It was intended that a copy of this should be sent into
different towns of the kingdom, that all might know, if possible, the
horrors (as far as the evidence contained them) of this execrable trade;
and as it was possible that these copies might lie in the places where they
were sent, without a due attention to their contents, I resolved, with the
approbation of the committee, to take a journey, and for no other purpose
than personally to recommend that they might be read.
The books, having been printed, were dispatched before me. Of this tour I
shall give the reader no other account than that of the progress of the
remedy, which the people were then taking into their own hands. And first I
may observe, that there was no town, through which I passed, in which there
was not some one individual who had left off the use of sugar. In the
smaller towns there were from ten to fifty by estimation, and in the larger
from two to five hundred, who had made this sacrifice to virtue. These were
of all ranks and parties. Rich and poor, churchmen and dissenters, had
adopted the measure. Even grocers had left off trading in the article, in
some places. In gentlemen's families, where the master had set the example,
the servants had often voluntarily followed it; and even children, who were
capable of understanding the history of the sufferings of the Africans,
excluded, with the most virtuous resolution, the sweets, to which they had
been accustomed, from their lips.
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