Africa was the ground on
which he chiefly rested; and there it was, that his two honourable
friends, one of whom had proposed gradual abolition, and the other
regulation, did not carry their principles, to their full extent. Both
had confessed the trade to be a moral evil. How much stronger, then, was
the argument, for immediate than for gradual abolition! If on the ground
of a moral evil it was to be abolished at last, why ought it not now?
Why was injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour? He knew of
no evil, which ever had existed, nor could he imagine any to exist,
worse than the tearing of eighty thousand persons annually from their
native land, by a combination of the most civilized nations, in the most
enlightened quarter of the globe; but more, especially by that nation,
which called herself the most free and the most happy of them all.
He would now notice the objection, that other nations would not give up
the Slave Trade, if we were to renounce it. But if the trade were
stained, but by a thousandth part of the criminality which he and
others, after a thorough investigation of the subject, charged upon it,
the House ought immediately to vote for its abolition.
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