the great disadvantages under which we had laboured with respect to evidence, that our cause was safe, and that, as far as it was to be decided by reason and sound policy, it would triumph.  It was in this retirement that Mr. Pitt made those able calculations which satisfied him for ever after, as the minister of the country, as to the safety of the great measure of the abolition of the Slave Trade; for he had clearly proved, that not only the islands could go on in a flourishing state without supplies from the coast of Africa, but that they were then in a condition to do it.

At length the 12th of May arrived.  Mr. Wilberforce rose up in the Commons and moved the order of the day for the house to resolve itself into a committee of the whole house, to take into consideration the petitions which had been presented against the Slave Trade.

This order having been read, he moved that the report of the committee of privy council, that the acts passed in the islands relative to slaves, that the evidence adduced last year on the Slave Trade, that the petitions offered in the last session against the Slave Trade, and that the accounts presented to the house in the last and present session relative to the exports and imports of Africa, be referred to the same committee.

These motions having been severally agreed to, the House immediately resolved itself into a committee of the whole house, and Sir William Dolben was put into the chair.

Mr. Wilberforce began by declaring, that when he considered how much discussion the subject, which he was about to explain to the committee, had occasioned, not only in that House, but throughout the kingdom, and throughout Europe; and when he considered the extent and importance of it, the variety of interests involved in it, and the consequences which might arise, he owned he had been filled with apprehensions, lest a subject of such magnitude, and a cause of such weight, should suffer from the weakness of its advocate; but when he recollected that, in the progress of his inquiries, he had everywhere been received with candour, that most people gave him credit for the purity of his motives, and that, however many of these might then differ from him, they were all likely to agree in the end, he had dismissed his fears, and marched forward with a firmer step in this cause of humanity, justice, and religion.  He could not, however, but lament that the subject had excited so much warmth.  He feared that too many on this account were but ill prepared to consider it with impartiality.  He entreated all such to endeavour to be calm and composed.  A fair and cool discussion was essentially necessary.  The motion he meant to offer, was as reconcilable to political expediency as to national humanity.  It belonged to no party question.  It would in the end be found serviceable to all parties, and to the best interests of the country.  He did not come forward to accuse the West India planter, or the Liverpool merchant, or indeed any one concerned in this traffic; but, if blame attached anywhere, to take shame to himself in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, who, having suffered it to be carried on under their own authority, were all of them participators in the guilt.