which should run
into it and feed it. So I presume the reader will not be a little
interested and entertained in viewing with me the course of the abolition
of the Slave-trade, in first finding its source, and then in tracing the
different springs which have contributed to its increase. And here I may
observe that, in doing this, we shall have advantages, which historians
have not always had in developing the causes of things. Many have handed
down to us events, for the production of which they have given us but their
own conjectures. There has been often indeed such a distance between the
events themselves and the lives of those who have recorded them, that the
different means and motives belonging to them have been lost through time.
On the present occasion, however, we shall have the peculiar satisfaction
of knowing that we communicate the truth, or that those, which we unfold,
are the true causes and means. For the most remote of all the human
springs, which can be traced as having any bearing upon the great event in
question, will fall within the period of three centuries, and the most
powerful of them within the last twenty years. These circumstances indeed
have had their share in inducing me to engage in the present history. Had I
measured it by the importance of the subject, I had been deterred: but
believing that most readers love the truth, and that it ought to be the
object of all writers to promote it, and believing moreover, that I was in
possession of more facts on this subject than any other person, I thought I
was peculiarly called upon to undertake it.

In tracing the different streams from whence the torrent arose, which has
now happily swept away the Slave-trade, I must begin with an inquiry as to
those who favoured the cause of the injured Africans from the year 1516 to
the year 1787, at which latter period a number of persons associated
themselves in England for its abolition. For though they, who belonged to
this association, may, in consequence of having pursued a regular system,
be called the principal actors, yet it must be acknowledged that their
efforts would never have been so effectual, if the minds of men had not
been prepared by others, who had moved before them. Great events have never
taken place without previously disposing causes. So it is in the case
before us. Hence they, who lived even in early times, and favoured this
great cause, may be said to have been necessary precursors in it.