The Bishop of St. Asaph (Dr. Horsley) said, that, allowing the slaves in
the West Indies even to be pampered with delicacies, or to be put to
rest on a bed of roses, they could not be happy, for--a slave would be
still a slave. The question, however, was not concerning the alteration
of their condition, but whether we should abolish the practice, by which
they were put in that condition? Whether it was humane, just, and
politic in us so to place them? This question was easily answered; for
he found it difficult to form any one notion of humanity, which did not
include a desire of promoting the happiness of others; and he knew of no
other justice than that, which was founded on the principle of doing to
others, as we should wish they should do to us. And these principles of
humanity and justice were so clear, that he found it difficult to make
them clearer. Perhaps no difficulty was greater than that of arguing a
self-evident proposition, and such he took to be the character of the
proposition, that the Slave Trade was inhuman and unjust.
It had been said, that slavery had existed from the beginning of the
world. He would allow it. But had such a trade as the Slave Trade ever
existed before? Would the noble Earl, who had talked of the slavery of
ancient Rome and Greece, assert, that in the course of his whole
reading, however profound it might have been, he had found anything
resembling such a traffic? Where did it appear in history, that ships
were regularly fitted out to fetch away tens of thousands of persons
annually, against their will, from their native land; that these were
subject to personal indignities and arbitrary punishments during their
transportation; and that a certain proportion of them, owing to
suffocation and other cruel causes, uniformly perished? He averred, that
nothing like the African Slave Trade was ever practised in any nation
upon earth.
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