At this committee John Barton, one of the members of it, stated that he was commissioned by the author of a poem, entitled The Wrongs of Africa, to offer the profits which might arise from the sale of that work, to the committee, for the purpose of enabling them to pursue the object of their institution.  This circumstance was not only agreeable, inasmuch as it showed us that there were others who felt with us for the injured Africans, and who were willing to aid us in our designs, but it was rendered still more so when we were given to understand that the poem was written by Mr. Roscoe, of Liverpool, and the preface to it by the late Dr. Currie, who then lived in the same place.  To find friends to our cause rising up from a quarter where we expected scarcely anything but opposition, was very consolatory and encouraging.  As this poem was well written, but cannot now be had, I shall give the introductory part of it, which is particularly beautiful, to the perusal of the reader.  It begins thus:—­

  Offspring of Love divine, Humanity! 
  To whom, his eldest born, th’ Eternal gave
  Dominion o’er the heart; and taught to touch
  Its varied stops in sweetest unison;
  And strike the string that from a kindred breast
  Responsive vibrates! from the noisy haunts
  Of mercantile confusion, where thy voice
  Is heard not; from the meretricious glare
  Of crowded theatres, where in thy place
  Sits Sensibility, with wat’ry eye,
  Dropping o’er fancied woes her useless tear;
  Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills;
  And execrate the wrongs that Afric’s sons,
  Torn from their natal shore, and doom’d to bear
  The yoke of servitude in foreign climes,
  Sustain.  Nor vainly let our sorrows flow,
  Nor let the strong emotion rise in vain;
  But may the land contagion widely spread,
  Till in its flame the unrelenting heart
  Of avarice melt in softest sympathy—­
  And one bright blaze of universal love
  In grateful incense rises up to Heaven!

  Form’d with the same capacity of pain,
  The same desire of pleasure and of ease,
  Why feels not man for man!  When nature shrinks
  From the slight puncture of an insect’s sting,
  Faints, if not screen’d from sultry suns, und pines
  Beneath the hardship of an hour’s delay
  Of needful nutriment;—­when liberty
  Is priz’d so dearly, that the slightest breath
  That ruffles but her mantle, can awake
  To arms unwarlike nations, and can rouse
  Confed’rate states to vindicate her claims:—­
  How shall the suff’rer man his fellow doom
  To ills he mourns and spurns at; tear with stripes
  His quiv’ring flesh; with hunger and with thirst
  Waste his emaciate frame; in ceaseless toils
  Exhaust his vital powers; and bind his limbs
  In galling chains?  Shall he, whose fragile form
  Demands continual blessings to support
  Its complicated texture, air, and food,
  Raiment, alternate rest, and kindly skies,
  And healthful seasons, dare with impious voice
  To ask those mercies, whilst his selfish aim
  Arrests the general freedom of their course;
  And, gratified beyond his utmost wish,
  Debars another from the bounteous store?