He needed only to have made one or two short statements, and to
have quoted the commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder." But he thought
it his duty to lay the whole of the case, and the whole of its guilt,
before them. They would see now that no mitigations, no palliatives,
would either be efficient or admissible. Nothing short of an absolute
abolition could be adopted. This they owed to Africa: they owed it, too,
to their own moral characters. And he hoped they would follow up the
principle of one of the repentant African captains, who had gone before
the committee of privy council as a voluntary witness, and that they
would make Africa all the atonement in their power for the multifarious
injuries she had received at the hands of British subjects. With respect
to these injuries, their enormity and extent, it might be alleged in
their excuse, that they were not fully acquainted with them till that
moment, and therefore not answerable for their former existence: but now
they could no longer plead ignorance concerning them. They had seen them
brought directly before their eyes, and they must decide for themselves,
and must justify to the world and their own consciences the facts and
principles upon which their decision was formed.
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