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Clarkson, Thomas, 1760-1846

"The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) Volume II"

A letter from my friend
announced to me, when at Nottingham, that his vanity had been so gratified
by the thought of a person coming expressly to visit him from such a
distance, that he would meet me according to my appointment. I went back.
We dined together. He yielded to my request. I was now repaid; and I
returned towards Nottingham in the night. These circumstances I mention,
and I feel it right to mention them, that the reader may be properly
impressed with the great difficulties we found in collecting a body of
evidence in comparison with our opponents. They ought never to be
forgotten; for if with the testimony, picked up as it were under all these
disadvantages, we carried our object against those, who had almost
numberless witnesses to command, what must have been the merits of our
cause! No person can indeed judge of the severe labour and trials in these
journeys. In the present, I was out four months. I was almost over the
whole island, I intersected it backwards and forwards both in the night and
in the day. I travelled nearly seven thousand miles in this time, and I was
able to count upon twenty new and willing evidences.
[Footnote A: Ten or twelve of those, who were examined, much to their
honour, came forward of their own accord.


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