THE SLAVE QUESTION. 
415 
the crowding previously resorted to. A struggle of 
twenty years accomplished for England the honour 
of the abolition of the trade ; in twenty years more, 
we acceded to the principle of emancipation, which 
even required other ten years to be carried into effect. 
Thus England took fifty years to meditate and resolve 
on an act of justice to Africa ; yet we expect other 
nations — implicated like ourselves — to jump at once 
to the conclusions we had formed, after such 
fierce and long struggles . between obdurate selfish- 
ness and humanity. We urge upon those nations 
with all the force of diplomacy, backed by the know- 
ledge of our superior power, at once to sacrifice 
what they believe to be their own interests, — 
to co-operate with us. But they are in the position 
which England held in that respect before 1788, 
when the majority here believed, as they do now 
in the slave-dealing countries, that our mercantile 
prosperity was inseparably bound up in the Slave 
Trade. If the voice of humanity required so many 
years to make itself heard in England, it is injustice 
to ourselves to suppose, that other nations wiU listen 
to it immediately it is propounded to them ; and in- 
justice to them to assume that they will require longer 
consideration, if left to their unconstrained judgment; 
for hitherto our arguments have been from the strong 
to the weak ; and a nation “ convinced against its will,” 
is in the same position as an individual; — meanwhile 
we draw on ourselves all the odium of the overbear- 
