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the time of the journey; and I will sup-" her boy had never told a lie, no never!” pose they travel only twelve miles per Towards strangers, he says they are of a day: Twelve miles per day, for six mild and obliging disposition. Having months together, makes a journey of 2,124 mentioned their habit of pilfering, he British miles; and so many British miles, adds-"To counterbalance this depravity upon the parallel of the middle latitude in their nation, it is impossible for me to of the Windward Coast, make 31 de- forget the disinterested charity and tengrees longitude; and 31 degrees of longi- der solicitude with which these poor tude eastward from the middle of heathens sympathized with me in my the Windward Coast carry us into the sufferings, relieved my distresses, and very heart of Africa, in the broadest part. contributed to my safety. In so free and And throughout this long tract of coun- kind a manner (speaking of the women in try, the natives, by the evidence of the particular)" [À laugh]-My lords, witnesses themselves, bear the marks of there is nothing in this to provoke the incipient civilization. But, by the rela- laugh of levity: Mr. Park's is a simple, tion of Mr. Park, on which I rely more but a serious, sober narrative; the freethan on the united testimony of all these dom of which he speaks was not the freewitnesses, through the whole extent of dom of wantonness, as those who laugh this country, civilization is much more must be supposed to understand it— than incipient. Through this very coun- "In so free and kind a manner did they try the line of Mr. Park's journey lay; (the women) contribute to my relief, that and, my lords, you cannot travel half a if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught, day with Mr. Park, in the whole route if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel, with from Pisania to the very extremity of a double relish." Then, of their domestic that line, but you find all the way the attachments and affections among thempleasing vestiges of a civilization that has selves, he gives many striking instances. already made some progress, and is Your lordships, I am sure, must recollect heightening every step you go the farther the affecting story of the return of the you get inland from the coast,-that is, blacksmith of Kasson, to his native vilthe farther you recede from the stage on lage. By the way, my lords, I must which the slave trade perpetrates its hor- ask, is this a character of savage manuers, rors. Mr. Park not only speaks in gene--that a young man goes from his home ral terms of the growing civilization of these people, but he mentions many particulars, from which your lordships may form your own judgment. He thus describes the dress of the Mandingoes: "Both sexes dress in cotton cloth of their own manufacture: the men wear a loose frock with drawers half-way down the leg, sandals on their feet, white cotton caps on their heads; the women, a petticoat of the same material, with a sort of mantle cast over their shoulders." My lords, is this the dress of savages?-Is there not evidently a degree of elegance and neatness in it? Speaking of their manners, he says "They are industrious in agriculture and pasturage they manufacture cotton cloths, and coloured leathers! they smelt iron; they smelt gold; they draw gold wire, of which they form various ornaments." Are these the occupations of barbarians? My lords, they are not destitute of moral principle: the first lesson, says Mr. Park, a Mandingo woman teaches her child, is the practice of truth: the lamentation of a miserable mother over her son, murdered by a moorish banditti, was, that in the course of his blameless life,

to a distant country, to find profitable employment in a trade?-But the story of the return, my lords, after an absence of some years! His brother meets him on the road, and brings out a singing man to sing him into the village; he brings a horse to mount him upon, that he may enter the town in a respectable manner: at the entrance of the village, his arrival is welcomed by a concourse of the peo ple; his mother blind with age, supporting her tottering steps upon her staff, is led out to meet him; the crowds respectfully make way for her; she shows the strongest emotions of joy and maternal affection, when she is satisfied, by feeling his person with her hands, that he is indeed her very son. Mr. Park concludes the interesting narrative with this remark, that "from this interview he was fully convinced, that whatever difference there is between the negro and European in the formation of the nose, and the colour of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feeling of our common nature." These, my lords, are the people which the slave-trade, in defiance of its own princples, makes its

