If then we felt that this perpetual confinement in the fetters of brutal
ignorance would have been the greatest calamity which could have befallen
us; if we viewed with gratitude the contrast between our present and our
former situation; if we shuddered to think of the misery, which would still
have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the present times,
through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to the more civilized
nations of the world;--God forbid, that we should any longer subject Africa
to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude the sight of knowledge from her
coasts, which had reached every other quarter of the globe!
He trusted we should no longer continue this commerce; and that we should
no longer consider ourselves as conferring too great a boon on the natives
of Africa in restoring them to the rank of human beings. He trusted we
should not think ourselves too liberal, if, by abolishing the Slave-trade,
we gave them the same common chance of civilization with other parts of the
world. If we listened to the voice of reason and duty this night, some of
us might live to see a reverse of that picture, from which we now turned
our eyes with shame.
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