"The enemies of abolition had," he said, "always confounded abolition with emancipation.

He and his friends had always distinguished between them; and not only abstained from proposing emancipation, but were ready to reject it when proposed by others.

How much soever he looked forward with anxious expectation to the period when the negroes might with safety be liberated, he knew too well the effect which the long continuance of abject slavery produced upon the human mind to think of their immediate emancipation, a measure which at the present moment would be injurious both to them and to the colonies.
He and those who acted with him were satisfied with having gained an object which was safely attainable." And they had reason to be satisfied.

For the good work thus done was not limited by the extent of the British dominions, vast as they are.

The example of the homage thus paid by the Parliament and the nation to justice and humanity was contagious; the principle on which the bill was founded and was carried being such that, for mere shame, foreign countries could hardly persist in maintaining a traffic which those who had derived the greatest profit from it had on such grounds renounced; though our ministers did not trust to their spontaneous sympathies, but made the abolition of the traffic by our various allies, or those who wished to become so, a constant object of diplomatic negotiations, even purchasing the co-operation of some by important concessions, in one instance by the payment of a large sum of money.