d more than they had money to pay for; and to these,
when they had thus exceeded, but one alternative was given, namely, a
slave-vessel, or a gaol. These distressing scenes I found myself obliged
frequently to witness, for I was no less than nineteen times occupied in
making these hateful rounds. And I can say from my own experience, and all
the information I could collect from Thompson and others, that no such
practices were in use to obtain seamen for other trades.

The treatment of the seamen employed in the Slave-trade had so deeply
interested me, and now the manner of procuring them, that I was determined
to make myself acquainted with their whole history; for I found by report,
that they were not only personally ill-treated, as I have already painfully
described, but that they were robbed by artifice of those wages, which had
been held up to them as so superior in this service. All persons were
obliged to sign articles, that, in case they should die or be discharged
during the voyage, the wages then due to them should be paid in the
currency where the vessel carried her slaves, and that half of the wages
due to them on their arrival there should be paid in the same manner, and
that they were never permitted to read over the articles they had signed.
By means of this iniquitous practice the wages in the Slave-trade, though
nominally higher in order to induce seamen to engage in it, were actually
lower than in other trades. All these usages I ascertained in such a
manner, that no person could doubt the truth of them. I actually obtained
possession of articles of agreement belonging to these vessels, which had
been signed and executed in former voyages. I made the merchants
themselves, by sending those seamen, who had claims upon them, to ask for
their accounts current with their respective ships, furnish me with such
documents as would have been evidence against them in any court of law. On
whatever branch of the system I turned my eyes, I found it equally
barbarous. The trade was, in short, one mass of iniquity from the beginning
to the end.

I employed myself occasionally in the Merchants-hall, in making copies of
the muster-rolls of ships sailing to different parts of the world, that I
might make a comparative view of the loss of seamen in the Slave-trade,
with that of those in the other trades from the same port. The result of
this employment showed me the importance of it: for, when I considered how
partial the