painted the accommodations on board a slave-ship in the most glowing colours.  He had represented them in a manner which would have exceeded his attempts at praise of the most luxurious scenes.  Their apartments, he said, were fitted up as advantageously for them as circumstances could possibly admit:  they had several meals a day; some of their own country provisions, with the best sauces of African cookery; and, by way of variety, another meal of pulse, according to the European taste.  After breakfast they had water to wash themselves, while their apartments were perfumed with frankincense and lime-juice.  Before dinner they were amused after the manner of their country; instruments of music were introduced; the song and the dance were promoted; games of chance were furnished them; the men played and sang, while the women and girls made fanciful ornaments from beads, with which they were plentifully supplied.  They were indulged in all their little fancies, and kept in sprightly humour.  Another of them had said, when the sailors were flogged, it was out of the hearing of the Africans, lest it should depress their spirits.  He by no means wished to say that such descriptions were wilful misrepresentations.  If they were not, it proved that interest or prejudice was capable of spreading a film over the eyes thick enough to occasion total blindness.

Others, however, and these men of the greatest veracity, had given a different account.  What would the house think, when by the concurring testimony of these the true history was laid open?  The slaves who had been described as rejoicing in their captivity, were so wrung with misery at leaving their country, that it was the constant practice to set sail in the night, lest they should know the moment of their departure.  With respect to their accommodation, the right ancle of one was fastened to the left ancle of another by an iron fetter; and if they were turbulent, by another on the wrists.  Instead of the apartments described, they were placed in niches, and along the decks, in such a manner, that it was impossible for any one to pass among them, however careful he might be, without treading upon them.  Sir George Yonge had testified, that in a slave-ship, on board of which he went, and which had not completed her cargo by two hundred and fifty, instead of the scent of frankincense being perceptible to the nostrils, the stench was intolerable.  The allowance of water was, so deficient, that the slaves were, frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated.  The pulse with which they had been said to be favoured, were absolutely English horse-beans.  The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament.  As Mr. Norris had said, the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling the house what they meant.  It would have been much more fair if he himself had explained