All
these usages I ascertained in such a manner, that no person could doubt
the truth of them. I actually obtained possession of articles of
agreement belonging to these vessels, which had been signed and executed
in former voyages. I made the merchants themselves, by sending those
seamen who had claims upon them to ask for their accounts current with
their respective ships, furnish me with such documents as would have
been evidence against them in any court of law. On whatever branch of
the system I turned my eyes, I found it equally barbarous. The trade
was, in short, one mass of iniquity from the beginning to the end.
I employed myself occasionally in the Merchant's-hall, in making copies
of the muster-rolls of ships sailing to different parts of the world,
that I might make a comparative view of the loss of seamen in the Slave
Trade, with that of those in the other trades from the same port. The
result of this employment showed me the importance of it: for, when I
considered how partial the inhabitants of this country were to their
fellow-citizens, the seamen belonging to it, and in what estimation the
members of the legislature held them, by enforcing the Navigation Act,
which they considered to be the bulwark of the nation, and by giving
bounties to certain trades, that these might become so many nurseries
for the marine, I thought it of great importance, to be able to prove,
as I was then capable of doing, that more persons would be found dead in
three slave-vessels from Bristol, in a given time, than in all the other
vessels put together, numerous as they were, belonging to the same port.
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