rearing, driven through their daily work like the vilest of the brute creation; and that too when each man can consult with his fellow, when all they see around them almost are blacks? Above all, but here I anticipate—when St. Domingo, and the lessons which it inculcates, occur to the mind. Surely enough has been said to shew, that there is no alternative, no practical medium, between keeping the Slaves sunk in their present state of extreme degradation, an idea for which no one, I trust, will be found hardy enough to contend, and introducing the milder system of what may not improperly be termed Patriarchal vassalage (to which the abolition is an indispensable preliminary) as the state of training and discipline for a condition in which they may be safely admitted to a still more advanced enjoyment of personal and civil rights. [Sidenote: Mr. Burke’s plan respecting the Slave Trade.] And in this place, where we are considering the different modes which have been proposed for effecting the abolition of the Slave Trade, it may be proper to notice another plan of gradual abolition, which has been often mentioned, though it has never been yet produced. No one can doubt that attention is justly due to it, when they are told that it claims the late Mr. Burke as its author. In duty to that great man himself, as well as to the cause which I am defending, this matter should be explained. Some years before the abolition of the Slave Trade had been named in Parliament, Mr. Burke’s attention had been drawn to that object. His stores of knowledge were so astonishingly ample and various, that it is difficult to suppose any subject on which his great mind was not abundantly furnished. But certainly very little was known, even by men in general well-informed, concerning the nature and effects of the Slave Trade on the coast, but much more in the interior of Africa. Nor had we then obtained any of that great mass of information concerning the West Indian system of management, which was procured through the authority and influence of Government, and which could no otherwise have been obtained. Mr. Burke, however, drew up the heads of a plan for regulating the mode of carrying on the Slave Trade in Africa, and a system for securing the better treatment of the Slaves in the West Indies.