of our cause. These scenes of our early friendship and
exertions I shall never forget. I often think of them both with
astonishment and with pleasure. Having recruited ourselves in this manner,
we used to return to our work. From these muster-rolls I may now observe,
that we gained the most important information. We ascertained beyond the
power of contradiction, that more than half of the seamen, who went out
with the ships in the Slave-trade, did not return with them, and that of
these so many perished, as amounted to one-fifth of all employed. As to
what became of the remainder, the muster-rolls did not inform us. This,
therefore, was left to us as a subject for our future inquiry.

In endeavouring to enlarge my knowledge, my thoughts were frequently turned
to the West Indian part of the question, and in this department my friend
Richard Phillips gained me important intelligence. He put into my hands
several documents concerning estates in the West Indies, which he had
mostly from the proprietors themselves, where the slaves by mild and
prudent usage had so increased in population, as to supersede the necessity
of the Slave-trade.

By attending to these and to various other parts of the subject, I began to
see as it were with new eyes: I was enabled to make several necessary
discriminations, to reconcile things before seemingly contradictory, and to
answer many objections which had hitherto put on a formidable shape. But
most of all was I rejoiced at the thought that I should soon be able to
prove that which I had never doubted, but which had hitherto been beyond my
power in this case, that Providence, in ordaining laws relative to the
agency of man, had never made that to be wise which was immoral, and that
the Slave-trade would be found as impolitic as it was inhuman and unjust.

In keeping up my visits to members of parliament, I was particularly
attentive to Mr. Wilberforce, whom I found daily becoming more interested
in the fate of Africa. I now made to him a regular report of my progress,
of the sentiments of those in parliament whom I had visited, of the
disposition of my friends in the City of whom he had often heard me speak,
of my discoveries from the Custom-houses of London and Liverpool, of my
documents concerning West India estates, and of all, indeed, that had
occurred to me worth mentioning. He had himself also been making his
inquiries, which he communicated to me in return. Our intercourse had now
b