With respect to the consequences mentioned by the two members for Liverpool, he had a word or two to offer upon them.  Lord Penrhyn had talked of millions to be lost and paid for.  But seeing no probability of any loss ultimately, he could see no necessity for compensation.  He believed, on the other hand, that the planters would be great gainers by those wholesome regulations, which they would be obliged to make, if the Slave-trade were abolished.  He did not however flatter them with the idea that this gain would be immediate.  Perhaps they might experience inconveniences at first, and even some loss.  But what then?  With their loss, their virtue would be the greater.  And in this light he hoped the house would consider the matter; for, if they were called upon to do an act of virtuous energy and heroism, they ought to think it right to submit to temporary disadvantages for the sake of truth, justice, humanity, and the prospect of greater happiness.

The other member, Mr. Gascoyne, had said, that his constituents, if the trade were abolished, could not employ their capitals elsewhere.  But whether they could or not, it was the duty of that house, if they put them into a traffic, which was shocking to humanity and disgraceful to the nation, to change their application, and not to allow them to be used to a barbarous purpose.  He believed, however, that the merchants of Liverpool would find no difficulty on this head.  All capitals required active motion.  It was in their nature not to remain passive and unemployed.  They would soon turn them into other channels.  This they had done themselves during the American war; for the Slave-trade was then almost wholly lost, and yet they had their ships employed, either as transports in the service of Government, or in other ways.

And as he now called upon the house not to allow any conjectural losses to become impediments in the way of the abolition of the Slave-trade, so he called upon them to beware how they suffered any representations of the happiness of the state of slavery in our islands to influence them against so glorious a measure.  Admiral Barrington had said in his testimony, that he had often envied the condition of the slaves there.  But surely, the honourable admiral must have meant, that, as he had often toiled like a slave in the defence of his country, (as his many gallant actions had proved,) so he envied the day, when he was to toil in a similar manner in the same cause.  If, however, his words to be taken literally, his sensations could only be accounted for by his having seen the negros in the hour of their sports, when a sense of the misery of their condition was neither felt by themselves nor visible to others.  But their appearance on such occasions did by no means disprove their low and abject state.  Nothing made a happy slave but a degraded man.  In proportion as the mind grows callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride is lost, the slave feels comfort.  In fact, he is no longer a man.  If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakespeare,