themselves fall with the trade. A third was, excessive labour joined with
improper food; and a fourth was, the extreme dissoluteness of their
manners. These also would both of them be counteracted by the impossibility
of getting further supplies: for owners, now unable to replace those slaves
whom they might lose, by speedy purchases in the markets, would be more
careful how they treated them in future, and a better treatment would be
productive of better morals. And here he would just advert to an argument
used against those who complained of cruelty in our islands, which was,
that it was the interest of masters to treat their slaves with humanity:
but surely it was immediate and present, not future and distant, interest,
which was the great spring of action in the affairs of mankind. Why did we
make laws to punish men? It was their interest to be upright and virtuous:
but there was a present impulse continually breaking in upon their better
judgment, and an impulse, which was known to be contrary to their permanent
advantage. It was ridiculous to say that men would be bound by their
interest, when gain or ardent passion urged them. It might as well be
asserted that a stone could not be thrown into the air, or a body move from
place to place, because the principle of gravitation bound them to the
surface of the earth. If a planter in the West Indies found himself reduced
in his profits, he did not usually dispose of any part of his slaves; and
his own gratifications were never given up, so long as there was a
possibility of making any retrenchment 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