The merchants and planters availed
themselves of it to collect petitions to parliament from interested persons
against the abolition of the trade, to wait upon members of parliament by
deputation, in order to solicit their attendance in their favour, and to
renew their injurious paragraphs in the public papers. The committee for
the abolition availed themselves of it to reply to these; and here Dr.
Dickson, who had been secretary to Governor Hey, in Barbadoes, and who had
offered the committee his Letters on Slavery before mentioned and his
services also, was of singular use. Many members of parliament availed
themselves of it to retire into the country to read the report. Among the
latter were Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt. In this retirement they
discovered, notwithstanding the great disadvantages under which we had
laboured with respect to evidence, that our cause was safe, and that, as
far as it was to be decided by reason and sound policy, it would triumph.
It was in this retirement that Mr. Pitt made those able calculations, which
satisfied him for ever after, as the minister of the country, as to the
safety of the great measure of the abolition of the Slave-trade; for he had
clearly proved, that not only the islands could go on in a flourishing
state without supplies from the coast of Africa, but that they were then in
a condition to do it.
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