The Bishop of St. Asaph (Dr. Horsley) said, that, allowing the slaves in
the West Indies even to be pampered with delicacies, or to be put to rest
on a bed of roses, they could not be happy, for--a slave would be still a
slave. The question, however, was not concerning the alteration of their
condition, but whether we should abolish the practice, by which they were
put in that condition? Whether it was humane, just, and politic in us so to
place them? This question was easily answered; for he found it difficult to
form any one notion of humanity, which did not include a desire of
promoting the happiness of others; and he knew of no other justice than
that, which was founded on the principle of doing to others, as we should
wish they should do to us. And these principles of humanity and justice
were so clear, that he found it difficult to make them clearer. Perhaps no
difficulty was greater than that of arguing a self-evident proposition, and
such he took to be the character of the proposition, that the Slave-trade
was inhuman and unjust.
It had been said, that slavery had existed from the beginning of the world.
He would allow it. But had such a trade as the Slave-trade ever existed
before? Would the noble Earl, who had talked of the slavery of ancient Rome
and Greece, assert, that in the course of his whole reading, however
profound it might have been, he had found any thing resembling such a
traffic? Where did it appear in history, that ships were regularly fitted
out to fetch away tens of thousands of persons annually, against their
will, from their native land; that these were subject to personal
indignities and arbitrary punishments during their transportation; and that
a certain proportion of them, owing to suffocation and other cruel causes,
uniformly perished? He averred, that nothing like the African Slave-trade
was ever practised in any nation upon earth.
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