waited patiently till his evidence was nearly closed, but he had then
made no unfavourable statements to the house. I desired, therefore, that
a question might be put to him, and in such a manner, that he might know
that they, who put it, had got a clue to his secrets. He became
immediately embarrassed; his voice faltered; he confessed with trembling
that he had lost a third of his sailors in his last voyage. Pressed hard
immediately by other questions, he then acknowledged that he had lost
one hundred and twenty, or a third of his slaves, also. But would he say
that these were all he had lost in that voyage? No; twelve others had
perished by an accident, for they were drowned. But were no others lost
beside the one hundred and twenty and the twelve? None, he said, upon
the voyage, but between twenty and thirty before he left the Coast. Thus
this champion of the merchants, this advocate for the health and
happiness of slaves in the middle passage, lost nearly a hundred and
sixty of the unhappy persons committed to his superior care, in a single
voyage!

The evidence, on which I have now commented, having been delivered, the
counsel summed up on the 17th of June, when the committee proceeded to
fill up the blanks in the bill. Mr. Pitt moved that the operation of it
be retrospective, and that it commence from the 10th instant. This was
violently opposed by Lord Penrhyn, Mr. Gascoyne, and Mr. Brickdale, but
was at length acceded to.

Sir William Dolben then proposed to apportion five men to every three
tons in every ship under one hundred and fifty tons burden, which had
the space of five feet between the decks, and three men to two tons in
every vessel beyond one hundred and fifty tons burden, which had equal
accommodation in point of height between the decks. This occasioned a
very warm dispute, which was not settled for some time, and which gave
rise to some beautiful and interesting speeches on the subject.

Mr. William Smith pointed out in the clearest manner many of the
contradictions, which I have just stated in commenting upon the
evidence; indeed he had been a principal means of detecting them. He
proved how little worthy of belief the witnesses had shown themselves,
and how necessary they had made the present bill by their own
confession. The worthy baronet, indeed, had been too indulgent to the
merchants, in the proportion he had fixed of the number of persons to be
carried to the tonnage of their vessels. He