364 REMARKS ON 



trade that is at present carrying on has sprung 

 up in spite of the slave-trade — that it has not 

 been encouraged by any legislative protection, or 

 forced to a precocious growth by any political 

 causes, and that its increase has been sure and 

 steady, affording the surest guarantee for its 

 continuance. Taking, then, the capabilities of 

 the country and the dispositions of the people, 

 I think I am fully justified in asserting, that 

 upon the extinction of the slave-trade, our com- 

 merce to that country will be extended to a de- 

 gree that those only who know the country and 

 the people can venture to hope ; and in propor- 

 tion to that increase will civilisation extend and 

 the happiness of the people be increased. In 

 making up, then, any account of the loss incurred 

 by the foreign slave-trade, the value of the trade 

 lost by the annual export of sixty or eighty 

 thousand African producers and consumers must 

 not be lost sight of: it is as legitimate a reason 

 to bring forward that we are losing indirectly, as 

 any argument that can be deduced from a state- 

 ment of a direct loss. 



The insufficiency and cruelty of the means at 

 present used in what is called (ironically, I 

 suppose) suppressing the slave-trade, is proved 



