ear in the West Indies, and twenty-five in
America.

William Beverley, esquire, eighteen years in America.

John Clapham, esquire, twenty years in America.

Robert Crew, esquire, a native of America, and long resident there.

John Savage, esquire, forty-six years resident in America.

The evidence having been delivered on both sides, and then printed, it was
judged expedient by Mr. Wilberforce, seeing that it filled three folio
volumes, to abridge it. This abridgement was made by the different friends
of the cause. William Burgh, esquire, of York; Thomas Babington, esquire,
of Rothley Temple; the Reverend Thomas Gisborne, of Yoxall Lodge; Mr.
Campbell Haliburton, of Edinburgh; George Harrison, with one or two others
of the committee, and myself, were employed upon it. The greater share,
however, of the labour fell upon Dr. Dickson. That no misrepresentation of
any person's testimony might be made, Matthew Montagu, esquire, and the
honourable E.J. Eliott, members of parliament, undertook to compare the
abridged manuscripts with the original text, and to strike out or correct
whatever they thought to be erroneous, and to insert whatever they thought
to have been omitted. The committee, for the abolition, when the work was
finished, printed it at their own expense. Mr. Wilberforce then presented
it to the House of Commons, as a faithful abridgement of the whole
evidence. Having been received as such under the guarantee of Mr. Montagu
and Mr. Eliott, the committee sent it to every individual member of that
House.

The book having been thus presented, and a day fixed for the final
determination of the question, our feelings became almost insupportable:
for we had the mortification to find, that our cause was going down in
estimation, where it was then most important that it should have increased
in favour. Our opponents had taken advantage of the long delay, which the
examination of evidence had occasioned, to prejudice the minds of many of
the members of the House of Commons against us. The old arguments of
emancipation, massacre, ruin, and indemnification, had been kept up; but,
as the day of final decision approached, they had been increased. Such was
our situation at this moment; when the current was turned still more
powerfully against us by the peculiar circumstances of the times. It was
indeed the misfortune of this great cause to be assailed by every weapon,
which could be turned against it. At this ti