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Matters had now become serious. The gauntlet had been thrown down and
accepted. The combatants had taken their stations, and the contest was to
be renewed, which was to be decided soon on the great theatre of the
nation. The committee by the very act of their institution had pronounced
the Slave-trade to be criminal. They, on the other hand, who were concerned
in it, had denied the charge. It became the one to prove, and the other to
refute it, or to fall in the ensuing session.
The committee, in this perilous situation, were anxious to find out such
other persons, as might become proper evidences before the privy council.
They had hitherto sent there only nine or ten, and they had then only
another, whom they could count upon for this purpose, in their view. The
proposal of sending persons to Africa, and the West Indies, who might come
back and report what they had witnessed, had been already negatived. The
question then was, what they were to do. Upon this they deliberated, and
the result was an application to me to undertake a journey to different
parts of the kingdom for this purpose.
When this determination was made I was at Teston, writing a long letter to
the privy council on the ill usage and mortality of the seamen employed in
the Slave-trade, which it had been previously agreed should be received as
evidence there.
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