The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839)Clarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839)
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
Labours of the committee during the author's journey; Quakers the
first to notice its institution; General Baptists the
next.--Correspondence opened with American societies for
Abolition.--First individual who addressed the committee was Mr.
William Smith.--Thanks voted to Ramsay.--Committee prepares lists of
persons to whom to send its publications; Barclay, Taylor, and
Wedgewood, elected members of the committee.--Letters from Brissot and
others.--Granville Sharp elected chairman,--Seal ordered to be
engraved.--Letters from different correspondents, as they offered
their services to the committee.
The committee, during my absence, had attended regularly at their posts;
they had been both vigilant and industrious; they were, in short, the
persons who had been the means of raising the public spirit which I had
observed first at Manchester, and afterwards as I journeyed on. It will
be proper, therefore, that I should now say something of their labours,
and of the fruits of them: and if, in doing this, I should be more
minute for a few pages than some would wish, I must apologize for myself
by saying, that there are others who would be sorry to lose the
knowledge of the particular manner in which the foundation was laid, and
the superstructure advanced, of a work which will make so brilliant an
appearance in our history, as that of the abolition of the Slave Trade.
The committee having dispersed five hundred circular letters, giving an
account of their institution in London and its neighbourhood, the
Quakers were the first to notice it. This they did in their yearly
epistle, of which the following is an extract:--"We have also thankfully
to believe there is a growing attention in many, not of our religious
society, to the subject of negro slavery; and that the minds of the
people are more and more enlarged to consider it as an aggregate of
every species of evil, and to see the utter inconsistency of upholding
it by the authority of any nation whatever, especially of such as
punish, with loss of life, crimes whose magnitude bears scarce any
proportion to this complicated iniquity."
The General Baptists were the next; for on the 22nd of June, Stephen
Lowdell and Dan Taylor attended as a deputation from the annual meeting
of that religious body, to inform the committee, that those whom they
represented approved their proceedings, and that they would countenance
the object of their institution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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