An honourable member (Colonel Tarleton) had disclaimed every attempt to interest the feelings of those present, but had desired to call them to reason and accounts. He also desired (though it was a question of feeling, if any one ever was,) to draw the attention of the committee to reason and accounts—to the voice of reason instead of that of prejudice, and to accounts in the place of idle apprehensions. The result, he doubted not, would be a full persuasion, that policy and justice were inseparable upon this, as upon every other occasion.
The same gentleman had enlarged on the injustice of depriving the Liverpool merchants of a business, on which were founded their honour and their fortunes. On what part of it they founded their honour he could not conjecture, except from those passages in the evidence, where it appeared, that their agents in Africa had systematically practised every fraud and villany, which the meanest and most unprincipled cunning could suggest, to impose on the ignorance of those with whom they traded.
The same gentleman had also lamented, that the evidence had not been taken upon oath. He himself lamented it too. Numberless facts had been related by eye-witnesses, called in support of the abolition, so dreadfully atrocious, that they appeared incredible; and seemed rather, to use the expression of Ossian, like "the histories of the days of other times." These procured for the trade a species of acquittal, which it could not have obtained, had the committee been authorised to administer an oath. He apprehended, also, in this case, that some other persons would have been rather more guarded in their testimony. Captain Knox would not then perhaps have told the committee, that six hundred slaves could have had comfortable room at night in his vessel of about one hundred and forty tons; when there could have been no more than five feet six inches in length, and fifteen inches in breadth, to about two-thirds of his number.
The same gentleman had also dwelt upon the Slave Trade as a nursery for seamen. But it had appeared by the muster-rolls of the slave-vessels, then actually on the table of the house, that more than a fifth of them died in the service, exclusive of those who perished when discharged in the West Indies; and yet he had been instructed by his constituents to maintain this false position. His reasoning, too, was very curious; for, though numbers might die, yet as one half who entered were landsmen, seamen were continually forming. Not to dwell on the expensive cruelty of forming these seamen by the yearly destruction of so many hundreds, this very statement was flatly contradicted by the evidence. The muster-rolls from Bristol stated the proportion of landsmen in the trade there at one twelfth, and the proper officers of Liverpool itself at but a sixteenth of the whole employed. In the face again of the most glaring facts, others had maintained that the mortality in these vessels did not exceed that of other trades in the tropical climates. But the same documents, which proved that twenty-three per cent were destroyed in this wasting traffic, proved that in West India ships only about one and a half per cent were lost, including every casualty. But the very men, under whose management this dreadful mortality had been constantly occurring, had coolly said, that much of it might be avoided by proper regulations. How criminal then were they, who, knowing this, had neither publicly proposed, nor in their practice adopted, a remedy!
The average loss of the slaves on board, which had been calculated by Mr. Wilberforce at twelve and a half per cent., had been denied. He believed this calculation, taking in all the circumstances connected with it, to be true; but that for years not less than one-tenth had so perished, he would challenge those concerned in the traffic to disprove. Much evidence had been produced on the subject; but the voyages had been generally selected. There was only one who had disclosed the whole account. This was Mr. Anderson of London, whose engagements in this trade had been very inconsiderable. His loss had only amounted to three per cent.; but, unfortunately for the slave-traders of Liverpool, his vessel had not taken above three-fourths of that number in proportion to the tonnage which they had stated to be necessary to the very existence of their trade.
An honourable member (Mr. Grosvenor) had attributed the protraction of this business to those who had introduced it. But from whom did the motion for further evidence (when that of the privy council was refused) originate, but from the enemies of the abolition? The same gentleman had said, it was impossible to abolish the trade; but where was the impossibility of forbidding the further importation of slaves into our own colonies? and beyond this the motion did not extend.
The latter argument had also been advanced by Sir William Yonge and others. But allowing it its full force, would there be no honour in the dereliction of such a commerce? Would it be nothing publicly to recognise great and just principles? Would our example be nothing!—Yes: every country would learn, from our experiment, that American colonies could be cultivated without the necessity of continual supplies equally expensive and disgraceful.
But we might do more than merely lay down principles or propose examples. We might, in fact, diminish the evil itself immediately by no inconsiderable part,—by the whole of our own supply; and here he could not at all agree with the honourable baronet, in what seemed to him a commercial paradox, that the taking away from an open trade by far the largest customer, and the lessening of the consumption of the article, would increase both the competition and the demand, and of course all those mischiefs, which it was their intention to avert.
That the civilization of the Africans was promoted, as had been asserted, by their intercourse with the Europeans, was void of foundation, as had appeared from the evidence. In manners and dishonesty they had indeed assimilated with those who frequented their coasts. But the greatest industry and the least corruption of morals were in the interior, where they were out of the way of this civilizing connexion.
To relieve Africa from famine, was another of the benign reasons which had been assigned for continuing the trade. That famines had occurred there, he did not doubt; but that they should annually occur, and with such arithmetical exactness as to suit the demands of the Slave Trade, was a circumstance most extraordinary; so wonderful, indeed, that, could it once be proved, he should consider it as a far better argument in favour of the divine approbation of that trade, than any which had ever yet been produced.