Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

The GAZETTE.
PHILADELPHIA, May 11.
By the ship Eliza arrived at New-York we received an English Paper entitled the "Cambridge Intelligencer," from which the following article is taken-
The strictures on the House of Commons under the Cambridge Head will show that the Liberty of the Press is in full vigor in that Country notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary.

CAMBRIDGE, March 7.

SLAVE TRADE.

The conduct of Administration, and the measures to which the House of Commons have given their sanction for many years past, have been such, that our readers perhaps may not be surprised at any thing which takes place, however insulting it may be either to Gov, to the country, or to the human race. If however, any thing can excite surprize, it must be the conduct of the House of Commons on Thursday the twenty-sixth of February last, in voting for the continuance of the Slave-Trade.

This subject has been so fully discussed, and its leading arguments are so well recapitulated in our parliamentary report, that it is unnecessary to say any thing to convince every honest man of the extreme, of the unparalleled wickedness of this traffic in the flesh and blood of our fellow-creatures. Any man who has the effrontery or the depravity to defend it, ought to be treated in society as a wretch, who would without scruple, turn pick-pocket, highwayman, or murderer, as it might best answer the purposes of his black and polluted heart.

Dr. Paley, in his chapter on Slavery, observes, "There may perhaps succeed a season for reflecting, whether a legislature which had so long lent its support to an institution so replete with human misery as the Slave Trade, was it to be trusted with the British Empire.". This observation, it ought to be remarked, was made long before the recent mass of evidence was exposed to public view. Is it not therefore the bounden duty of this celebrated writer, now to represent the conduct of the present legislature in its proper colors, that is, so far as human ability can do it. But what language is sufficient to express the abhorrence which every good man must feel at reading the Infernal Vote!

We might mention the perfect contempt shewn to public opinion. Five Hundred petitions have been presented to the House. Mr. Pitt, that insincere friend to the abolition, observed, soon after they were presented, "that the late petitions did not at all weigh with him, either one way or the other, he only considered them as a testimony of the humanity of the people."

The Commons are entirely of the minister's opinion. Let the insulted British nation reflect, 'that their five hundred petitions have been treated as waste paper. Then let them ask seriously, whether a complete reform of parliament is not absolutely essential for the salvation of the British empire.

The vote, however, is not so insulting to man as it is to God. This was the first vote of the House after the day of public fasting and humiliation! The members returned as they went, with their hands full of blood, and immediately set Heaven at defiance, and dared its vengeance!
This is the House of Commons which has squandered sixty or seventy millions of national treasure, in the prosecution of a war in defence of our Religion!

We have had the melancholy task of displaying to our readers the sanguinary horrors of a Robespierre, and the still more sanguinary horrors of a Russian Empress. We have read of a few thousands sacrificed by Revolutionary Tribunals in France. We have read of thirty thousand Turks massacred at Ismail, and of nearly an equal number of Poles at Praga and Warsaw. But we must now stand aghast at superior atrocity in Britain! After demonstrative evidence that from twenty to thirty thousand Africans are annually murdered in the Slave Trade-after contemplating for seven years a series of unparalleled cruelties inflicted on our innocent fellow-creatures--after promising that the traffic should be abolished at the commencement of the ensuing year, the House of Commons have blasted the hopes of every friend to justice, humanity and religion, by declaring, that the trade shall be continued!

Let us, as a nation, expect that severe punishment our deep criminality deserves. If there is a God if his conduct, as the moral governor of the universe, is not different towards this nation than it has been towards the nations of antiquity-divine vengeance will be equal; and we have nothing now to expect but a fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation!