his case, that his son, Mr. John Shaw Leigh, is one of the wealthiest, probably the wealthiest, commoner in England, able, as some one lately observed in his presence, “not only to buy up a duke, but half-a-dozen dukes, if they were in the market.” But these far-seeing men were the exceptions. Ruin to Liverpool was the general fear of her inhabitants upon the abolition of the slave-trade. We wonder now, when we look back, that England, and Englishmen, should ever have tolerated and sanctioned the nefarious traffic in human flesh. But, while the trade existed, it had champions and defenders, not only among those who were interested in it, but among classes whose blindness can only be attributed to prejudice, the offspring of habit and custom. Thus, Boswell, in his _Life of Johnson_, calmly writes, “The wild and dangerous attempt which has been for some time persisted in to obtain an act of our Legislature, to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it made the vast body of planters, merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in the trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has received excites my wonder and indignation, and, though some men of superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary popularity, when prosperous, or a love of general mischief, when desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To abolish a _status_, which, in all ages, God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be _robbery_ to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to the African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre and intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life, especially now when their passage to the West Indies, and their treatment there, is humanely regulated. To abolish this trade would be, to ‘Shut the gates of mercy on mankind.’ Whatever may have passed elsewhere concerning it, the House of Lords is wise and independent. _Intaminatis fulget honoribus_; _Nec sumit aut ponit secures_ _Arbitrio popularis auræ_.” Such was the hollow and feeble sophistry of such men as Mr. James Boswell, and so fondly and foolishly did they talk. But not of his opinion was our own noble and immortal Roscoe, who devoted a long life to the cause of philanthropy, and battled for freedom for the slave in every variety of ways, beginning with his poem of “Mount Pleasant,” and ending with his vote for abolition in the House of Commons. But not of his opinion were the Wilberforces, and Clarksons, and Macaulays, and Croppers, and Rathbones, and Rushtons, and Curries, who fought the great battle of outraged humanity, at first, against mighty and tremendous odds, but still struggling on,