Crafton, of Tewksbury,
and called _A Sketch of the Evidence, with a Recommendation on the
Subject to the serious Attention of People in general_, made its
appearance; and another followed it, written by William Fox, of London,
_On the Propriety of abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum_. These
pamphlets took the same ground. They inculcated abstinence from these
articles as a moral duty; they inculcated it as a peaceable and
constitutional measure; and they laid before the reader a truth which
was sufficiently obvious, that, if each would abstain, the people would
have a complete remedy for this enormous evil in their own power.

While these things were going on, it devolved upon me to arrange all the
evidence on the part of the abolition under proper heads, and to abridge
it into one volume. It was intended that a copy of this should be sent
into different towns of the kingdom, that all might know, if possible,
the horrors (as far as the evidence contained them) of this execrable
trade; and as it was possible that these copies might lie in the places
where they were sent, without a due attention to their contents, I
resolved, with the approbation of the committee, to take a journey, and
for no other purpose than personally to recommend that they might be
read.

The books, having been printed, were despatched before me. Of this tour
I shall give the reader no other account than that of the progress of
the remedy, which the people were then taking into their own hands. And
first I may observe, that there was no town, through which I passed, in
which there was not some one individual who had left off the use of
sugar. In the smaller towns there were from ten to fifty by estimation,
and in the larger from two to five hundred, who made this sacrifice to
virtue. These were of all ranks and parties. Rich and poor, churchmen
and dissenters, had adopted the measure. Even grocers had left off
trading in the article, in some places. In gentlemen's families, where
the master had set the example, the servants had often voluntarily
followed it; and even children, who were capable of understanding the
history of the sufferings of the Africans, excluded, with the most
virtuous resolution, the sweets, to which they had been accustomed, from
their lips. By the best computation I was able to make from notes taken
down in my journey, no fewer than three hundred thousand persons had
abandoned the use of sugar.

Having travelled over