in the allowance of his slaves.—­But to return to the subject which he had left:  he was happy to state, that as all the causes of the decrease which he had stated might be remedied, so, by the progress of light and reformation, these remedies had been gradually coming into practice; and that, as these had increased, the decrease of slaves had in an equal proportion been lessened.  By the gradual adoption of these remedies, he could prove from the report on the table, that the decrease of slaves in Jamaica had lessened to such a degree, that from the year 1774 to the present it was not quite one in a hundred, and that, in fact, they were at present in a state of increase; for that the births in that island, at this moment, exceeded the deaths by one thousand or eleven hundred per annum.  Barbados, Nevis, Antigua, and the Bermudas, were, like Jamaica, lessening their decrease, and holding forth an evident and reasonable expectation of a speedy state of increase by natural population.  But allowing the number of Negroes even to decrease for a time, there were methods which would insure the welfare of the West India islands.  The lands there might be cultivated by fewer hands, and this to greater advantage to the proprietors and to this country, by the produce of cinnamon, coffee, and cotton, than by that of sugar.  The produce of the plantations might also be considerably increased, even in the case of sugar, with less hands than were at present employed, if the owners of them would but introduce machines of husbandry.  Mr. Long himself, long resident as a planter, had proved, upon his own estate, that the plough, though so little used in the West Indies, did the service of a hundred slaves, and caused the same ground to produce three hogsheads of sugar, which, when cultivated by slaves, would only produce two.  The division of work, which, in free and civilized countries, was the grand source of wealth, and the reduction of the number of domestic servants, of whom not less than from twenty to forty were kept in ordinary families, afforded other resources for this purpose.  But, granting that all these suppositions should be unfounded, and that everyone of these substitutes should fail for a time, the planters would be indemnified, as is the case in all transactions of commerce, by the increased price of their produce in the British market.  Thus, by contending against the abolition, they were defeated in every part of the argument.  But he would never give up the point, that the number of the slaves could be kept up, by natural population, and without any dependence whatever on the Slave Trade.  He therefore called upon the house again to abolish it as a criminal waste of life—­it was utterly unnecessary—­he had proved it so by documents contained in the report.  The merchants of Liverpool, indeed, had thought otherwise, but he should be cautious how he assented to their opinions.  They declared last year that it was a losing trade at two slaves to a ton, and yet they pursued it when restricted to