were received as witnesses in their own favour. A denial upon the word of an African trader, or West India proprietor, of any charge by which his own interest and character were assailed, was admitted as freely, as the testimony of those who were liable to no selfish bias.

Inquiry, therefore, if not impartial, was at least, not partial to the accusers-Yet what was the result?

To state the substance of the evidence, even in the most com. pendious form, would be to demand the perusal of a large volume, upon a subject not likely I fear to obtain the attention which it preeminently deserves, at this alarming juncture.-But the general effect, is sufficient for my purpose, and may be briefly told. The slave trade was condemned in the house of Commons, the only branch of the legislature that gave an early opinion upon the evidence, in the most deliberate and satisfactory way. That immediate reformation was not voted, is a lamentable truth; but the reprobation of the slave trade upon moral principles, was not on that account less decisive, as a parliamentary verdict, of its iniquity. It was even more so perhaps, than had the just practical consequence been instantly adopted. There were enemies enough to virtuous reformation, to carry a vote for delay; but even these, with the exception of a self- interested few, were as strongly of opinion that the abolition of the trade was a moral duty, as their opponents: nay, they admitted, that even the imperious motives of a supposed political necessity, the ground upon which they voted against an immediate reform, would not justify the suspension of the measure beyond a period of eight or ten years.

To those who can not, or will not, undertake the laborious task of examining the printed evidence, more complete satisfaction as to the enormity of this national crime cannot be offered, than arises from the confessions of those senators by whose votes it was protracted. Does any man doubt that the slave trade is a system of gigantic guilt, let him go to their speeches for conviction. The talents of some of these men were very eminent, their diligence extreme, their sceptical dexterity in political discussions characteristically great. Can it be believed then, that they would have conceded to their opponents, ground so formidably strong, as the admission of the moral duty of terminating this traffic at an early period, if the effect of the evidence before the house had not irresistibly demanded such a concession? Were the guilt of a convict, whose execution had been respited, matter of doubt, what could be stronger satisfaction than to say, that the friends at whose earnest solicitation

his life had for a while been spared, had confessed the justice of the sentence; and petitioned for no more than a temporary stay of execution?

While the nature and magnitude of this grand iniquity, were thus incontestibly established in point of evidence, it pleased Heaven, to aid the effect which the display of its hideous features was fitted to produce, by various modes of direct and strong expostulation. Not only was a flood of light poured upon the conscience of the nation, which before lay sleeping in darkness, but a voice clear and loud, as ever spoke without miracle to man, called upon it to awake, and escape from the judgments of God. From the happy texture of our constitution, the public mind has many organs, through which knowledge, political as well as moral, can be conveyed with peculiar facility; and through them all, were the people of England addressed upon this occasion, in the most impressive manner. In parliament, the call for reformation, was supported by a concert of splendid talents, such as perhaps was never employed before, in the support of any national measure! Nor was the credit of high station, wanting to give weight to the persuasions of eloquence; though its official influence, was fatally withheld.

Supposing it to have been the will of God, that the result of this grand investigation should furnish clear evidence of our sinful character as a people, it is not difficult to discover, why while such strong expostulation was addressed to the commons, both in and out of parliament, the influence of government was neutralized, through an opposition in sentiment which prevailed between different members of the cabinet. Certain it is, that the theory of our constitution, was in this case followed in practice, with a much closer correspondence than is usual; and perhaps than is generally expedient; and that there never was known in parliament upon any question of equal interest and importance, since the influence of the crown succeeded to the awe of prerogative, so absolute a neutrality on the part of the administration.

The call thus fairly, and thus solemnly, made upon the parliament and people of England, though admitted to be just, has not hitherto alas! led to repentance. Like Pharaoh, we promised for a moment to let the people go; but like him, we speedily relapsed, and persevered in following the counsels of national avarice, in de-' fiance of that voice of conscience, which is the undoubted messenger of God. Our public affront to the Majesty of Heaven, in this view, exceeded that of Pharaoh; for he appears to have doubted, till convinced by repeated plagues, that Moses spoke by divine authority;

whereas, Christians could not question the authority of those sacred principles, with the practical demands of which we nevertheless refused to comply.

I have not time to examine those strange and inconsistent excuses, that were offered by some respectable individuals in parliament, for withholding immediate reformation. They were not only unsound in moral principle, but founded on assumptions of facts that are demonstrably untrue; and most of their authors have since, either actively or passively, departed in conduct from those practical conclusions to which their own arguments led. But no man can read the parliamentary debates on the slave trade, without perceiving the chief motives upon which the majority acted. The sordid consideration of commercial expediency, was in reality the ground upon which the solemn call upon the national conscience was effectually repelled; and moral principle was deliberately sacrificed by a national assembly, upon the altar of public interest.

