Commons; amended, and
passed there, and sent back to the Lords; receives the royal
assent.--Reflections on this great event

Map

Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship

* * * * *

PREFATORY REMARKS

TO

THE PRESENT EDITION.

* * * * *

The invaluable services rendered by Thomas Clarkson to the great
question of the Slave Trade in all its branches, have been universally
acknowledged both at home and abroad, and have gained him a high place
among the greatest benefactors of mankind. The History of the Abolition
which this volume contains, affords some means of appreciating the
extent of his sacrifices and his labours in this cause. But after these,
with the unwearied exertions of William Wilberforce, had conducted its
friends to their final triumph, in 1807, they did not then rest from
their labours. There remained four most important objects, to which the
anxious attention of all Abolitionists was now directed.

_First_,--The law had been passed, forced upon the Planters, the
Traders, and the Parliament, by the voice of the people; and there was a
necessity for keeping a watchful eye over its execution.

_Secondly_,--The statute, however rigorously it might be enforced, left,
of course, the whole amount of the Foreign Slave traffic untouched, and
it was infinitely to be desired that means should be adopted for
extending our Abolition to other nations.

_Thirdly_,--Some compensation was due to Africa, for the countless
miseries which our criminal conduct had for ages inflicted upon her, and
strict justice, to say nothing of common humanity and Christian charity,
demanded that every means should be used for aiding in the progress of
her civilization, and effacing as far as possible the dreadful marks
which had been left upon her by our crimes.

_Lastly,_--Many of those whom we had transported by fraud and violence
from their native country, and still more of the descendants of others
who had fallen a sacrifice to our cruelties, and perished in the course
of nature, slaves in a foreign land, remained to suffer the dreadful
evils of West India bondage. It seemed to follow, that the earliest
opportunity consistent with their own condition, should be taken to free
those unhappy beings, the victims of our sordid cruelty; and all the
more to be pitied, as we were all the more to be blamed, because one
result of our transgressio