Mr. Fox, however,
would not retract the expression. He repeated it. He had no notion,
however, that any individual would have taken it to himself. If it
contained any reflection at all, it was on the whole parliament, who had
sanctioned such a trade. Mr. Molyneux rose up, and animadverted severely
on the character of Mr. Ramsay, one of the evidences in the privy
council report, during his residence in the West Indies. This called up
Sir William Dolben and Sir Charles Middleton in his defence, the latter
of whom bore honourable testimony to his virtues from an intimate
acquaintance with him, and a residence in the same village with him, for
twenty years. Mr. Molyneux spoke also in angry terms of the measure of
abolition. To annihilate the trade, he said, and to make no compensation
on account of it, was an act of swindling. Mr. Macnamara called the
measure hypocritical, fanatic, and methodistical. Mr. Pitt was so
irritated at the insidious attempt to set aside the privy council
report, when no complaint had been alleged against it before, that he
was quite off his guard, and he thought it right afterwards to apologize
for the warmth into which he had been betrayed. The Speaker, too, was
obliged frequently to interfere.
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