After many other observations, he concluded by moving, "that the year 1793
be substituted in the place of the year 1800."
In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Burdon stated his
conviction of the necessity of immediate abolition; but he would support
the amendment, as the shortest of the terms proposed.
Mr. Robert Thornton would support it also, as the only choice left him. He
dared not accede to a motion, by which we were to continue for seven years
to imbrue our hands in innocent blood.
Mr. Ryder would not support the trade for one moment, if he could avoid it.
He could not hold a balance with gold in one scale, and blood in the other.
Mr. William Smith exposed the wickedness of restricting the trade to
certain ages. The original motion, he said, would only operate as a
transfer of cruelty from the aged and the guilty to the young and the
innocent. He entreated the House to consider, whether, if it related to
their own children, any one of them would vote for it.
Mr. Windham had hitherto felt a reluctance to speaking, not from the
abstruseness, but from the simplicity, of the subject; but he could not
longer be silent, when he observed those arguments of policy creeping again
out of their lurking-places, which had fled before eloquence and truth.
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