“The fate of America is cast. You may bruise its heel, but you cannot crush its head. It will revive again. _The New World is before them. Liberty is theirs._ They have possession of a free government, their birthright and inheritance, derived to them from their parent state, which the hand of violence cannot wrest from them. If you will cast them off, my last wish is to them, May they go and prosper!”[482] Again, on the 10th May, 1776, he vindicated anew his original proposition; and here again he testifies for peace and against slavery:-- “For the sake of peace, therefore, I did propose a test of compromise, by an acceptance, on the part of the Colonists, of an Act of Parliament which should lay _the foundation for the extirpation of the horrid custom of slavery in the New World_.… My motion was … simply as an act of compromise and reconciliation; and, as far as it was a legislative act, it was still to have been applied in correcting the laws of slavery in America, which I considered as repugnant to the laws of the realm of England, and to the fundamentals of our Constitution. Such a compromise would at the same time have saved the national honor.”[483] All gratitude to the hero who at this early day vowed himself to the abolition of slavery! Hartley is among the first of Abolitionists, with hardly a predecessor except Granville Sharp, and in Parliament absolutely the first. Clarkson was at this time fifteen years old, Wilberforce sixteen. Only in 1785 Clarkson obtained the prize for the best Latin essay on the question, “Is it right to make men slaves against their will?”[484] It was not until 1791 that Wilberforce moved for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade. It is no small honor for one man to have come forward in Parliament as an avowed abolitionist, while at the same time a vindicator of our independence. Again, on the 15th May, 1777, Hartley pleaded for us:-- “At sea, which has hitherto been our prerogative element, they rise against us at a stupendous rate; and if we cannot return to our old mutual hospitalities towards each other, a very few years will show us a most formidable hostile marine, ready to join hands with any of our enemies.… I will venture to prophesy that the principles of a federal alliance are the only terms of peace that ever will and that ever ought to obtain between the two countries.”[485] On the 5th of June, three weeks afterwards, the “Parliamentary History” reports briefly:-- “Mr. Hartley went upon the cruelties of slavery, and urged the Board of Trade to take some means of mitigating it. He produced a pair of handcuffs, which he said was a manufacture they were now going to establish.”[486]