The evidence taken before the House of Commons contains but too many humiliating instances of this kind; and in consequence we find the most respectable naval commanders acknowledging that the Slave Trade is no nursery of seamen. This truth was even frankly confessed by a Noble Admiral on whose general testimony our opponents set the highest value. But I will quit the present topic, only remarking, that as at the outset of the discussion none of our assertions was more strongly controverted than that concerning the loss of seamen, which can now be no longer denied, we may hence claim some credit on those points which are still in dispute. The incident shows at least that it is not necessary that our opponents should be correct in order to be positive. [Sidenote: Another objection to abolition:—if we should abolish, foreign nations would still carry on the trade.] Again, great stress was laid on the consideration, that were Great Britain to desist from the Slave Trade, other nations would still continue it, and that the trade would not therefore cease to exist. The only difference would be, that the trade which formerly we had ourselves carried on, would henceforth be carried on by others; and how would Africa, how would the cause of humanity, be hereby a gainer? To this argument, many answers were returned. But before I proceed to state them, can I forbear remarking, that there would have been no place for such an argument as this, but for that fashionable though pernicious doctrine of the present day, that we are to regulate our practice by considerations of expediency, that vague, fluctuating, and often vicious instructress, instead of the sound, plain, and immutable dictates of justice. It is self-evident, that by stopping the importation into our own colonies, we destroy a large proportion at least of the evil. During the continuance of the war, all the Dutch, and some of the French colonies, being in our hands, the supply to such of the French as are still unconquered being stopped, that of the Spanish being much interrupted, and the Portuguese settlements also deriving their supply from the more southern part of the Slave coast, the whole of that vast region which constitutes what may be called the solid substance of the African continent, would be almost entirely exempt from the ravages of the Slave Trade. Nor is this temporary abolition desirable, merely in the view of its affording to that wretched country a short breathing time from her miseries. If the war should be of any duration, we may hope, that the Africans may form new habits, and, having adopted less guilty expedients for obtaining the commodities with which they are supplied by the Europeans, may, in some parts at least of the coast, not resume the traffic in human beings, when the war shall be at an end.