The
House had clearly given up the policy of the question. They had been
determined by the justice of it. Why were they then to be troubled again
with arguments of this nature? These, if admitted, would go to the
subversion of all public as well as private morality. Nations were as much
bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former
could not be so easily punished. In private life morality took pretty good
care of itself. It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were
speedy. If a man broke open his neighbour's house, he would feel the
consequences. There was an ally of virtue, who rendered it the interest of
individuals to be moral, and he was called the executioner. But as such
punishment did not always await us in our national concerns, we should
substitute honour as the guardian of our national conduct. He hoped the
West-Indians would consider the character of the mother-country, and the
obligations to national as well as individual justice. He hoped also they
would consider the sufferings, which they occasioned both in Africa, in the
passage, and in the West-Indies. In the passage indeed no one was capable
of describing them.
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