He would
repeat his words; for he did not know, how he could express himself better
on the subject. And, after all these horrors, what was their destiny? It
was such, as justified the charge in the resolution again: for, after
having survived the sickness arising from the passage, they were doomed to
interminable slavery.
We had been, he said, so much accustomed to words, descriptive of the
cruelty of this traffic, that we had almost forgotten their meaning. He
wished that some person, educated as an Englishman, with suitable powers of
eloquence, but now for the first time informed of all the horrors of it,
were to address their lordships upon it, and he was sure, that they would
instantly determine that it should cease. But the continuance of it had
rendered cruelty familiar to us; and the recital of its horrors had been so
frequent, that we could now hear them stated without being affected as we
ought to be. He intreated their lordships, however, to endeavour to
conceive the hard case of the unhappy victims of it; and as he had led them
to the last stage of their miserable existence, which was in the colonies,
to contemplate it there. They were there under the arbitrary will of a
cruel task-master from morning till night.
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