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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)"

A letter from my friend announced to me,
when at Nottingham, that his vanity had been so gratified by the thought
of a person coming expressly to visit him from such a distance, that he
would meet me according to my appointment; I went back; we dined
together; he yielded to my request; I was now repaid, and I returned
towards Nottingham in the night. These circumstances I mention, and I
feel it right to mention them, that the reader may be properly impressed
with the great difficulties we found in collecting a body of evidence in
comparison with our opponents. They ought never to be forgotten; for if
with the testimony, picked up as it were under all these disadvantages,
we carried our object against those who had almost numberless witnesses
to command, what must have been the merits of our cause! No person can
indeed judge of the severe labour and trials in these journeys. In the
present, I was out four months; I was almost over the whole island; I
intersected it backwards and forwards both in the night and in the day;
I travelled nearly seven thousand miles in this time, and I was able to
count upon twenty new and willing evidences.
Having now accomplished my object, Mr.


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