́in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of TRUTH. We must if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelope it, and display in its full danger, and genuine colours, the RUIN which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty, as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? Measures, my Lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to SCORN and CONTEMPT! But yesterday, and Britain might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do her reverence! The people whom we at first despised as REBELS, but whom we now acknowledge as ENEMIES, are abetted against us, supplied with every military store, have their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by our INVETERATE ENEMY, -and ministers do not-dare not, interpose with dignity or effect.

The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the British troops than I do; I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of British America is an impossibility. You cannot, my Lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing but suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot, your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent-doubly so indeed from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your adversaries to over-run them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, and devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms; NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!

But, my Lords, who is the man who, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to

authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage?-to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitants of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war against our BRETHREN?

My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my Lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality, "for it is perfectly allowable," said Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands." I am astonished-I am shocked to hear such principles confessed to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country. My Lords, I did not intend to incroach so much on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation, I feel myself impelled to speak. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as CHRISTIANS, to protest against such horrid barbarity! "That God and nature have put into our hands!" What ideas of God and nature that noble Lord may entertain I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping knife! to the Cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victim! notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation.

Such

I call upon that Right Reverend and this most learned Bench, to vindicate the religion of their GOD, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops, the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the Judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution!

I call upon the honour of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution.

From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. To send forth the merciless Cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom? your Protestant brethren!· -to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast preeminence in barbarity: she armed herself with blood hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity.

I solemnly call upon your Lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the holy Prelates of our religion, to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify this country from this deep and deadly sin!

LORD BROUGHAM AGAINST SLAVERY.

Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny his right-I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes-the same throughout the world-the same in all times; such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes-such as it is at this day. It is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of

man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternalwhile men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and hate blood-they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To these laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African Trade. Such treaties did they cite and not untruly; for by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet in spite of law and treaty, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not, assuredly, by the Parliament leading the way, but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now then let the planters beware-let their assemblies beware-let the government at home beware -let the Parliament beware! The same country is once more awake-awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosoms of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and if it shall descend again, they on whom its crash may fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God.

EXTRACT FROM LORD ERSKINE'S SPEECH.

Such, my Lords, is the case: the Defendant, not a disappointed and malicious informer, prying into official abuses, because without office himself, but himself a man in office,-not troublesomely inquisitive into other men's departments, but conscientiously correcting his own,-doing it pursuant to the rules of law, and, what heightens the character, doing it at the risk of his office, from which the effrontery of power has already

suspended him, without proof of his guilt; a conduct not only unjust and illiberal, but highly disrespectful to this court, whose judges sit in the double capacity of ministers of law, and the governors of this sacred and abused institution. Indeed, Lord Sandwiche has, in my opinion, acted such a part

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[Here Lord Mansfield observing the Counsel heated with his subject, and growing personal on the First Lord of the Admiralty, told him that Lord Sandwiche was not before the Court] I know that he is not formally before the Court, but for that very reason, I will bring him before the Court. He has placed these men in the front of the battle, in hopes to escape under their shelter, but I will not join in battle with them: their vices, though screwed up to the highest pitch of human depravity, are not of dignity enough to vindicate the combat with me; I will drag him to light who is the dark mover behind this scene of iniquity. I assert that the Earl of Sandwiche has but one road to escape out of this business without pollution and disgrace, and that is by publicly disavowing the acts of the prosecutors, and restoring Captain Baillie to his command. If he does this, then his offence will be no more than the too common one, of having suffered his own personal interest to prevail over his public duty, in placing his voters in the hospital. But if on the contrary, he continues to protect the prosecutors, in spite of the evidence of their guilt, which has excited the abhorrence of the numerous audience that crowd this court: IF HE KEEPS THIS INJURED MAN SUSPENDED, OR DARES TO TURN THAT SUSPENSION INTO A REMOVAL, I SHALL THEN NOT SCRUPLE TO DECLARE HIM AN ACCOMPLICE IN THEIR GUILT A SHAMELESS OPPRESSOR, A DISGRACE TO HIS RANK, AND A TRAITOR TO HIS TRUST.

But as I should be very sorry that the fortune of my brave and honourable friend should depend either upon the exercise of Lord Sandwiche's virtues, or the influence of his fears, I do most earnestly entreat the Court to mark the malignant object of this prosecution, and to defeat it. I beseech you, my Lords, to consider that even by discharging the rule, and with costs, the