tend to all the
evidence which was presented to us by our correspondents, but to find
out and select the best. The happiness of millions depended upon it.
Hence I was often obliged to travel during these examinations, in order
to converse with those who had been pointed out to us as capable of
giving their testimony; and, that no time might be lost, to do this in
the night. More than two hundred miles in a week were sometimes passed
over on these occasions.

The disappointments too, which I frequently experienced in journeys,
increased the poignancy of the, suffering, which arose from a
contemplation of the melancholy cases which I had thus travelled to
bring forward to the public view. The reader at present can have no idea
of these. I have been sixty miles to visit a person, of whom I had
heard, not only as possessing important knowledge, but as espousing our
opinions on this subject. I have at length seen him. He has applauded my
pursuit at our first interview. He has told me, in the course of our
conversation, that neither my own pen, nor that of any other man, could
describe adequately the horrors, of the Slave Trade, horrors which he
himself had witnessed. He has exhorted me to perseverance in this noble
cause. Could I have wished for a more favourable reception!--But mark
the issue. He was the nearest relation of a rich person concerned in the
traffic; and if he were to come forward with his evidence publicly, he
should ruin all his expectations from that Quarter. In the same week I
have visited another at a still greater distance. I have met with
similar applause. I have heard him describe scenes of misery which he
had witnessed, and on the relation of which he himself almost wept. But
mark the issue again.--"I am a surgeon," says he; "through that window
you see a spacious house; it is occupied by a West Indian. The medical
attendance upon his family is of considerable importance to the temporal
interests of mine. If I give you my evidence I lose his patronage. At
the house above him lives a East Indian. The two families are connected:
I fear, if I lose the support of one, I shall lose that of the other
also: but I will give you privately all the intelligence in my power."

The reader may now conceive the many miserable hours I must have spent,
after such visits, in returning home; and how grievously my heart must
have been afflicted by these cruel disappointments, but more
particularly where they arose from c