session.  For certainly there could be no information laid before the house, through the medium of the lords of the council, which could not more advantageously have been obtained by themselves, had they instituted a similar inquiry.  It was their duty to advise the king, and not to ask his advice.  This the constitution had laid down as one of its most essential principles; and though in the present instance he saw no cause for blame, because he was persuaded His Majesty’s Ministers had not acted with any ill intention, it was still a principle never to be departed from, because it never could be departed from without establishing a precedent which might lead to very serious abuses.  He lamented that the privy council, who had received no petitions from the people on the subject, should have instituted an inquiry, and that the House of Commons, the table of which had been loaded with petitions from various parts of the kingdom, should not have instituted any inquiry at all.  He hoped these petitions would have a fair discussion in that house, independently of any information that could be given to it by His Majesty’s Ministers.  He urged again the superior advantage of an inquiry into such a subject carried on within those walls over any inquiry carried on by the lords of the council.  In inquiries carried on in that house, they had the benefit of every circumstance of publicity; which was a most material benefit indeed, and that which of all others made the manner of conducting the parliamentary proceedings of Great Britain the envy and the admiration of the world.  An inquiry there was better than an inquiry in any other place, however respectable the persons before and by whom it was carried on.  There, all that could be said for the abolition or against it might be said.  In that house every relative fact would have been produced, no information would have been withheld, no circumstance would have been omitted, which was necessary for elucidation; nothing would have been kept back.  He was sorry, therefore, that the consideration of the question, but more particularly where so much human suffering was concerned, should be put off to another session, when it was obvious that no advantage could be gained by the delay.

He then adverted to the secrecy which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had observed relative to his own opinion on this important subject.  Why did he refuse to give it?  Had Mr. Wilberforce been present, the house would have had a great advantage in this respect, because doubtless he would have stated in what view he saw the subject, and in a general way described the nature of the project he meant to propose.  But now they were kept in the dark as to the nature of any plan, till the next session.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer had indeed said, that it had been a very general opinion that the African Slave Trade should be abolished.  He had said again, that others had not gone so far, but had given it as their opinion, that it required to be revised and regulated.