The first of these was Dr. Peckard.  This gentleman had distinguished himself in the earlier part of his life by certain publications on the intermediate state of the soul, and by others in favour of civil and religious liberty.  To the latter cause he was a warm friend, seldom omitting any opportunity of declaring his sentiments in its favour.  In the course of his preferment he was appointed by Sir John Griffin, afterwards Lord Howard of Walden, to the mastership of Magdalen College in the University of Cambridge.  In this high office he considered it to be his duty to support those doctrines which he had espoused when in an inferior station; and accordingly, when in the year 1784 it devolved upon him to preach a sermon, before the University of Cambridge, he chose his favourite subject:  in the handling of which he took an opportunity of speaking of the Slave Trade in the following nervous manner:—­

“Now, whether we consider the crime with respect to the individuals concerned in this most barbarous and cruel traffic, or whether we consider it as patronized and encouraged by the laws of the land, it presents to our view an equal degree of enormity.  A crime, founded on a dreadful pre-eminence in wickedness—­a crime, which being both of individuals and the nation, must sometime draw down upon us the heaviest judgment of Almighty God, who made of one blood all the sons of men, and who gave to all equally a natural right to liberty; and who, ruling all the kingdoms of the earth with equal providential justice, cannot suffer such deliberate, such monstrous iniquity, to pass long unpunished.”

But Dr. Peckard did not consider this delivery of his testimony, though it was given before a learned and religious body, as a sufficient discharge of his duty, while any opportunity remained of renewing it with effect.  And, as such an one offered in the year 1785, when he was vice-chancellor of the University, he embraced it.  In consequence of his office, it devolved upon him to give out two subjects for Latin dissertations, one to the middle bachelors, and the other to the senior bachelors of arts.  They who produced the best were to obtain the prizes.  To the latter he proposed the following:  Anne liceat Invitos in Servitutem dare? or, Is it right to make slaves of others against their will?

This circumstance of giving out subjects for the prizes, though only an ordinary measure, became the occasion of my own labours, or of the real honour which I feel in being able to consider myself as the next coadjutor of this class in the cause of the injured Africans.  For it happened in this year that, being of the order of senior bachelors, I became qualified to write.  I had gained a prize for the best Latin dissertation in the former year, and, therefore, it was expected that I should obtain one in the present, or I should be considered as having lost my reputation both in the eyes of the University and of my own College.