It had not even
to plead what could often be said in favour of the most unjustifiable wars.
Though conquest had sometimes originated in ambition, and in the worst of
motives, yet the conquerors and the conquered were sometimes blended
afterwards into one people; so that a system of common interest arose out
of former differences. But where was the analogy of the cases? Was it only
at the outset that we could trace violence and injustice on the part of the
Slave-trade? Were the oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled, that
enmities ultimately ceased?--No. Was it reasonable then to urge a
prescriptive right, not to the fruits of an antient and forgotten evil, but
to a series of new violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties
continually repeated; and of which every instance inflicted a fresh
calamity, and constituted a separate and substantial crime?
The debate being over, the House divided; when it appeared that there were
for Mr. Wilberforce's motion seventy-four, but against it eighty-two.
The motion for the general abolition of the Slave-trade having been thus
lost again in the Commons, a new motion was made there soon after, by Mr.
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