The question was then put on the resolution, and carried by a majority of forty-one to twenty.  The same address also to His Majesty, which had been agreed upon by the Commons, was directly afterwards moved.  This also was carried, but without the necessity of a division.

The resolution and the motion having passed both Houses, one other parliamentary measure was yet necessary to complete the proceedings of this session.  It was now almost universally believed, in consequence of what had already taken place there, that the Slave Trade had received its death-wound; and that it would not long survive it.  It was supposed, therefore, that the slave-merchants would, in the interim, fit out not only all the vessels they had, but even buy others, to make what might be called their last harvest.  Hence, extraordinary scenes of rapine and murder would be occasioned in Africa.  To prevent these, a new bill was necessary.  This was accordingly introduced into the Commons.  It enacted, but with one exception, that from and after the first of August, 1806, no vessel should clear out for the Slave Trade, unless it should have been previously employed by the same owner or owners in the said trade, or should be proved to have been contracted for previously to the 10th of June, 1806, for the purpose of being employed in that trade.  It may now be sufficient to say that this bill also passed both Houses of Parliament; soon after which the session ended.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

[Sidenote:—­Continuation from July 1806, to March 1807.—­Death of Mr. Fox.—­Bill for the total abolition of the Slave Trade carried in the House of Lords; sent from thence to the Commons; amended and passed there; carried back, and passed with its amendments by the Lords; receives the royal assent.—­Reflections on this great event.]

It was impossible for the committee to look back to the proceedings of the last session, as they related to the great question under their care, without feeling a profusion of joy, as well as of gratitude to those, by whose virtuous endeavours they had taken place.  But, alas, how few of our earthly pleasures come to us without alloy! a melancholy event succeeded.  We had the painful intelligence, in the month of October 1806, that one of the oldest and warmest friends of the cause was then numbered with the dead.

Of the character of Mr. Fox, as it related to this cause, I am bound to take notice.  And, first, I may observe, that he professed an attachment to it almost as soon as it was ushered into the world.  Early in the year 1788, when he was waited upon by a deputation of the committee, his language was, as has appeared in the first volume, “that he would support their object to its fullest extent, being convinced that there was no remedy for the evil but in the total abolition of the trade.”