Mr. Pitt then rose.  He deprecated the resolutions altogether.  He denied also the inferences which Mr. Dundas had drawn from the West Indian documents relative to the Negro population.  He had looked aver his own calculations from the same documents again and again, and he would submit them, with all their data, if it should be necessary, to the House.

Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Fox held the same language.  They contended also, that Mr. Dundas had now proved, a thousand times more strongly than ever, the necessity of immediate abolition.  All the resolutions he had read were operative against his own reasoning.  The latter observed, that the Slave-traders were in future only to be allowed to steal innocent children from their disconsolate parents.

After a few observations by Lord Sheffield, Mr. Drake, Colonel Tarleton, and Mr. Rolle, the House adjourned.

On the 25th of April it resumed the consideration of the subject.  Mr. Dundas then went over his former resolutions, and concluded by moving, “that it should not be lawful to import any African Negroes into any British colonies, in ships owned or navigated by British subjects, at any time after the 1st of January, 1800.”

Lord Mornington (now Marquis Wellesley) rose to propose an amendment.  He congratulated his countrymen, that the Slave Trade had received its death-wound.  This traffic was founded in injustice; and between right and wrong there could be no compromise.  Africa was not to be sacrificed to the apparent good of the West Indies.  He would not repeat those enormities out of the evidence, which had made such a deep impression upon the House.  It had been resolved, that the trade should be abolished.  The question then was, how long they were to persevere in the crime of its continuance?  One had said, that they might be unjust for ten years longer; another, only till the beginning of the next century.  But this diversity of opinion had proceeded from an erroneous statement of Mr. Dundas against the clear and irrefragable calculations of Mr. Pitt.  The former had argued, that, because Jamaica and the ceded islands had retained almost all the slaves which had been, imported into them, they were therefore not yet in a situation to support their population without further supplies from Africa.  But the truth was, that the slaves, so retained, were kept, not to maintain the population there, but to clear new land.  Now the House had determined, that the trade was not to be continued for this purpose.  The population, therefore, in the islands was sufficient to continue the ordinary cultivation of them.