y I had yet undertaken; many still
refused to come forward to be examined, and some on the most frivolous
pretences; so that I was disgusted, as I journeyed on, to find how little
men were disposed to make sacrifices for so great a cause. In one part of
it I went over nearly two thousand miles, receiving repeated refusals. I
had not secured one witness within this distance. This was truly
disheartening. I was subject to the whims and the caprice of those, whom I
solicited on these occasions[A]. To these I was obliged to accommodate
myself. When at Edinburgh, a person who could have given me material
information, declined seeing me, though he really wished well to the cause.
When I had returned southward as far as York, he changed his mind; and he
would then see me. I went back, that I might not lose him. When I arrived,
he would give me only private information. Thus I travelled, backwards and
forwards, four hundred miles to no purpose. At another place a circumstance
almost similar happened, though with a different issue. I had been for two
years writing about a person, whose testimony was important. I had passed
once through the town, in which he lived; but he would not then see me. I
passed through it now, but no entreaties of his friends could make him
alter his resolution. He was a man highly respectable as to situation in
life; but of considerable vanity. I said therefore to my friend, on leaving
the town, You may tell him that I expect to be at Nottingham in a few days;
and though it be a hundred and fifty miles distant, I will even come back
to see him, if he will dine with me on my return. 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