These journeys we performed with considerable success; during which the
committee elected Mr. Joseph Townsend of Baltimore, in Maryland, an
honorary and corresponding member.
Parliament having met, Mr. Wilberforce, in February 1793, moved, that the
House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House on Thursday next,
to consider of the circumstances of the Slave-trade. This motion was
opposed by Sir William Yonge, who moved, that this day six months should be
substituted for Thursday next. A debate ensued: of this, however, as well
as of several which followed, I shall give no account; as it would be
tedious to the reader to hear a repetition of the same arguments. Suffice
it to say, that the motion was lost by a majority of sixty-one to
fifty-three.
This sudden refusal of the House of Commons to renew their own vote of the
former year gave great uneasiness to the friends of the cause. Mr.
Wilberforce, however, resolved, that the session should not pass without an
attempt to promote it in another form; and accordingly, on the fourteenth
of May, he moved for leave to bring in a bill to abolish that part of the
Slave-trade, by which the British merchants supplied foreigners with
slaves.
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