It did not, however, follow, because a great evil subsisted, that therefore it should be removed; for it might be comparatively a less evil, than that which would accompany the attempt to remove it.

The noble lord, who had just spoken, had exemplified this: for though slavery was a great evil in itself, he was of opinion, that it could not be done away but in a course of time.
A state of slavery, he said, had existed in Africa from the earliest time; and, unless other nations would concur with England in the measure of the abolition, we could not change it for the better.
Slavery had existed also throughout all Europe.

It had now happily in a great measure been done away.

But how?
Not by acts of parliament; for these might have retarded the event; but by the progress of civilization, which removed the evil in a gradual and rational manner.
He then went over the same ground of argument, as when a member of the Commons in 1792.

He said that the inhumanity of the abolition was visible in this, that not one slave less would be taken from Africa; and that such, as were taken from it, would suffer more than they did now, in the hands of foreigners.