At length, the twelfth of May arrived. Mr. Wilberforce rose up in the
Commons, and moved the order of the day for the house to resolve itself
into a committee of the whole house, to take into consideration the
petitions, which had been presented against the Slave-trade.
This order having been read, he moved that the report of the committee of
privy council; that the acts passed in the islands relative to slaves; that
the evidence adduced last year on the Slave-trade; that the petitions
offered in the last session against the Slave-trade; and that the accounts
presented to the house, in the last and present session, relative to the
exports and imports to Africa, be referred to the same committee.
These motions having been severally agreed to, the house immediately
resolved itself into a committee of the whole house, and Sir William Dolben
was put into the chair.
Mr. Wilberforce began by declaring, that, when he considered how much
discussion the subject, which he was about to explain to the committee, had
occasioned not only in that house but throughout the kingdom, and
throughout Europe; and when he considered the extent and importance of it,
the variety of interests involved in it, and the consequences which might
arise, he owned he had been filled with apprehensions, lest a subject of
such magnitude, and a cause of such weight, should suffer from the weakness
of its advocate; but when he recollected that in the progress of his
inquiries he had every where been received with candour, that most people
gave him credit for the purity of his motives, and that, however many of
these might then differ from him, they were all likely to agree in the end,
he had dismissed his fears and marched forward with a firmer step in this
cause of humanity, justice and religion.
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