oreseen, on the twenty-second of May 1787; and that, after
having voted the Slave-trade to be both unjust and impolitic, they formed
themselves into a commitee for procuring such information and evidence, and
for publishing the same, as might tend to the abolition of it, and for
directing the application of such money, as had been already and might
hereafter be collected for that purpose. At this meeting it was resolved
also, that no less than three members should form a quorum; that Samuel
Hoare should be the treasurer; that the treasurer should pay no money but
by order of the commitee; and that copies of these resolutions should be
printed and circulated, in which it should be inserted that the
subscriptions of all such, as were willing to forward the plans of the
commitee, should be received by the treasurer or any member of it.

On the twenty-fourth of May the commitee met again to promote the object of
its institution.

The treasurer reported at this meeting, that the subscriptions already
received, amounted to one hundred and thirty-six pounds.

As I had foreseen, long before this time, that my Essay on the Slavery and
Commerce of the Human Species was too large for general circulation, and
yet that a general circulation of knowledge on this subject was absolutely
necessary, I determined, directly after the formation of the commitee, to
write a short pamphlet consisting only of eight or ten pages for this
purpose. I called it A Summary View of the Slave-trade, and of the probable
Consequences of its Abolition. It began by exhibiting to the reader the
various unjustifiable ways in which persons living on the coast of Africa
became slaves. It then explained the treatment which these experienced on
their passage, the number dying in the course of it, and the treatment of
the survivors in the colonies of those nations to which they were carried.
It then announced the speedy publication of a work on the Impolicy of the
Trade, the contents of which, as far as I could then see, I gave generally
under the following heads:--Part the first, it was said, would show, that
Africa was capable of offering to us a trade in its own natural productions
as well as in the persons of men; that the trade in the persons of men was
profitable but to a few; that its value was diminished from many commercial
considerations; that it was also highly destructive to our seamen; and that
the branch of it, by which we supplied the island of St.