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Clarkson, Thomas, 1760-1846

"The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839)"

The work was called _An Essay on the Comparative Efficiency of
Regulation or Abolition as applied to the Slave Trade_.
The committee, also, in this interval, brought out their famous print of
the plan and section of a slave-ship, which was designed to give the
spectator an idea of the sufferings of the Africans in the Middle
Passage, and this so familiarly, that he might instantly pronounce upon
the miseries experienced there. The committee at Plymouth had been the
first to suggest the idea; but that in London had now improved it. As
this print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all
who saw it, and as it was therefore very instrumental, in consequence of
the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured
Africans, I have given the reader a copy of it in the annexed plate, and
I will now state the ground or basis upon which it was formed.
It must be obvious that it became the committee to select some one ship,
which had been engaged in the Slave Trade, with her real dimensions, if
they meant to make a fair representation of the manner of the
transportation. When Captain Parrey, of the royal navy, returned from
Liverpool, to which place Government had sent him, he brought with him
the admeasurement of several vessels which had been so employed, and
laid them on the table of the House of Commons.


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