, had the Africans ever been parties to these? It was rather curious also, when King James the Second gave a charter to the slave-traders, that he should have given them a right to all the south of Africa, and authority over every person born therein! But, by doing this, it was clear, that he gave them a right which he never possessed himself. After many other observations, he concluded by moving, "that the year 1793 be substituted in the place of the year 1800."
In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Burdon stated his conviction of the necessity of immediate abolition; but he would support the amendment, as the shortest of the terms proposed.
Mr. Robert Thornton would support it also, as the only choice left him. He dared not accede to a motion, by which we were to continue for seven years to imbrue our hands in innocent blood.
Mr. Ryder would not support the trade for one moment, if he could avoid it.
He could not hold a balance with gold in one scale, and blood in the other.
Mr. William Smith exposed the wickedness of restricting the trade to certain ages. The original motion, he said, would only operate as a transfer of cruelty from the aged and the guilty to the young and the innocent. He entreated the House to consider, whether, if it related to their own children, any one of them would vote for it.
Mr. Windham had hitherto felt a reluctance to speaking, not from the abstruseness, but from the simplicity, of the subject; but he could not longer be silent, when he observed those arguments of policy creeping again out of their lurking-places, which had fled before eloquence and truth. The House had clearly given up the policy of the question. They had been determined by the justice of it. Why were they then to be troubled again with arguments of this nature? These, if admitted, would go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality. Nations were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former could not be so easily punished. In private life morality took pretty good care of itself. It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were speedy. If a man broke open his neighbour's house, he would feel the consequences. There was an ally of virtue, who rendered it the interest of individuals to be moral, and he was called the executioner. But as such punishment did not always await us in our national concerns, we should substitute honour as the guardian of our national conduct. He hoped the West-Indians would consider the character of the mother-country, and the obligations to national as well as individual justice. He hoped also they would consider the sufferings, which they occasioned both in Africa, in the passage, and in the West-Indies. In the passage indeed no one was capable of describing them. The section of the slave-ship, however, made up the deficiency of language, and did away all necessity of argument, on this subject. Disease there had to struggle with the new affliction of chains and punishment. At one view were the irksomeness of a gaol, and the miseries of an hospital; so that the holds of these vessels put him in mind of the regions of the damned. The trade, he said, ought immediately to be abolished. On a comparison of the probable consequences of the abolition of it, he saw on one side only doubtful contingencies, but on the other shame and disgrace.
Sir James Johnstone contended for the immediate abolition of the trade. He had introduced the plough into his own plantation in the West Indies, and he found the land produced more sugar than when cultivated in the ordinary way by slaves. Even for the sake of the planters, he hoped the abolition would not be long delayed.