when this demand ceased, the manufacture also was discontinued. Another strange and utterly groundless assertion was, that the Slaves already in our West Indian Colonies, mistaking the abolition of the African Slave Trade for their own emancipation, a confusion, I have already stated, produced only by our opponents themselves, would break out into insurrection, and that our West Indian Islands would consequently become one wide scene of anarchy and desolation.

To these gloomy apprehensions were super-added confident predictions of the utter ruin of our vast transatlantic possessions, as well as of a vast body of our merchants and manufacturers in the mother country. Our opponents predicted the decay of our marine, the diminution of our revenue, if not the utter ruin of our finances. In short, in times such as those in which we live, when great and expensive naval and military establishments have become necessary to the national security, they foretold the gradual decline and ultimate ruin of Great Britain. Surely after seven years' experience, we may appeal to all Europe, if these alarming predictions have not been falsified by the event. Notwithstanding the great extent of our traffic in Slaves, of which we then possessed the monopoly, our Rulers themselves, Lord Grenville in the House of Lords, and Lord Howick, now Earl Grey, in the House of Commons, (I delight in recording my country's, and may I not add my own, obligation to them,) confidently assuming for their guides the laws of justice, and the principles of humanity, proposed, and the Legislature decreed the immediate abolition of that disgraceful traffic. And what has been the result? Neither in our commerce, our manufactures, our marine, our revenue, have we suffered any apparent injury. Yet I will frankly own to you, Prince, that when these melancholy denunciations which I lately mentioned were first uttered, when the fatal consequences of the Abolition were first stated to me, I could not hear them without serious alarm. But even then, I could not but be slow to admit the truth and probability of these melancholy forebodings. Had, then, the great Author and Disposer of all things deviated so strangely in this instance, from the general principles of his moral administration, as to have identified the prosperity of a mighty empire with the continuance of a system of wickedness and cruelty, hitherto without a parallel in the annals of the world? The very supposition was little less than blasphemy against the moral character of the Almighty. This consideration revived my hopes, and I advanced towards my object with renewed alacrity; yet I could not proceed altogether without anxiety, after having been warned so solemnly that Iwas advancing in paths which must end in the ruin of my country. It was not long, however, before authentic information

and sound reasoning altogether dispelled my fears; and I was enabled to prove, to the entire satisfaction of all our greatest statesmen, that these gloomy apprehensions were altogether vain, the offspring only of prejudice and error.

You will not be surprised that the attention of an Englishman was first turned, with peculiar sensibility, to that part of the reasoning of our opponents, in which they earnestly contended that the Slave Trade was a necessary source for the supply of seamen to the navy. Happily the falsehood of this assertion was soon undeniably proved. The zealous and humane industry of Mr. Clarkson, to whom our cause owes the highest obligations, discovered that which the muster rolls of slave ships furnished by our opponents themselves afterwards ascertained beyond dispute, that owing in part to the insalubrity of the African climate, but far more to peculiar circumstances arising out of that traffic itself, to which happily a trade in the natural productions of Africa is not liable, the Slave Trade deserved to be termed the grave rather than the nursery of our seamen. It would be tedious to enter here into a minute detail; but it is also unnecessary, because almost all our great naval men, without exception, though several of them were favorable to what they erroneously deemed the cause of the West Indian Islands, from having been treated, when stationed in their harbours, with commendable hospitality; in particular, Lord Rodney, a name of high renown in the naval history of Great Britain, frankly acknowledged that the Slave Trade was not a nursery for seamen. In short, it may be truly affirmed, that there never was a greater error than that of praising the Slave Trade as beneficial to the naval force of Great Britain.

But the grand alarm of all was for our West Indian Colonies. In them, confessedly, was invested a large mass of the national capital. The real value of our annual exports to them were above ten millions sterling; that of our imports from them seventeen millions sterling: nor could it be denied that the West Indian Trade, probably in proportion to the number of seamen employed in it, contributed to the maintenance of our marine. All the apprehensions for the West Indies manifestly hinged on one question, whether the number of the Negro Slaves, already in the islands, could be kept up by natural generation only. The West Indians loudly proclaimed that, from some invincible obstacles, the slave population of our West Indian Islands could not be maintained, much less increased, without continual importations from Africa. It seemed strange, indeed, that, in contradiction alike of the great law of nature, and contrary to the universal experience of all other countries, the population of several islands, remarkable for their fertility, and peopled by a race of men to whom the climate was

congenial, should necessarily decline. It appeared much more strange, when on inquiry it had been found that the Negroes were represented by the best writers as perhaps the most prolific people on the globe. The climate of the West Indies was similar to that of Africa, only more salubrious. Why, then, should the same race of beings gradually diminish in the West Indian Colonies, which on the opposite Continent had so increased and multiplied as for two centuries to bear the continual drain of their population to the opposite side of the Atlantic? On examining whether the Negro race had kept up its numbers in other foreign countries, it was found that it had increased, and sometimes rapidly, even where the influence of the climate might be justly supposed to have been highly unfavorable.

The climate of the United States of America, for instance, is far from being well suited to the Negro constitution, which, we are assured, is so little patient of cold, as even in the West Indies to suffer from it. The cold in America is often very severe in the winter, even in the Southern States; and the peculiar nature of the employment of great numbers of the Slaves, working in the Rice Plantations, must operate very unfavorably on their health; yet the Negro Slaves are universally acknowledged to have so rapidly increased in that country, that, according to the last census of the American population, without taking into the account any importations, the Negroes had increased so much in the ten years last preceding, that, continuing to advance at the same rate, their numbers would be doubled in about twenty-four years.