victims on the Windward Coast,-because, | slave trade were the wicked sinful thing forsooth, they are the best of slaves! which those who would abolish it conTheir civilization is already in its progress, ceive it to be, it is very strange there and needs not the assistance of the slave- should be no prohibition, no reprobation trade. of slavery, in the Holy Scriptures either of the Old or New Testament. The learned counsel evidently wished your lordships to conclude, that the slave trade is at least not condemned, if not sanctioned, by religion. My lords, that learned counsel has studied his law books with more critical accuracy than his Bible, or he never would have been the great and able lawyer that he is; he would have been no better lawyer than he is divine,—that is to say, he would have been a very bad one. My lords, the sentiments of a right reverend prelate, while he lived a dear and valued friend of mine, have been cited in this night's debate, as if they had in some degree coincided with those of the learned counsel upon the subject. True it is, that about the time when the question of abolition first began to be agitated, the right reverend prelate let fall something in a sermon, about a danger which he apprehended might arise from exciting the public mind upon the subject of the slave trade, while it was protected by the laws, and while the matter was under the examination of the privy council. I confess that I never saw that danger; and I am confident, were the right reverend prelate among us now, his sentiments upon the scriptural part of the argument would not be very different from mine. Be that as it may, I am confident, that in what I am about to deliver upon that subject, I shall have the concurrence of my right reverend brethren near me. My lords, I do certainly admit, that there is no prohibition of slavery in the Bible, in explicit terms,

My lords, shall I be told, "Imagine what civility you please, slavery is the birth-right of the African; and we remove him only from slavery in one place to slavery in another?" My lords, slavery is a word of very large indefinite meaning, comprehending a variety of conditions, in fact very different from one another under a common name. I admit that it is the case, that in that part of Africa of which I have been speaking, not more than one-fourth part of the inhabitants are of free condition; the other three-fourths are slaves. But, of what sort is the African slavery in Africa?-My lords, it seems at this moment perfectly analogous to the slavery of the heroic and the patriarchal ages; when the slave and the freeborn lived so much upon a footing that you could hardly distinguish the one from the other, when the princess Nausicaa took a part in the labour of her female slaves-and the slave-girls, when the common task was finished, were the playmates of the princess,-when Abraham's confidential slave, sent to choose a wife for his master's eldest son, found the lady designed by Providence to be joined in marriage to so great a man as Isaac, in the laborious office of drawing water for her father's cattle and the slave of Abraham that came upon this happy errand was received by the parents of the bride with all the respect and hospitality with which they could have received his master. My lords, the indigenous slavery of Africa is of this kind. The witnesses have told you, that persons not well acquainted with the country would mistake the domestic slaves for free persons: there is no external distinction; they are dressed alike, they are fed alike; they are lodged alike; and they are all employed alike; the slave is not treated with rigour, nor punished with severity; the master cannot legally sell his domestic slave, unless for crime, and with the consent and approbation of the family. My lords, it is absurd to compare this sort of slavery with that to which, the slave trade consigns the African; no two things can be more unlike; they agree in nothing but the name. My lords, the learned counsel who replied to the summing up of the learned counsel for the Sierra Leone company, said, that if the

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such as these would be, "Thou shalt not have a slave," or "Thou shalt not hold any one in slavery;" there is no explicit reprobation of slavery by name. were to say that there was no occasion for any such prohibition or reprobation because slavery is condemned by something anterior either to the christian or the Mosaic dispensation, I could support the assertion by grave authorities,-not the authorities of the new-fashioned advocates of the rights of men,-not such authorities as Vattel or Tom Paine. My lords, what is the definition of slavery in

Dr. Samuel Halifax, Lord Bishop of Gloucester, afterwards of St. Asaph,

charter had been granted for erecting this company into a corporation for the purpose of trade. In the charter a clause was inserted to prohibit them as a company from trading in slaves upon that part of the Coast; but no penalty was annexed to a breach of the prohibition, nor was it provided that their agents should be so prohibited. What other trade could they carry on? It was a miserable company, which never could flourish in a place which experience had proved to be incapable of yielding any productions of value. The bill was altogether miserable and ridiculous. But the society alleged that it would civilize the Africans; that was to say they would send missionaries to preach in a barn of Sierra Leone to a set of negroes, who did not understand a single word of his language. He considered the bill to be absurd, unjust, and such as ought not to be passed into a law.

The House divided: Contents, 25; Not-contents, 32; Proxies, 36, on each side. The bill was consequently thrown

out.

Protest against the Militia Reduction Bill.] July 10. The following Protest was entered on the Journals:

“Dissentient,

"Because the measures prescribed by the bill are destructive of the constitutional force of the country, by making the militia ballot a fund for the supply, and its discipline a drill for the accommodation, of other corps, and by degrading its officers to the humiliating situation of commanding the miserable remnants of their regiments rejected by recruiting serjeants of the line.

