Nevertheless the use of bloodhounds, which placed Britons on a level with the Spanish crusaders, aroused general disgust. Attempts were made in the House of Commons by General Macleod, Sheridan, and Courtenay to represent the Maroons as men worthily struggling for liberty. Dundas, while pruning these sprays of rhetoric, declared that Ministers would thereafter prohibit the use of bloodhounds. These troubles with the slaves prejudiced Parliament against any change in their condition. In vain did Francis, in one of the last speeches of an acrid but not discreditable career, press for the amelioration of their lot. At the outset he showed the bitterness of his enmity to Pitt by charging him with the betrayal of the cause which, in his oration of 2nd April 1792, he had irradiated with the beatific vision of a regenerated and blissful Africa. Why, he asked, did not the Minister resign office after his failure to realize his heart's desire? He then charged him with insincerity on the whole question, and urged the House to be content with alleviating the condition of the slaves by giving them the rudiments of education and some rights of property, above all by securing the sanctity of their marriages. Fox followed with a speech aimed more against Pitt than the slave-owners. The Prime Minister then replied. Ignoring the charges of his opponents, he pointed out that the proposed improvements were utterly inadequate to remedy the ills of the negroes so long as Parliament allowed shiploads of these unhappy creatures to be cast into the West Indies every year. What was needed, he said, was the abolition of that hateful traffic, indeed of the whole system of slavery. For himself, he still hoped that Parliament would adopt those measures, which alone could be effective. Wilberforce was absent through illness. Francis, having elicited in the main mere personalities, not declarations of principle, withdrew his motion. The lapse of the question of Abolition in the years 1795-6 was a public misfortune; for the slaves, despairing of justice from England, turned to France. For the good of the cause they murdered men, women, or children, with equal indifference; and, when hunted down, died with the cry _Vive la Republique_. Here was our chief difficulty in the West Indies. Owing to the refusal of Parliament to limit the supply of slaves or to alleviate their condition, we had to deal with myriads of blacks, exasperated by their former hardships, hoping everything from France, and able to support climatic changes which dealt havoc to the raw English levies. In truth, the success of the West India expeditions depended on other factors besides military and medical skill. It turned on political and humanitarian motives that were scouted at Westminster. The French Jacobins stole many a march on the English governing classes; and in declaring the negro to be an equal of the white man they nearly wrecked Britain's possessions in the West Indies.