They,
he said, who defended this trade, were warped and blinded by their own
interests, and would not be convinced of the miseries they were daily
heaping on their fellow-creatures. By the countenance they gave it, they
had reduced the inhabitants of Africa to a worse state than that of the
most barbarous nation. They had destroyed what ought to have been the bond
of union and safety among them: they had introduced discord and anarchy
among them: they had set kings against their subjects, and subjects against
each other: they had rendered every private family wretched: they had, in
short, given birth to scenes of injustice and misery not to be found in any
other quarter of the globe.
Having said thus much on the subject of procuring slaves in Africa, he
would now go to that of the transportation of them. And here he had fondly
hoped, that when men with affections and feelings like our own had been
torn from their country, and every thing dear to them, he should have found
some mitigation of their sufferings; but the sad reverse was the case. This
was the most wretched part of the whole subject. He was incapable of
impressing the house with what he felt upon it.
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