authority which the plantation-laws confer upon the slaveholder is
exercised, by the English slaveholder especially, with rigour and
brutality.

"But necessity is pretended, the name under which every enormity is
attempted to be justified; and after all, what is the necessity? It has
never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is
here, by hired servants. It is said, that it could not be cultivated
with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of
slaves; by which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells
for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny--and this
is the necessity!

"The great revolution which has taken place in the western world, may,
probably, conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate
the fall of this abominable tyranny: and now that this contest and the
passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed, perhaps, a
season for reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its
assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery,
was fit to be trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever
obtained in any age or quarter of the world."

The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an
extensive effect. For _The Moral Philosophy_ was adopted early by some
of the colleges in our universities into the system of their education.
It soon found its way also into most of the private libraries of the
kingdom; and it was, besides, generally read and approved. Dr. Paley,
therefore, must be considered, as having been a considerable coadjutor
in interesting the mind of the public in favour of the oppressed
Africans.