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 its abolition.
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