ing contrasts arise, between the treatment which we have long received from the Almighty, and that which we give to our poor African brethren. He has girt our isle with a bulwark which for ages has not been broken; war has scarcely during a century and a half, a brief and slight civil contest or two, excepted, visited our happy soil; and its horrors for the most part have been too remote, to excite even a fear of its contact. To devastation by foreign armies, we have been strangers for many centuries. In short, our domestic exemption from the miseries of war, has been perhaps unparalleled

among nations.
nations. But the

But the eye of an all-seeing God, beholds in Africa, a contrast dreadful indeed; and of which much favoured Britain is the chief, as well as most guilty, author. There, the wretched villager can at no time lay down his head in safety, secure from being, before the rising sun, the wictim of a predatory invasion. To fill our slave ships, the sword, the fire arms which we furnish, and the torch of midnight conflagration, ravage that hapless land; and war, in its terrors at least, if not in its actual inflictions, is nearly incessant. By Britain, both the arms and the motives are supplied; by Britain, those horrid consequences of captivity, eternal exile and bondage, are chiefly inflicted. The commerce, the maritime energies, which to ourselves impart security, and internal peace; are in our hands, the instruments of unspeakable misery to helpless and unoffending millions.

Do we shudder at the idea of those calamities which a successful invasion would bring upon our country? They would, as I have faintly attempted to shew, be indeed dreadful; and a united people should prepare to make every sacrifice, and to encounter every danger, by which they may be aver

ted. But while we contemplate these menaced evils; while we deprecate them in our closets, and in the house of God; let conscience fairly suggest to us what more dreadful invasions we are hourly abetting in Africa! how much worse than even French bondage, is the captivity which we multiply, and perpetuate among her innocent children! May the merciful disposer of all events, avert from us, guilty though we are, the horrors of a foreign yoke! but let not those who can, and will not, deliver us from the impious crime of the slave trade, join in this prayer for our country; lest it should from their lips offend, rather than propitiate, the just Governor of the world.

The obstinate adherence to this crime, with which we have too long been chargeable, is another aggravation by which Divine justice may be reasonably supposed to have been provoked; for perseverance in guilt, after admonitions to reform it, has in what we know of the course of Providence towards nations, been usually added to the offence, before the scourge has been inflicted.

The iniquities of the slave trade are of ancient date. During a long course of years it has been a standing crime of England to export Negroes from. Africa, and sell them into a cruel bondage in the colonies.

But of a stubborn and obdurate mind, long perseverance in a particular sin is not conclusive evidence. An inveterate, as well as a recent, criminal habit, may have had its origin in ignorance, or heedlessness: and if conscience has at first been blind, or inadvertent, the error is more likely to be confirmed, than diminished by the length of the sinful practice.* The divine justice and mercy,.

* It is well known, that Queen Elizabeth was persuaded, that the Negroes, carried from Africa to her colonies, were voluntary emigrants; and expressed a pious horror at the idea of taking them by force.

therefore, afe most clearly vindicated, when to long forbearance, awakening expostulation is added, prior to the avenging stroke. Accordingly, we are told ́thất Noah 'preached righteousness to his cotemporaries, prior to the overwhelming deluge. We find Lot expos

tulating with the inhabitants of Sodom, before the fall of the avenging fire from heaven. Moses and Aaroh 'were sent repeatedly to admonish the Egyptians, and 'to demand the dismission of the oppressed Israelites, 'before the various plagues which fell upon that devoted 'land, successively chastised its contumacy. Above all, the dreadful scourges which were inflicted upon the stiffnecked, though chosen race, were always preceded by an open exposition of their sins, and earnest calls to répèntance, till at last the warning voice of the Messiah himself, loudly denounced those full-blown iniquities, which were consummated' by their rejection of that sacred Monitor, and were soon after punished by a terrible destruction. Amidst so many signal examples of this righteous mode of dealing of the Most High, we have one, in which the obduracy of the human heart relented, and the uplifted scourge was withdrawn; for at the preaching of Jonas, Nineveh repented and was spared.

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In alarming conformity to these scriptural precedents, will be found the conduct of Providence towards this long favoured nation, upon the hypothesis that severe chastise'ments for the guilt of the Slave Trade, have been already felt, and that still severer are now approaching.

The extreme wickedness of our African commerce, and of the colonial oppressions which it generates, were, till about 19 years ago, but little known to the British public at large; and even our most intelligent Statesmen and Sena

tors, had but imperfect conceptions, of the number and extent of those foul crimes which British subjects had long been perpetrating against the Negro race, upon both sides of the Atlantic. The mode of procuring Slaves in Africa, and the horrid effects of our enormous and increasing demand for them, in that ill-fated region, were distinctly known only to the obscure and sordid individuals immediately engaged in that opprobrious traffic. -Some crude notions prevailed, that men were unjustly torn from their native land in Africa, and oppressed in the West India Islands; but the detail and the extent of their wrongs, were uninvestigated and unknown. It was not Glearly understood, that multitudes of cruel murders were chargeable upon the British nation, as the ordinary effects

of the Slave Trade.

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"The times of this ignorance God winked at."

It pleased him in the inscrutable counsels of his providence, wherein compensations for temporal evil, rich enough to make its permission just, and beneficent, are reserved for the virtuous sufferer, that the cruelties of our traders and colonists, should be long shrouded in obscurity, and unarraigned at the national bar.

But the greatness and suddenness of the light, was at length as remarkable as the long duration of the darkness.In the year 1787, the wrongs of the oppressed Africans, forcibly attracted the attention, and excited the compassion of some able and eminent men. Their case was powerfully stated to the public, and still more powerfully brought into parliament. The moral feelings of the nation were appealed to, and the appeal was at first very favourably received. -Pity, remorse, and indignation, were almost universally inspired; except, indeed, among that

too large and powerful proportion of our fellow subjects, whose private interests and connections, or prejudices born of such influence, bound them to the side of the colonies.

This appeal to the national conscience, was not supported merely by the exertions of individuals, or by private and hasty examinations of the case. Obvious and seemingly irresistible, though the moral considerations were that demanded an abolition of the slave trade, it was made the subject of deep and long investigation. The great inquests of the Crown, and the People; the Privy Council, and House of Commons, went into elaborate inquiries respecting the nature and extent of those crimes, whereof the nation stood arraigned by some of its most respectable members and while evidence was received on the part of the accusers, every opportunity was given to those who profited by the alleged iniquities, to deny, extenuate, or excuse them. Even the immediate perpetrators of those crimes, were received as witnesses

in their own favour. A denial upon the word of an African Trader, or West India Proprietor, of any charge by which his own interest and character were assailed, was admitted as freely, as the testimony of those who were liable to no selfish bias.

Inquiry therefore, if not impartial, was at least, not partial to the accusers-Yet what was the result?

To state the substance of the evidence, even in the most compendious form, would be to demand the perusal of a large volume, upon a subject not likely I fear to obtain the attention which it pre-eminently deserves, at this alarming juncture.—But the general effect, is sufficient for my purpose, and may be briefly told. The slave-trade was condemned in the House of Commons, the only branch of the