k the issue. He was the nearest relation of a rich
person concerned in the traffic; and if he were to come forward with his
evidence publicly, he should ruin all his expectations from that quarter.
In the same week I have visited another at a still greater distance. I have
met with similar applause. I have heard him describe scenes of misery which
he had witnessed, and on the relation of which he himself almost wept. But
mark the issue again.--"I am a surgeon," says he: "through that window you
see a spacious house. It is occupied by a West Indian. The medical
attendance upon his family is of considerable importance to the temporal
interests of mine. If I give you my evidence I lose his patronage. At the
house above him lives an East Indian. The two families are connected: I
fear, if I lose the support of one, I shall lose that of the other also:
but I will give you privately all the intelligence in my power."

The reader may now conceive the many miserable hours I must have spent,
after such visits, in returning home; and how grievously my heart must have
been afflicted by these cruel disappointments, but more particularly where
they arose from causes inferior to those which have been now mentioned, or
from little frivolous excuses, or idle and unfounded conjectures, unworthy
of beings expected to fill a moral station in life. Yes, O man! often in
these solitary journeyings have I exclaimed against the baseness of thy
nature, when reflecting on the little paltry considerations which have
smothered thy benevolence, and hindered thee from succouring an oppressed
brother. And yet, on a further view of things, I have reasoned myself into
a kinder feeling towards thee. For I have been obliged to consider
ultimately, that there were both lights and shades in the human character;
and that, if the bad part of our nature was visible on these occasions, the
nobler part of it ought not to be forgotten. While I passed a censure upon
those, who were backward in serving this great cause of humanity and
justice, how many did I know, who were toiling in the support of it! I drew
also this consolation from my reflections, that I had done my duty; that I
had left nothing untried or undone; that amidst all these disappointments I
had collected information, which might be useful at a future time; and that
such disappointments were almost inseparable from the prosecution of a
cause of such magnitude, and where the interests of so many were co