OUR COMMERCE WITH AFRICA. 383 



With the British market open, the slave-holding 

 planters would soon find it their interest to abo- 

 lish slavery : with the example of the British West 

 Indies before them, they would see that it was 

 possible to have a free, an industrious, and 

 peaceable black peasantry, and thus by the quiet 

 and silent operation of a revenue law, the slave- 

 holding states in the New World may, I think, 

 be made to perceive their true interest lies in 

 using free labour. 



Far different will be the result if the prohibi- 

 tory duties are abolished without such a re- 

 servation ; a stimulus would be given to the 

 foreign slave-trade, which would double the im- 

 portation of Africans ; a premium would be given 

 to the continuation of slavery, and a great in- 

 justice done to our own colonies. God forbid 

 that popular clamour should ever force such a 

 measure upon the legislature! 



I consider it, then, the duty and the interest, 

 moral and commercial, of Great Britain to pro- 

 mote by all the means in her power the civil- 

 isation of Africa. The application of those 

 means is perhaps the most difficult part of the 

 subject, and upon which there will exist the 

 greatest diversity of opinion. 



