t
mentioned, in 1784. An Enquiry, also, into the Effects of the Abolition of
the Slave-trade, in 1784. A Reply to personal Invectives and Objections, in
1785. A Letter to James Tobin, Esq., in 1787. Objections to the Abolition
of the Slave-trade, with Answers: and an Examination of Harris's Scriptural
Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade, in 1788;--and An Address on
the proposed Bill for the Abolition of the Slave-trade, in 1789. In short,
from the time when he first took up the cause, he was engaged in it till
his death, which was not a little accelerated by his exertions. He lived
however to see this cause in a train for parliamentary inquiry, and he died
satisfied, being convinced, as he often expressed, that the investigation
must inevitably lead to the total abolition of the Slave-trade.

In the next year, that is, in the year 1785, another advocate was seen in
monsieur Necker, in his celebrated work on the French Finances, which had
just been translated into the English language from the original work, in
1784. This virtuous statesman, after having given his estimate of the
population and revenue of the French West Indian colonies, proceeds thus:
"The colonies of France contain, as we have seen, near five hundred
thousand slaves, and it is from the number of these poor wretches that the
inhabitants set a value on their plantations. What a dreadful prospect! and
how profound a subject for reflection! Alas! how little are we both in our
morality and our principles! We preach up humanity, and yet go every year
to bind in chains twenty thousand natives of Africa! We call the Moors
barbarians and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at
the risk of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere
speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their masters,
and excite all those bloody scenes, which are the usual preliminaries of
this traffic!" He goes on still further in the same strain. He then shows
the kind of power, which has supported this execrable trade. He throws out
the idea of a general compact, by which all the European nations should
agree to abolish it. And he indulges the pleasing hope, that it may take
place even in the present generation.

In the same year we find other coadjutors coming before our view, but these
in a line different from that, in which any other belonging to this class
had yet moved. Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established