To the latter cause he was a warm friend, seldom
omitting any opportunity of declaring his sentiments in its favour. In the
course of his preferment he was appointed by Sir John Griffin, afterwards
Lord Howard, of Walden, to the mastership of Magdalen College in the
University of Cambridge. In this high office he considered it to be his
duty to support those doctrines which he had espoused when in an inferior
station; and accordingly, when in the year 1784 it devolved upon him to
preach a sermon before the University of Cambridge, he chose his favourite
subject, in the handling of which he took an opportunity of speaking of the
Slave-trade in the following nervous manner:--
"Now, whether we consider the crime, with respect to the individuals
concerned in this most barbarous and cruel traffic, or whether we consider
it as patronized and encouraged by the laws of the land, it presents to our
view an equal degree of enormity. A crime, founded on a dreadful
preeminence in wickedness--A crime, which being both of individuals and the
nation, heaviest judgment of Almighty God, who made of one blood all the
sons of men, and who gave to all equally a natural right to liberty; and
who, ruling all the kingdoms of the earth with equal providential justice,
cannot suffer such deliberate, such monstrous iniquity, to pass long
unpunished.
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