"Because the subversion of this constitutional force must be the inevitable consequence, as it is probably the object of these measures; for it cannot be imagined that gentlemen of property (such as are required by the still remaining wreck of the militia laws) should hereafter come forward in times of difficulty and danger, with a zeal and patriotism so much applauded, and so bitterly insulted: that men of the highest consideration and for tune, such as alone can form a constitutional force, should quit their domestic comforts and family occupations, without personal views or professional allurements, to fill a station so degrading to them as that of drill-serjeants for the army; but exclusive of this great and insuperable objection, we consider this bill as framed

under circumstances of gross inattention to the public interest, to private rights of various descriptions, and to the clearest and most important principles of the constitution; and we should esteem ourselves neglectful of our own characters, as well as deficient in public duty, if we did not record our marked and unreserved reprobation of a measure of such dangerous tendency.

"1. Because the promoters of this bill have, contrary to every principle of common justice, established an arbitrary pro portion, by which the respective counties are hereafter to be burthened with the expense of raising their future militia, deviating from the established scale, approved and sanctioned by the acts of the twenty-sixth and thirty-seventh of the king, without any grounds laid before parliament by which the justice of such deviation could be estimated; though in a few days, and with no expense, the annual list for the county ballots returned to the lieutenants of each county, and directed (by the 26th of Geo. 3rd, chap. 107, clause 50) to be transmitted to the secretary of state, would without error have produced a correct scale.

"2. Because all militia men, not arriving (after the enrolment) at their respective regiments at the exact time contained in any order which may be given to them, are declared to be deserters, liable to be taken from service in the militia for five years within the kingdom, and condemned to serve in regiments of the line for life in any part of the world, by sentence of a regimental court martial, where neither the judges nor the witnesses are upon oath; and by an additional injustice, the county which paid the service of the man is liable to the farther charge of supplying his place.

"3. Because the difficulties and embar rassments which men enrolled to serve in the militia are exposed to by this bill are so obviously cruel and unjust, that it af fords no slight ground of suspicion that they are intended to promote the recruiting the regular forces from the militia by the forced desertions of the unfortunate individuals who shall be engaged in the militia service; for the man, as soon as he is enrolled, perhaps many hundred miles from his regiment, is ordered to join it, but by this bill no pay is to commence, nor allowance to be granted till he actually arrives at his regiment; he is deprived of all former sources of subsistence, and

is not entitled to the means of present | support; plunder or charity alone can maintain him on the road; and if under all these insurmountable difficulties he does not arrive within the time limited in his orders, he is liable to be treated as a deserter.

"4. Because by this bill the regiments of militia are invited to a state of disorder and mutiny by anticipation, as the bill has publicly declared that desertion before the period of its passing into a law was to be made an offence not necessarily followed by punishment, but that every man may by such desertion take leave of absence till August, if by that time he shall enlist into the regular service; the bill encourages immediate desertion from a service to which the man had sworn fidelity, and the king is empowered to authorize the deserter's entrance into another ser

vice, discharged from any claim by the militia regiment to which he belongs.

5. Because by this bill the most important and incontrovertible principle of the constitution is flagrantly impeached. Whether it is legal or not, to appropriate public money by an order of the commissioners of the Treasury, and levy money on the land owners by a similar order, without consent of parliament, is stated by this bill as a matter of doubt entertained by parliament; and on the grounds of this pretended doubt, a clause of indemnity is introduced, of which the title of the bill gave no intimation, and to which the attention of the legislature had not been directed.

In this general neglect, overthrow, and denial of private justice, public principles, and national rights, it is not to be wondered at, that little attention should be paid to the feelings of individuals, however called by their country to stations of considerable confidence and trust; yet we cannot but express our disapprobation of the grating directions to commanding of ficers of militia regiments, to crimp for another service their associates and fellow soldiers, and become at once the instrument both of their own disgrace, and of that of the militia establishments, to which they are zealously attached. (Signed) CAERNARVON, RADNOR,

WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM."

Mr.Tierney's Finance Resolutions.]June 28. Mr. Tierney rose and said :-Sir, in pursuance of the notice which I gave, I now

rise to trouble the House with several resolutions relative to the finances of the country. It is now three years since any question of the expenditure of the country was agitated; it is now three years since any inquiry was instituted into the magnitude of that expenditure, the application of it, or the consequences to which it must lead. My object in these resolutions is, to take a comparative view of what the state of the country was at the period previous to the war, and what it is now; to show at what rate of expense we are travelling, and what the result must be, even if peace should arrive at the end of the present year.-Mr. Tierney here read his Resolutions, which were as follow:

FINANCE RESOLUTIONS.

1. That it appears to this House, that the amount of the public funded debt existing on the 5th January, 1793, was 238,231,248l. exclusive of the long and short annuities to the amount of 1,373,5501.; of which sums on the 1st of February, 1799, stock to the amount of 28,677,6891. had been purchased by, and annuities to the amount of 119,880l. had fallen in to the commissioners for redeeming the national debt; reducing the actual amount of the debt existing on the 5th of January, 1793, to 209,553,5591. and the annuities to 1,253,670l.

2. That the amount of the public funded debt, created since the 5th January, 1793 (including the amount to be created by sums borrowed in the present session of parliament, and exclusive of 7,502,6331. 3 per cent stock, and 230,000l. per annum annuities, created by advances to the emperor of Germany), is 225,602,792/_exclusive of long annuities to the amount of 283,2061. per annum; of which sums, on the 1st of Feb. 1799, 8,704,0827. had been purchased by the commissioners for redeeming the national debt; reducing the actual amount of debt created since the 5th Jan., 1793, to 216,898,710l. exclusive of long annuities to the amount of 283,2061. per

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including 316,000l. permaneat interest on the Joan of the present session), amounts to 8,247,2157. per annum; and that a farther charge of 497,7351. per annum is liable to be incurred in default of payment of the interest of certain loans by his majesty the emperor of Germany.

7. That the unfunded debt (exclusive of anticipations in the usual form upon the land and malt taxes) amounted, on the 5th Jan., 1793, to 10,252,5341.

8. That the unfunded debt (exclusive of anticipations in the usual form upon the land and malt taxes) amounted, on the 5th Jan., 1799, to 17,405,974/.

9. That the nett produce of the old permanent taxes, existing previous to the war, was, on the 5th Jan., 1793, 14,284,000/.

10. That the nett produce of the old permanent taxes, existing previous to the war, was, on the 5th Jan., 1794, 13,941,000l.; on the 5th Jan., 1795, 13,858,000l.; on the 5th Jan. 1796, 13,557,000l.; on the 5th Jan., 1797, 14,292,000l.; on the 5th Jan., 1798, 13,332,000l.; on the 5th Jan., 1799, 14,275,000l.; and on the 5th April, 1799, 14,574,300/.

11. That the nett produce of the taxes imposed since the 5th Jan., amounted, in the year ending the 5th April, 1799, to 7,272,0437. 12. That the total value of all imports into Great Britain, in the year ending the 5th Jan., 1793, was 19,659,358l.; and on an average of six years, ending 5th Jan., 1793, 18,685,2901.

That the total value of all imports into Great Britain, in the year ending 5th Jan., 1779, was 25,654,000l.; and on an average of six years, ending 5th Jan., 1799, 21,356,2961.

13. That the total value of British manufactures exported from Great Britain, in the year ending 5th Jan., 1793, was 18,336,8517., and on an average of six years, ending 5th Jan., 1793, 14,771,0197.

That the total value of British manufactures exported, in the year ending the 5th Jan., 1799, was 19,771,5107.; and on an average of six years, ending 5th Jan., 1799, 17,154,323/.

14. That the total value of foreign merchandize exported from Great Britain, in the year ending the 5th Jan. 1793, was 6,497,9117.; and on an average of six years, ending 5th Jan., 1793, 5,468,014/.

That the total value of foreign merchandize exported from Great Britain, in the year ending the 5th Jan., 1799, was 13,883,8851.; and on an average of six years, ending the 5th Jan., 1799, 10,753,6887.

15. That the total sum to be raised in Great Britain, in the year 1799, may be estimated as follows, viz.

Interest of the public funded

debt, charges of management and sinking fund, on the 5th Jan., 1799, after deducting the interest

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16. That it appears to this House, that the gross receipt of the revenue (after deducting re- -payments for over-entries, drawbacks, and bounties in the nature of drawbacks), amounted, in the year ending the 5th Jan., 1799, to 26,039,0467.

That the tax on income is estimated to produce a sum of 7,500,000l. per annum.

That the tax on imports and exports may be estimated to produce a sum of 1,500,000l.

That permanent taxes have been imposed in the present session of parliament, calculated to produce 316,000l.; and that, estimating the gross receipt of the revenue to continue the same as in the year ending the 5th Jan., 1799, the total amount to be raised by taxes, for the service of the year 1799, may be computed at a sum not less than 35,355,0461.

17. That it appears by the report of a committee of this House in 1791, that the actual expenditure of the peace establishment (including the annual million for the sinking fund), on an average of five years, ending the 5th Jan, 1791, was

•••••£.16,816,985

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