6. That it is highly honourable in us to have proposed, and in the French to have agreed to, the abolition of the Slave Trade, at the end of five years, though it would have been insulting in us to have proposed, and degrading in them to have submitted to, any stipulation on the subject.
7. That to rob and murder on the coast of Africa is among the internal rights of legislation and domestic privileges of every European and Christian state.
8. That we are not to teach the French people religion and morality at the point of the sword, though this is what we have been professing to teach them for the last two and twenty years.
9. That his most Christian Majesty Louis XVIII. is so fully impressed with the humane and benevolent sentiments of Great Britain and the allies in favour of the abolition of the Slave Trade, that he was ready to have plunged all Europe into a war for its continuance.
10. That we could not possibly make the abolition, (though the French government would certainly have made the revival) of the Slave Trade a sine qua non in the treaty of peace, and that they would otherwise have gone to war to recover by force of arms what they can only owe to the credulity or complaisance of our negociators.
Lastly. That by consenting to the re-establishment of the Slave Trade in France, we were most effectually preparing the way for its abolition all over the world.
"With so little a web as this will I ensnare so great a fly as Cassio!"—Such were the formidable barriers, the intricate lines of circumvallation, drawn by the French round the abolition of the Slave Trade, as strong as those which they threw up to defend their capital: yet we think, that after our political missionary had overleaped the one, he might have broken through the other. Where there is a will, there is a way. But there are some minds to which every flimsy pretext presents an insurmountable obstacle, where only the interests of justice and humanity are at stake. These persons are always impotent to save—powerful only to
