ence, we
have no reason to conclude from any facts they have left us, that persons
in their days did any thing more than occasionally relieve an unfortunate
object, who might present himself before them, or that, however they might
deplore the existence of public evils among them, they joined in
associations for their suppression, or that they carried their charity, as
bodies of men, into other kingdoms. To Christianity alone we are indebted
for the new and sublime spectacle of seeing men going beyond the bounds of
individual usefulness to each other--of seeing them associate for the
extirpation of private and public misery--and of seeing them carry their
charity, as a united brotherhood, into distant lands. And in this wider
field of benevolence it would be unjust not to confess, that no country has
shone with more true lustre than our own, there being scarcely any case of
acknowledged affliction for which some of her Christian children have not
united in an attempt to provide relief.

Among the evils, corrected or subdued, either by the general influence of
Christianity on the minds of men, or by particular associations of
Christians, the African[A] Slave-trade appears to me to have occupied the
foremost place. The abolition of it, therefore, of which it has devolved
upon me to write the history, should be accounted as one of the greatest
blessings, and, as such, should be one of the most copious sources of our
joy. Indeed I know of no evil, the removal of which should excite in us a
higher degree of pleasure. For in considerations of this kind, are we not
usually influenced by circumstances? Are not our feelings usually affected
according to the situation, or the magnitude, or the importance of these?
Are they not more or less elevated as the evil under our contemplation has
been more or less productive of misery, or more or less productive of
guilt? Are they not more or less elevated, again, as we have found it more
or less considerable in extent? Our sensations will undoubtedly be in
proportion to such circumstances, or our joy to the appretiation or
mensuration of the evil which has been removed.

[Footnote A: Slavery had been before annihilated by Christianity, I mean in
the West of Europe, at the close of the twelfth century.]

To value the blessing of the abolition as we ought, or to appretiate the
joy and gratitude which we ought to feel concerning it, we must enter a
little into the circumstances of the trad