On the second reading of it a serious opposition took place; and an amendment was moved for postponing it till that day six months.  The amendment was opposed by Mr. Fox and Mr. Huddlestone.  The latter could not help lifting his voice against this monstrous traffic in the sinews and blood of man, the toleration of which had so long been the disgrace of the British legislature.  He did not charge the enormous guilt resulting from it upon the nation at large; for the nation had washed its hands of it by the numerous petitions it had sent against it; and it had since been a matter of astonishment to all Christendom, how the constitutional guardians of British freedom should have sanctioned elsewhere the greatest system of cruelty and oppression in the world.

He said that a curse attended this trade even in the mode of defending it.  By a certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought forward, which corrupted the very persons, who used them.  Every one of these were built on the narrow ground of interest; of pecuniary profit; of sordid gain; in opposition to every higher consideration; to every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion; or to that great principle, which comprehended them all.  Place only before the most determined advocate of this odious traffic the exact image of himself in the garb and harness of a slave, dragged and whipped about like a beast:  place this image also before him, and paint it as that of one without a ray of hope to cheer him; and you would extort from him the reluctant confession, that he would not endure for an hour the misery, to which he condemned his fellow-man for life.  How dared he then to use this selfish plea of interest against the voice of the generous sympathies of his nature?  But even upon this narrow ground the advocates for the traffic had been defeated.  If the unhallowed argument of expediency was worth any thing when opposed to moral rectitude, or if it were to supersede the precepts of Christianity, where was a man to stop, or what line was he to draw?  For any thing he knew, it might be physically true, that human blood was the best manure for the land; but who ought to shed it on that account?  True expediency, however, was, where it ever would be found, on the side of that system, which was most merciful and just.  He asked how it happened, that sugar could be imported cheaper from the East Indies, than from the West, notwithstanding the vast difference of the length of the voyages, but on account of the impolicy of slavery, or that it was made in the former case by the industry of free men, and in the latter by the languid drudgery of slaves.