while
the Slave-trade existed there? What bill could prevent the miserable
victims of the trade from rising, when on board the ships, if they saw an
opportunity, and felt a keen sense of their oppression? Those of the second
I stated to admit of a remedy, and, after making accurate calculations on
the subject of each, I showed that those merchants, who were to do them
away effectually, would be ruined by their voyages. The work was called An
Essay on the comparative Efficiency of Regulation or Abolition as applied
to the Slave-trade.

The committee also in this interval brought out their famous print of the
plan and section of a slave-ship; which was designed to give the spectator
an idea of the sufferings of the Africans in the Middle Passage, and this
so familiarly, that he might instantly pronounce upon the miseries
experienced there. The committee at Plymouth had been the first to suggest
the idea; but that in London had now improved it. As this print seemed
to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and
as it was therefore very instrumental, in consequence of the wide
circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans,
I have given the reader a copy of it in the annexed plate, and I will
now state the ground or basis, upon which it was formed.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

It must be obvious that it became the committee to select some one ship,
which had been engaged in the Slave-trade, with her real dimensions, if
they meant to make a fair representation of the manner of the
transportation. When Captain Parrey, of the royal navy, returned from
Liverpool, to which place Government had sent him, he brought with him the
admeasurement of several vessels, which had been so employed, and laid them
on the table of the House of Commons. At the top of his list stood the ship
Brookes. The committee therefore, in choosing a vessel on this occasion,
made use of the ship Brookes; and this they did, because they thought it
less objectionable to take the first that came, than any other. The vessel
then in the plate is the vessel now mentioned, and the following is her
admeasurement as given in by Captain Parrey.

Ft. In.
Length of the lower deck, gratings, and bulkheads
included at A A, 100 0
Breadth of beam on the lower deck inside, B B, 25 0
Depth