Having had reason to believe that the Slave-trade was peculiarly fatal to those employed in it, I wished much to get copies of many of the muster-rolls from the Custom-house at Liverpool for a given time. James Phillips wrote to his friend William Rathbone, who was one of his own religious society, and who resided there, to procure them. They were accordingly sent up. The examination of these, which took place at the chambers of Richard Phillips, was long and tedious. We looked over them together. We usually met for this purpose at nine in the evening, and we seldom parted till one, and sometimes not till three in the morning. When our eyes were inflamed by the candle, or tired by fatigue, we used to relieve ourselves by walking out within the precincts of Lincoln's Inn, when all seemed to be fast asleep, and thus, as it were, in solitude and in stillness to converse upon them, as well as upon the best means of the further promotion of our cause. These scenes of our early friendship and exertions I shall never forget. I often think of them both with astonishment and with pleasure. Having recruited ourselves in this manner, we used to return to our work. From these muster-rolls I may now observe, that we gained the most important information. We ascertained beyond the power of contradiction, that more than half of the seamen, who went out with the ships in the Slave-trade, did not return with them, and that of these so many perished, as amounted to one-fifth of all employed. As to what became of the remainder, the muster-rolls did not inform us. This, therefore, was left to us as a subject for our future inquiry. In endeavouring to enlarge my knowledge, my thoughts were frequently turned to the West Indian part of the question, and in this department my friend Richard Phillips gained me important intelligence. He put into my hands several documents concerning estates in the West Indies, which he had mostly from the proprietors themselves, where the slaves by mild and prudent usage had so increased in population, as to supersede the necessity of the Slave-trade. By attending to these and to various other parts of the subject, I began to see as it were with new eyes: I was enabled to make several necessary discriminations, to reconcile things before seemingly contradictory, and to answer many objections which had hitherto put on a formidable shape. But most of all was I rejoiced at the thought that I should soon be able to prove that which I had never doubted, but which had hitherto been beyond my power in this case, that Providence, in ordaining laws relative to the agency of man, had never made that to be wise which was immoral, and that the Slave-trade would be found as impolitic as it was inhuman and unjust.