good men, until he gained a noble band of patriots and
Christians, with Wilberforce at their head.

The following extract from a memoir of Clarkson discloses the manner and
spirit in which he commenced his enterprise, and toiled through to its
accomplishment.

"In 1785 Dr. Peckhard, Vice-Chancellor of the University, deeply
impressed with the iniquity of the slave-trade, announced as a subject
for a Latin Dissertation to the Senior Bachelors of Arts: '_Anne liceat
invitos in servitutem dare?_' 'Is it right to make slaves of others
against their will?' However benevolent the feelings of the
Vice-Chancellor, and however strong and clear the opinions he held on
the inhuman traffic, it is probable that he little thought that this
discussion would secure for the object so dear to his own heart, efforts
and advocacy equally enlightened and efficient, that should be
continued, until his country had declared, not that the slave-trade
only, but that slavery itself should cease.

"Mr. Clarkson, having in the preceding year gained the first prize for
the Latin Dissertation, was naturally anxious to maintain his honourable
position; and no efforts were spared, during the few intervening weeks,
in collecting information and evidence. Important facts were gained from
Anthony Benezet's Historical Account of Guinea, which Mr. Clarkson
hastened to London to purchase. Furnished with these and other valuable
information, he commenced his difficult task. How it was accomplished,
he thus informs us.

"'No person,' he states,[1] 'can tell the severe trial which the writing
of it proved to me. I had expected pleasure from the invention of the
arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them
together, and from the thought, in the interim, that I was engaged in an
innocent contest for literary honour. But all my pleasure was damped by
the facts which were now continually before me. It was but one gloomy
subject from morning to night. In the day-time I was uneasy; in the
night I had little rest. I sometimes never closed my eyelids for grief.
It became now not so much a trial for academical reputation, as for the
production of a work which might be useful to injured Africa. And
keeping this idea in my mind ever after the perusal of Benezet, I always
slept with a candle in my room, that I might rise out of bed, and put
down such thoughts as might occur to me in the night, if I judged them
valuable, conceiving that no argument