XXIII. BOOK debate, of " a series of pompous nothings." Mr. Pitt also again appeared as its opponent, in an artificial harangue decorated with a great external shew of candor and speciousness of language. 1788. Lord Stan hope's mo pealing va statutes. On a division the numbers were, ayes 104, noes 124; so that this important question-important indeed even beyond what the minister himself probably had at this period any conception of— was lost by twenty voices only. This therefore might be regarded as a decided victory on the part of the dissenters, had they known how to improve their advantage. But their resentment against the court and the minister was not at all abated by the soft and soothing expressions by which Mr. Pitt attempted to disguise and palliate his refusal : and the ground they had gained, in despite of the courtly machinations against them, excited a degree of elation which led to gross and fatal indiscretions. About this period, a bill of a nature very merition for re- torious was introduced into the house of peers by rious penal lord Stanhope, for the repeal of a number of obsolete and vexatious laws, inflicting penalties upon persons absenting themselves from the service of the church, speaking in derogation of the book of Common Prayer, &c. On the second reading, Dr. Moore, archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate of a disposition naturally mild and generous, roused by this alarming attack upon the CHURCH, rose to XXIII. give his decided opposition to the measure. "The BOOK bill under their lordships' discussion, if permitted to pass, would serve as a cover (his grace affirmed) to every species of irreligion. If unrestrained speaking, writing, and publishing, on the subject of religion were tolerated, there was scarcely any mischief to the church or to civil society that imagination could frame which might not be effected. The very foundation of religion, as by law established, might be undermined and overthrown." Dr. Warren, bishop of Bangor, observed, “ that it remained for these days of licentiousness to call in question the propriety and wisdom of those regulations which their lordships were now solicited to repeal. To compel inen by penalties not to absent themselves from the public places of worship did not militate against any sort of religious liberty, since the dissenters were allowed to resort to their own congregations: and he who would not communicate with either, might well be supposed to hold doctrines injurious to the state, and which ought not to be tolerated." Dr. Halifax, of St. Asaph, enforced this assertion, and reminded the house of the institution among the Locrians, which obliged every man that proposed a repeal of an existing law to come into the assembly with a rope about his neck. Dr. Horseley, of St. David's, expressed himself in terms still more indignant, and with still greater 1788. XXIII. 1788. BOOK ardor of holy zeal. He said, "the bill in question was calculated to tear away the foundations of the church of England, and through her means to destroy the very being of the English constitution. The act of Elizabeth, imposing a fine upon the non-attendants on divine worship, was a salutary law. It was a mistake to suppose the right of private judgment in religion unlimited. The magistrate had a right to punish atheism, as a crime against the welfare of society; and, by the same rule, to punish a contempt for the revelation of God in the Christian religion. There was moreover always danger in disturbing ancient laws, for the existence of which, at a distant period, no good reason could be given. Their wisdom, though not obvious at the period of the repeal, was generally proved by the mischief that ensued upon their annihilation." Lord Stormont, enlightened and enraptured with these arguments, paid high compliments to the bench of bishops, declaring that they had that day done themselves infinite credit, and rendered their characters sacred in the public estimation. It is needless to say that the bill was rejected. On the approach of the summer recess, Mr. Dundas, agreeably to the tenor of the India Regulation Bill, made his annual statement of the finances of the Company, which he represented as in a most prosperous and flourishing condition; XXIII. 1788. concluding however, as usual, with a motion to BOOK empower the Company to raise the sum of one million, by way of increase of capital, to be subscribed by the present proprietors of East-India stock; and the bill founded on this motion passed both houses with trivial opposition. berforce's the slave The session was far advanced, when Mr. Wil- Mr. Wilberforce brought forward his long-expected mo- motion respectingthe tion, relating to the abolition of the African slave-abolition of trade, which was now become the theme of public trade. execration. Mr. Wilberforce divided his subject into three parts-the nature of the trade as it af fected Africa itself; the appearance it assumed in the transportation of the slaves; and the considerations suggested by their actual state in the West Indies. What must be the natural consequence of a slave-trade with Africa, with a country vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Was it not plain that she must suffer from it? that her savage manners must be rendered still more ferocious, and that a slave-trade carried on round her coasts must extend violence and desolation to her very centre? Such were precisely the circumstances proved by the evidence before the privy-council. As to the mode in which the slaves were transported from Africa to the West Indies, he affirmed that so much misery condensed into so small a compass was more than human imagination had ever before XXIII. 1788. BOOK Conceived. It was the constant practice to set sail in the night, that the slaves, wrung with distress at quitting for ever their native country, might not be sensible of the moment of departure. This dreadful event was marked with songs and tears of lamentation. It appeared in evidence, that a captain more susceptible than the rest had threatened a woman with the terrors of the lash, because her song was too painful for his feelings. The mortality on board the ships was prodigious; and, including the subsequent seasoning, it did not amount to less than 50 per cent. On their arrival in the West Indies, astringents and washes were employed to hide their wounds, and make them up for sale-artifices at once fraudulent and fatal. This infamous traffic was also known to be the grave of sailors employed in it. Of 3170 seamen who sailed from Liverpool in 1787, only 1428 had returned. Mr. Wilberforce said he felt the wickedness of the slave-trade to be so enormous, so dreadful, and irremediable, that he could stop at no alternative short of its abolition. He acknowledged that his mind had indeed been harassed with the objections of the West-India planters, who had asserted that the ruin of their property must be the consequence of this regulation. He could not, however, help distrusting their arguments. He could not believe that the Almighty Being, who forbade the |