The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume IIClarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume II
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
motives, yet the conquerors and the conquered were sometimes blended
afterwards into one people; so that a system of common interest arose out
of former differences. But where was the analogy of the cases? Was it only
at the outset that we could trace violence and injustice on the part of the
Slave-trade? Were the oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled, that
enmities ultimately ceased?--No. Was it reasonable then to urge a
prescriptive right, not to the fruits of an antient and forgotten evil, but
to a series of new violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties
continually repeated; and of which every instance inflicted a fresh
calamity, and constituted a separate and substantial crime?
The debate being over, the House divided; when it appeared that there were
for Mr. Wilberforce's motion seventy-four, but against it eighty-two.
The motion for the general abolition of the Slave-trade having been thus
lost again in the Commons, a new motion was made there soon after, by Mr.
Henry Thornton, on the same subject. The prosecution of this traffic on
certain parts of the coast of Africa had become so injurious to the new
settlement at Sierra Leone, that not only its commercial prospects were
impeded, but its safety endangered. Mr. Thornton therefore brought in a
bill to confine the Slave-trade within certain limits. But even this bill,
though it had for its object only to free a portion of the coast from the
ravages of this traffic, was opposed by Mr. Gascoyne, Dent, and others.
Petitions also were presented against it. At length, after two divisions,
on the first of which there were thirty-two votes to twenty-seven, and on
the second thirty-eight to twenty-two, it passed through all its stages.
When it was introduced into the Lords the petitions were renewed against
it. Delay also was interposed to its progress by the examination of
witnesses. It was not till the fifth of July that the matter was brought to
issue. The opponents of the bill at that time were, the Duke of Clarence,
Lord Westmoreland, Lord Thurlow, and the Lords Douglas and Hay, the two
latter being Earls of Morton and Kinnoul in Scotland. The supporters of it
were Lord Grenville, who introduced it; Lord Loughborough; Holland; and Dr.
Horsley, bishop of Rochester. The latter was peculiarly eloquent. He began
his speech by arraigning the injustice and impolicy of the trade:
injustice, he said, which no considerations of policy could extenuate;
impolicy, equal in degree to its injustice.
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