ing at home." To give this news still greater effect, a
meeting of our opponents was held at the London Tavern. By a letter read
there it appeared, that "the ruin of Dominica was now at hand." Resolutions
were voted, and a memorial presented to government, "immediately to
dispatch such a military force to the different islands, as might preserve
the Whites from destruction, and keep the Negros in subjection during the
present critical state of the slave-bill." This alarm was kept up till the
seventh of April, when another meeting took place to receive the answer of
government to the memorial. It was there resolved, that "as it was too late
to send troops to the islands, the best way of preserving them would be to
bring the question of the Slave-trade to an immediate issue; and that it
was the duty of the government, if they regarded the safety of the islands,
to oppose the abolition of it." Accounts of all these proceedings were
inserted in the public papers. It is needless to say that they were
injurious to our cause. Many looked upon the abolitionists as monsters.
They became also terrified themselves. The idea with these was, that unless
the discussion on this subject was terminated, all would be lost. Thus,
under a combination of effects arising from the publication of the Rights
of Man, the rise and progress of the French revolution, and the
insurrections of the Negros in the different islands, no one of which
events had any thing to do with the abolition of the Slave-trade, the
current was turned against us; and in this unfavourable frame of mind many
members of parliament went into the House, on the day fixed for the
discussion, to discharge their duty with respect to this great question.

On the eighteenth of April Mr. Wilberforce made his motion. He began by
expressing a hope, that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity
and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction of the
truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the
Slave-trade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and
religion, but by sound policy. He stated that he should argue the matter
from evidence. He adverted to the character, situation, and means of
information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into
parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of
Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner.

He would begin, h