Now what was this, but a public and systematic defiance of the authority of God?-Had the alleged notion of effects compensatory in point of humanity, that most specious, though preposterous plea, been ever so sincere, and well founded; still such a perseverance in acknowledged iniquity, would have been opprobrious to a Christian legislature; and, as I believe, without a precedent in any age or nation. If individuals, in aiming to produce good by a breach of the <livine law, contract presumptuous guilt; more obviously still may it be pronounced of nations, in such cases, that "their condemnation is just." In public morals, still more than in private, an infraction of acknowledged principles of the divine law, is ill compensated by any imaginary good consequence, while it is peculiarly affronting to the majesty of heaven; for this false principle, always implies that God is not the best judge of the tendency of his own institutions; and when irreverence to the deity, finds admission into senatorial assemblies, the example must be fatal indeed.

Murder, let it be remembered; deliberate, cruel, and wide-extended murder, is an indisputable, though by no means the only sin, continually produced by the slave trade. Thousands of innocent lives rapidly destroyed, and tens of thousands consequentially, and most miserably wasted, are annual fruits of our African commerce: yet this, and still deeper guilt, is openly persisted in by the vote of a British parliament, for the sake of the supposed temporal good to be produced by it, and the temporal evils that are feared from reformation.

We even aggravated this violation of the law of God, by alleging

as motives of perseverance in it, the interests of our navigation and trade. The singular resolution of a Christian legislature, to prosecute for years to come, a career of acknowledged oppression and bloodshed, upon principles of national convenience, seems to amount to a sin, which not only in its degree, but in its kind, is unprecedented and enormous. It is a contumacious denial of the supremacy of God; a kind of high treason against the majesty of heaven.

What made the massacres in the streets of Dublin some years ago, different in the species of crime, from ordinary murders, but the traiterous principle on which they were perpetrated? The rebels had not yet enthroned a usurper, or erected a republic; neither have we yet set up the image of commerce in St. Paul's Cathedral; but we carry slaughter among the innocent subjects of the king of heaven, as Emmitt and his followers, among the subjects of an earthly king, in open contempt of his laws; because there is an object of disloyal attachment in our hearts, which we avowedly prefer to our allegiance. We say, "It is true O God, thy laws are good, but the laws of commercial policy are better-We must continue, for a while at least, to violate thy most solemn commandments, and to destroy, as well as oppress, thy rational creatures; because we can no otherwise preserve our commerce, our colonial interests, and navigation.”

There remains one further scriptural characteristic of those crimes, by which the penal doom of nations has been sealed.-I mean the perverse and audacious extension, of that very iniquity, which has been the recent subject of divine expostulation, and of a neglected call to repentance.

"They be idle-therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God,-let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein."- "Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore ;-let them go and gather straw for themselves." (Exodus, chap. v, ver. 7, 8, 9.)—Such was Pharaoh's answer to that demand of God, "Let my people go, that they may serve me ;" and thus did he audaciously straiten those bands of oppression which he was commanded to relax.- -The same infatuated monarch, enhanced the guilt of his contumacy, even after he had been repeatedly chastised. Immediately before the slaughter of the first-born, the last and decisive plague, he drove the messenger of God finally from his presence, "Get thee from me; take heed to thyself, see my face no more: for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die." And Moses said, "thou hast well spoken,-I will see thy face no more." Exodus, chap. xxviii, ver. 29.

It was not possible for Great Britain, exactly to follow the first

part of this precedent, by increasing the labour of her West India bondmen. They were already making bricks without straw; and oppression in our colonies, had long produced an effect, for which a bloody mandate to the Egyptian midwives was found to be necessary, in the far milder bondage of the Israelites.-The poor negroes, who have no land of Goshen, no flocks, or herds, to be the subjects of divine protection, no fleshpots of Egypt, to sustain them, and who have, instead of task-masters, and a tale of bricks, drivers armed with whips, to urge forward their toil; could experience as the fruit of rejected intercession, no exacerbation of their fate.-Neither could slave making in Africa, be conducted with greater fraud and ferocity, than our white and black agents already employed and abetted, except through an extension of the trade.

But what we could do in defiance of omnipotent justice, dreadful to think! we did. If we could not make our colonial bondmen more wretched, we could add to their numbers. We could also enlarge the local domains of that abominable system, of which the dreadful nature and effects were now for the first time understood, and laid bare to the national eye. We could acquire, at the fearful cost of protracting a calamitous war, a new and vast aceldama, for the immolation of the victims of our avarice, in Trinidada; where the pestilent exhalations of an uncleared tropical soil, would quicken the lethiferous process of oppression; and where enormous and evergrowing demands on the British slave market, would protract the chief pretence for continuing the devastation of Africa.

Still more aggravation was possible; and, though at the expense of the most obvious principles of worldly policy, was accordingly practised.Conquest had given to us a temporary and precarious possession, of a foreign territory of vast extent, on the continent of South America. To settle it by British capital, was like building on another man's freehold. The folly was still grosser; for it was to increase the competitory powers of a dangerous rival to our sugar colonies; and to augment the future maritime resources of an enemy. Yet such was our increased and enamoured attachment to the manstealing trade, and to West India oppression; so eager were we to shew our contempt for consistency, and for the sacred principles upon which reformation had been promised;-so bold was our defiance of heaven; that full sixty thousand additional slaves were manufactured by crimes in Africa, torn from their native land, and placed permanently upon that conquered soil, in the short term of three or four years, by British subjects alone. New plantations, from 70 to 100 miles in length, upon a frontier line, were opened at