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3. Another most important advantage, resulting from this contest, is that in the course of it, the nature of the slave-trade to the coast of Africa has been fully laid open to the world; all its horrors have been dragged forth to public view, and the grand point in dispute, on which the controversy chiefly turned, and the truth of which was for a long time most strenuously denied by the opposers of the abolition, I mean the injustice, the inhumanity, and the immorality of that trade, has been at length given up, even by several of the West India proprietors themselves, and those too of the most respectable characters and talents.

I appeal, in the first place, to the full, explicit, and honourable confession of the late Mr. Bryan Edwards, (the celebrated historian of the West Indies, and an enemy to the abolition of the slave-trade,) in his speech delivered at a free conference be tween the council and assembly of the island of Jamaica, on the 19th of November 1789. The passage I allude to is as follows: "I am persuaded that Mr. Wilberforce

manner in which slaves are generally procured. The intelligence I have collected from my own Negroes abundantly confirm Mr. Wilberforce's account; and I have not the smallest doubt that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely such as he represents them to be. Sir, the whole or greatest part of that immense continent is a field of warfare, and desolation; a wilderness in which the inhabitants are wolves toward each other. That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and blood, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the slave-trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the sugarislands may be convinced that it is so, who will inquire of any African Negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. The assertion, that a great many of them are criminals and convicts, is a mockery and insult; nor can any thing be more fallacious than a comparative reference to the number of felons transported annually from England." Mr. Edwards's speech at a Free Conference, &c.-p. 10.

In the next place, I appeal to the motion made by Mr. Charles Ellis, in the house of commons, April 6, 1797, for adopting such measures as might gradually diminish the necessity of the slave-trade, and ultimately lead to its complete termination; which motion (as we are informed by one of the speakers in that debate) was much to their honour, made at the general and almost unanimous desire of the whole West Indian body in the house of commons, after many and deep consultations. *

In the debate on this motion, Mr. Ellis candidly confesses that the slave-trade could not be considered in any other light than as a necessary evil † ; and that if the question were changed to a deliberation, whether a system should or should not now be established, which must depend for its future existence on a trade in slaves, the discussion might then be confined to the merits of such a trade; and arguing simply on that principle, it would be impossible any man of common humanity to hesitate

for

* Mr. Barham's speech, p. 56.

in foregoing whatever advantages might be expected from such a system.

It appears then from this speech of Mr. Ellis, and still more from that of Mr. Edwards, that the merits of the trade are completely abandoned, and the propriety of putting a termination to it admitted. The question is, therefore, now brought into a very narrow compass, and reduced to this single point; what is the best, and safest, and most effectual mode of removing this dreadful Scourge of so large a part of the human race? This will be the sole subject of consideration, if ever this great question shall be again resumed; and when all the ability and wisdom of the two houses of parliament are directed to this single point now at issue, we may reasonably flatter ourselves that the decision of it will not meet with much difficulty or much delay.

* Mr. Ellis's speech, p. 2.

SERMON XVIII.

NOW THERE

JOHN Xiii. 23.

WAS LEANING ON JESUS' BO

SOM ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES, WHOM JESUS LOVED.

THE person here described, is St. John

the Evangelist, the author of that Gospel which bears his name, and from which the text is taken. It was he who enjoyed the honourable distinction of being placed next to his divine Master, and of leaning on his bosom at supper. He was, moreover, always one of those whom our lord admitted to his most confidential conversations and most interesting transactions, especially in the last awful and affecting scenes of his life; and

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