Lord Grenville then read the resolution of the Commons. This resolution, he said, stated first, that the Slave Trade was contrary to humanity, justice, and sound policy. That it was contrary to humanity was obvious; for humanity might be said to be sympathy for the distress of others, or a desire to accomplish benevolent ends by good means. But did not the Slave Trade convey ideas the very reverse of this definition? It deprived men of all those comforts, in which it pleased the Creator to make the happiness of his creatures to consist,—of the blessings of society,—of the charities of the dear relationships of husband, wife, father, son, and kindred,—of the due discharge of the relative duties of these—and of that freedom, which in its pure and natural sense was one of the greatest gifts of God to man.
It was impossible to read the evidence, as it related to this trade, without acknowledging the inhumanity of it, and our own disgrace. By what means was it kept up in Africa? By wars instigated, not by the passions of the natives, but by our avarice. He knew it would be said in reply to this, that the slaves, who were purchased by us, would be put to death, if we were not to buy them. But what should we say, if it should turn out, that we were the causes of those very cruelties, which we affected to prevent? But, if it were not so, ought the first nation in the world to condescend to be the executioner of savages?
Another way of keeping up the Slave Trade was by the practice of man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head. This practice included violence, and often bloodshed. The inhumanity of it therefore could not be doubted.
The unhappy victims, being thus procured, were conveyed, he said, across the Atlantic in a manner which justified the charge of inhumanity again. Indeed the suffering here was so great, that neither the mind could conceive, nor the tongue describe, it. He had said on a former occasion, that in their transportation there was a greater portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had ever existed in the known world. He would repeat his words; for he did not know, how he could express himself better on the subject. And, after all these horrors, what was their destiny? It was such, as justified the charge in the resolution again: for, after having survived the sickness arising from the passage, they were doomed to interminable slavery.
We had been, he said, so much accustomed to words, descriptive of the cruelty of this traffic, that we had almost forgotten their meaning. He wished that some person, educated as an Englishman, with suitable powers of eloquence, but now for the first time informed of all the horrors of it, were to address their lordships upon it, and he was sure, that they would instantly determine that it should cease. But the continuance of it had rendered cruelty familiar to us; and the recital of its horrors, had been so frequent, that we could now hear them stated without being affected as we ought to be. He intreated their lordships, however, to endeavour to conceive the hard case of the unhappy victims of it; and as he had led them to the last stage of their miserable existence, which was in the colonies, to contemplate it there. They were there under the arbitrary will of a cruel task-master from morning till night. When they went to rest, would not their dreams be frightful? When they awoke, would they not awake—
—only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges?—
They knew no change, except in the humour of their masters, to whom their whole destiny was entrusted. We might, perhaps, flatter ourselves with saying, that they were subject to the will of Englishmen. But Englishmen were not better than others, when in possession of arbitrary power. The very fairest exercise of it was a never-failing corrupter of the heart. But suppose it were allowed that self-interest might operate some little against cruelty; yet where was the interest of the overseer or the driver? But he knew it would be said, that the evils complained of in the colonies had been mitigated. There might be instances of this; but they could never be cured, while slavery existed. Slavery took away more than half of the human character. Hence the practice, where it existed, of rejecting the testimony of the slave: but, if this testimony was rejected, where could be his redress against his oppressor?
Having shown the inhumanity, he would proceed to the second point in the resolution, or the injustice of the trade. We had two ideas of justice, first, as it belonged to society by virtue of a social compact; and, secondly, as it belonged to men, not as citizens of a community, but as beings of one common nature. In a state of nature, man had a right to the fruit of his own labour absolutely to himself; and one of the main purposes, for which he entered into society, was that he might be better protected in the possession of his rights. In both cases therefore it was manifestly unjust, that a man should be made to labour during the whole of his life, and yet have no benefit from his labour. Hence the Slave Trade and the colonial slavery were a violation of the very principle, upon which all law for the protection of property was founded. Whatever benefit was derived from that trade, to an individual, it was derived from dishonour and dishonesty. He forced from the unhappy victim of it that, which the latter did not wish to give him; and he gave to the same victim that, which he in vain attempted to show was an equivalent to the thing he took,—it being a thing for which there was no equivalent; and which, if he had not obtained by force, he would not have possessed at all. Nor could there be any answer to this reasoning, unless it could be proved, that it had pleased God to give to the inhabitants of Britain a property in the liberty and life of the natives of Africa. But he would go further on this subject. The injustice complained of was not confined to the bare circumstance of robbing them of the right to their own labour. It was conspicuous throughout the system. They, who bought them, became guilty of all the crimes which had been committed in procuring them, and when they possessed them, of all the crimes which belonged to their inhuman treatment. The injustice in the latter case amounted frequently to murder. For what was it but murder to pursue a practice, which produced untimely death to thousands of innocent and helpless beings? It was a duty, which their lordships owed to their Creator, if they hoped for mercy, to do away this monstrous oppression.
With respect to the impolicy of the trade, (the third point in the resolution,) he would say at once, that whatever was inhuman and unjust must be, impolitic. He had, however, no objection to argue the point upon its own particular merits: and, first, he would observe, that a great man, Mr. Pitt, now no more, had exerted his vast powers on many subjects, to the admiration of his hearers; but on none more successfully than on the subject of the abolition of the Slave Trade. He proved, after making an allowance for the price paid for the slaves in the West Indies, for the loss of them in the seasoning, and for the expense of maintaining them afterwards; and comparing these particulars with the amount in value of their labour there, that the evils endured by the victims of the traffic were no gain to the master, in whose service they took place. Indeed, Mr. Long had laid it down in his History of Jamaica, that the best way to secure the planters from ruin would be to do that which the resolution recommended. It was notorious, that when any planter was in distress, and sought to relieve himself by increasing the labour on his estate, by means of the purchase of new slaves, the measure invariably tended to his destruction. What then was the importation of fresh Africans, but a system tending to the general ruin of the islands?
But it had often been said, that without fresh importations the population of the slaves could not be supported in the islands. This, however, was a mistake. It had arisen from reckoning the deaths of the imported Africans, of whom so many were lost in the seasoning, among the deaths of the Creole slaves. He did not mean to say that, under the existing degree of misery, the population would greatly increase; but, he would maintain, that if the deaths and the births were calculated upon those, who were either born, or who had been a long time in the islands, so as to be considered as natives, it would be found that the population had not only been kept up, but that it had been increased.