But that which I must press upon you is, that all these sufferers, or at least an immense majority of them, are the victims of the Slave Trade. For it is this pernicious traffic, which by the double operation of continually increasing the disproportion between the Blacks and Whites on the one hand, and of obstructing on the other those salutary reforms which would change by degrees this depraved, degraded mass into a happy peasantry; makes you shrink back with terror from defending the islands by their own internal resources, though we cannot but acknowledge that they would hereby be rendered utterly invincible by any European force which the great nation, or any others of our enemies, might bring against them.[54] And here a fresh prospect of misery opens to our view: here come in a new set of sufferers from the Slave Trade, not the less to be attended to, because, as yet at least, they do not themselves trace the bitter stream from which their cup is filled, to its original source; the numerous train of widows and orphans and relatives, whose nearest connections have fallen the victims of the diseases of the western world. I am persuaded, that if the full effect of the Slave Trade in this relation were generally known, the general feelings of the nation, more powerfully, alas! excited for our own subjects than for the unhappy Africans, would have produced throughout the British Isles one universal cry of indignation against this arch enemy of the happiness of mankind. Here is another of those instances, several of which in the course of this investigation we have had occasion to remark, wherein, through the righteous retribution of Heaven, wickedness and cruelty are not allowed, even in this world, to go unpunished; by which the irreligious and unfeeling are taught to respect the happiness of others, if from no higher motive, yet from regard to the preservation of their own. [Sidenote: Summary view of the miseries produced by the Slave Trade.] And now surely you must be prepared to admit without hesitation, and in its full extent, the declaration made by Mr. Pitt in the House of Commons, that the Slave Trade was the greatest practical evil that ever had afflicted the human race. Such indeed it would be found, had we but leisure to take the real weight of all the various evils which it includes; and surely it might well become us to enter into this examination. But it would almost exceed the powers of calculation, after having traced the Slave Trade into all its various forms of suffering, to estimate the amount of them all. Let us, however, spend a few moments in adding up the great totals of which it consists, that we may be the less likely to deceive ourselves, as in such cases men are apt to do, by underrating the evils of which we are the cause, and consequently the amount of guilt with which we are chargeable.