ect, for I had not even
leisure to attend to my own concerns. The various instances of
barbarity which had come successively to my knowledge within this
period, had vexed, harrassed, and afflicted it. The wound which these
had produced was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments
before related, which arose from the reiterated refusals of persons to
give their testimony, after I had traveled hundreds of miles in quest
of them. But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the
persecution, begun and pursued by persons interested in the
continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined
against them; and whom, on account of their dependent situation in
life, it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing
these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when
thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From
their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and
ungrateful to have fled. These different circumstances, by acting
together, had at length brought me into the situation just mentioned;
and I was therefore obliged, though very reluctantly, to be borne out
of the field, where I had placed the great honor and glory of my
life."

I may as well add here that a Mr. Whitbread, to whom Clarkson
mentioned this latter cause of distress, generously offered to repair
the pecuniary losses of all who had suffered in this cause. One
anecdote will be a specimen of the energy with which Clarkson pursued
evidence. It had been very strenuously asserted and maintained that
the subjects of the slave trade were only such unfortunates as had
become prisoners of war, and who, if not carried out of the country in
this manner, would be exposed to death or some more dreadful doom in
their own country. This was one of those stories which nobody
believed, and yet was particularly useful in the hands of the
opposition, because it was difficult legally to disprove it. It was
perfectly well known that in very many cases slavetraders made direct
incursions into the country, kidnapped, and carried off the
inhabitants of whole villages, but the question was, how to establish
it? A gentleman whom Clarkson accidentally met on one of his journeys,
informed him that he had been in company, about a year before, with a
sailor, a very respectable looking young man, who had actually been
engaged in one of these expeditions; he had spent half an hour with
him at an inn; h