And the bill had hardly passed when this
result began to show itself, not only in transactions of domestic
legislation, but in others which affected our most remote dependencies,
both in the East and West. We have seen in a previous chapter how
Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward
of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he
had not ventured to grapple with the institution which gave birth to
that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it
was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged.
It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an anomaly, and a
glaring inconsistency, in any British settlement. The law, as we have
seen, had been laid down as absolutely settled, that no man within the
precincts of the United Kingdom could be a slave; that, even had such
been his previous condition, the moment his foot touched English soil he
became a free man. By what process of reasoning, then, could it be
contended that his right to liberty according to English law depended on
what portion of the British dominion he was in--that what was
incompatible with his claims as a human being in Kent ceased to be so in
Jamaica? The sentiment that what was just or unjust in one place was
just or unjust in every place; that a man's right to freedom did not
depend on the country of his birth or the color of his skin, had
naturally and logically been widely diffused and fostered by the
abolition of the slave-trade.
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