The defeat which we had just sustained, was a matter of great triumph to our opponents.  When they considered the majority in the House of Commons in their favour, they viewed the resolutions of the committee, which have been detailed, as the last spiteful effort of a vanquished and dying animal, and they supposed that they had consigned the question to eternal sleep.  The committee, however, were too deeply attached to the cause, vanquished as they were, to desert it; and they knew, also, too well the barometer of public feeling, and the occasion of its fluctuations, to despair.  In the year 1787, the members of the House of Commons, as well as the people, were enthusiastic in behalf of the abolition of the trade.  In the year 1788, the fair enthusiasm of the former began to fade.  In 1789, it died.  In 1790, prejudice started up as a noxious weed in its place.  In 1791, this prejudice arrived at its growth.  But to what were these changes owing?  To delay; during which the mind, having been gradually led to the question as a commercial, had been gradually taken from it as a moral object.  But it was possible to restore the mind to its proper place.  Add to which, that the nation had never deserted the cause during this whole period.

It is much to the honour of the English people, that they should have continued to feel for the existence of an evil which was so far removed from their sight.  But at this moment their feelings began to be insupportable.  Many of them resolved, as soon as parliament had rejected the bill, to abstain from the use of West Indian produce.  In this state of things, a pamphlet, written by William Bell Crafton, of Tewksbury, and called A Sketch of the Evidence, with a Recommendation on the Subject to the serious Attention of People in general, made its appearance; and another followed it, written by William Fox, of London, On the Propriety of abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum.  These pamphlets took the same ground.  They inculcated abstinence from these articles as a moral duty; they inculcated it as a peaceable and constitutional measure; and they laid before the reader a truth which was sufficiently obvious, that, if each would abstain, the people would have a complete remedy for this enormous evil in their own power.

While these things were going on, it devolved upon me to arrange all the evidence on the part of the abolition under proper heads, and to abridge it into one volume.  It was intended that a copy of this should be sent into different towns of the kingdom, that all might know, if possible, the horrors (as far as the evidence contained them) of this execrable trade; and as it was possible that these copies might lie in the places where they were sent, without a due attention to their contents, I resolved, with the approbation of the committee, to take a journey, and for no other purpose than personally to recommend that they might be read.