But notwithstanding I ascribe so much of the opposition which has been made to us, to the operation of party spirit, yet I dare not hope that the flame is likely to become weaker, or at length to die away. On the contrary, there is a store of aliment fully sufficient to maintain it in continual and even interminable vigour. For after all that I have stated, of it’s being rather the spirit of party, or at the utmost a mistaken apprehension of loss, than a just sense of interest, which animates the efforts of the great mass of West Indian Proprietors, yet there are many who, it cannot be denied, are prompted by a true persuasion that the abolition of the Slave Trade will materially lessen their gains. Of this number is that great, respectable, affluent, and, as we have fatally experienced; most powerful body, the West Indian Merchants. I cannot deny that many, perhaps almost all of this class, may have a direct interest in the extension of West Indian cultivation. Though planting speculations may not answer to the immediate undertakers, they may answer to the merchant in this country; and he might gain by the cultivation being pushed to an extent which would utterly ruin the planters. He pays himself in the first instance both for the articles furnished for the supply of the estate, and for his profits on the importations from abroad; and if he have prudence sufficient, which however is seldom the case, to prevent his advancing too much on any one estate, so as to compel him to become the proprietor of it, he is certainly engaged in an advantageous branch of business. Hence he is always the foremost to petition against the abolition.