Again; in Bencoolen, which has been accounted one of the most unhealthy climates on earth, the Negro Slaves had increased.

But, lest the decrease in our islands should be supposed to arise out of some peculiarity of the West Indian climate, undoubted instances of Negro increase can be adduced, even in the West Indies themselves. The crew of a slave ship had been wrecked on the unsettled island of St. Vincent's, about the beginning of the 18th century: they had every difficulty to contend with, were wholly unprovided with necessaries, and were obliged to maintain a constant war with the native Charaibs: yet they had soon multiplied exceedingly. Even in the island of Jamaica itself, the Maroons, the descendants of the Negro Slaves, who, when the island was originally captured, made their escape into the mountains, and ever afterwards lived the life of savages; the Maroons, who were acknowledged by the West Indians themselves to be under peculiar circumstances, so unfavorable to the maintenance of their numbers, that their decrease would furnish no fair argument for the general impossibility of keeping up the stock, were found, by ac

tual enumeration, to have nearly doubled their numbers in the period between 1749 and 1782.

In the same island of Jamaica, the Free Blacks and the Mulattoes were stated by the historian of Jamaica, Mr. Long, an author of high credit, to have increased. The domestic Slaves were said also, by Mr. Long, to increase rapidly. Several particular instances were adduced, of gangs of Slaves having been kept up, and even having increased without importation; and one of the most eminent of the medical men in Jamaica, who had under his care no less than 4,000 Negroes, stated that there was a very considerable increase of Negroes on the properties of that island, particularly in the parish in which he resided, one of the largest in Jamaica. All these instances certainly afforded a strong presumptive proof that the stock of Slaves in the islands might with proper treatment be kept up, and might even increase, without continual importa

tions.

But the conclusion resulting from so much, and such diversified experience, was established also by positive and decisive reasoning. It was proved, First, That the abuses and the obstructions to the natural increase, which too generally prevail, were sufficient to account for a rapidly decreasing population, and even to lead us to expect it,

Secondly, That the decrease, which really had been considerable a century ago, had been gradually diminishing; till at length there was good reason to believe it had entirely ceased, and that the population fully maintained itself.

Thirdly, That, therefore, if the great and numerous abuses which now prevail, should be materially mitigated, and the means of correcting them were clearly pointed out, we might confidently anticipate in future a great and even a rapid increase. Such was the argument of Mr. Pitt on that memorable night, when the subject was discussed in the British House of Commons. His eloquence, never more splendid, because never more from the heart, than when it was exerted in the cause of Africa, shone on that night with more than ordinary lustre. His superior powers of reasoning were never more powerfully displayed. His positions were clearly deduced from the very documents and accounts which had been supplied by the islands themselves; and he completely refuted the grand position of the West Indians, that the stock of Slaves actually in our islands could not be maintained without continual importations, and established the opposite position with a force of reasoning little short of demonstration. Such was the generous acknowledgment of his great political rival, Mr. Fox, who, though on almost every other subject his strenuous adversary, never failed to co-operate with him on this with the most zealous

cordiality. But it is not necessary to my present purpose to enumerate the abuses of our own West Indian system. I will only remark, that though most of the vices of the system were greatly aggravated by the absentee-ship so generally prevalent in the British West Indian islands, and by the embarrassed state of the affairs of by far the greater part of the planters; yet, perhaps, the abuses might all be truly said to bottom, in its having been the general policy to make great immediate profits rather than the permanent value of the estate, the leading object; and consequently to work down and look to the Slave Market, and not to the natural increase, for a fresh supply of laborers. I say, this was the general policy. There were many individual exceptions; exceptions so much the more honorable, as the opposite practice was so generally prevalent, and was supposed to be the more profitable course. It is my more agreeable province to remark, that your planters, except perhaps in St. Domingo, were more generally residents; and that your West Indian islands, from their larger size, as well as from other circumstances, are much more favorably circumstanced than ours were, for a home-born increase. If, therefore, even in the British West Indian islands, there was no real need of these continual recruits from Africa for maintaining and gradually, according to the order of nature, increasing the stock of laborers, much more confidently may the same position be affirmed in the case of your West Indian settlements. And surely, Sir, to your penetrating and comprehensive mind, it must be needless for me to point out the highly beneficial consequences which would result from putting an end to the strange unnatural system on which the West Indian colonies of all nations have hitherto proceeded, and from restoring them to a more sound and healthful regimen. This is not the time or place for entering at large into the discussion of this important subject. Suffice it to state, that it was soon deeply impressed on those who contemplated our West Indian possessions considerately, and with a statesman's eye, that there was no small reason to tremble for the safety of the fabric which we had gradually been rearing in the Western Hemisphere. True, they beheld a spacious and a lofty structure, but its foundations were manifestly artificial and unnatural, and therefore unsound and precarious. They saw a vast agricultural and manufacturing system carried on by a factitious population, torn by force from the opposite continent. And what a popula

Let me pay a willing tribute to the memory of this great man, who died during our last struggle, and therefore did not witness the final issue of that warfare in which he was always so powerful a combatant; that no man felt the wrongs of Africa more deeply, and that, even in his last illness, his own sufferings did not render him forgetful of them.