Domingo, and of
similar dangers impending over our own islands, it ill became him to be the
person to cry out for further importations! It ill became him to charges
upon the abolitionists the crime of stirring up insurrections, who only
recommended what the Legislature of Jamaica itself had laid down in a time
of danger with an avowed view to prevent them. It was indeed a great
satisfaction to himself, that among the many arguments for prohibiting the
Slave-trade, the security of our West Indian possessions against internal
commotions, as well as foreign enemies, was among the most prominent and
forcible. And here he would ask his honourable friend, whether in this part
of the argument he did not see reason for immediate abolition. Why should
we any longer persist in introducing those latent principles of
conflagration, which, if they should once burst forth, might annihilate the
industry of a hundred years? which might throw the planters back a whole
century in their profits, in their cultivation, and in their progress
towards the emancipation of their slaves? It was our duty to vote, that the
abolition of the Slave-trade should be immediate, and not to leave it to he
knew not what future time or contingency.
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