been examined in the last sessions.  In the present, two-thirds of the time had been occupied by others on the same side.  Hence the impression upon this ground also was against us; and we had yet had no adequate opportunity of doing it away.  A clamour was also raised, where we thought it least likely to have originated.  They (the planters), it was said, had produced persons in elevated life, and of the highest character, as witnesses; whereas we had been obliged to take up with those of the lowest condition.  This idea was circulated directly after the introduction of Isaac Parker, before mentioned, a simple mariner, and who was now contrasted with the admirals on the other side of the question.  This outcry was not only ungenerous, but unconstitutional.  It is the glory of the English law, that it has no scale of veracity which it adapts to persons, according to the station which they may be found to occupy in life.  In our courts of law, the poor are heard as well as the rich; and if their reputation be fair, and they stand proof against the cross-examinations they undergo, both the judge and the jury must determine the matter in dispute by their evidence.  But the House of Commons was now called upon by our opponents, to adopt the preposterous maxim of attaching falsehood to poverty, or of weighing truth by the standard of rank and riches.

But though we felt a considerable degree of pain in finding this adverse disposition among so many members of the Lower House, it was some consolation to us to know that our cause had not suffered with their constituents,—­the people.  These were still warmly with us.  Indeed, their hatred of the trade had greatly increased.  Many circumstances had occurred in this year to promote it.  The committee, during my absence in France, had circulated the plate of the slave-ship throughout all England.  No one saw it but he was impressed.  It spoke to him in a language which was at once intelligible and irresistible.  It brought forth the tear of sympathy in behalf of the sufferers, and it fixed their sufferings in his heart.  The committee, too, had been particularly vigilant during the whole of the year with respect to the public papers.  They had suffered no statement in behalf of those interested in the continuance of the trade to go unanswered.  Dr. Dickson, the author of the Letters on Slavery, before mentioned, had come forward again with his services on this occasion; and, by his active co-operation with a sub-committee appointed for the purpose, the coast was so well cleared of our opponents, that, though they were seen the next year again, through the medium of the same papers, they appeared only in sudden incursions, as it were, during which they darted a few weapons at us; but they never afterward ventured upon the plain to dispute the matter, inch by inch, or point by point, in an open and manly manner.

But other circumstances occurred to keep up a hatred of the trade among the people in this interval, which, trivial as they were, ought not to be forgotten.  The amiable poet Cowper had frequently made the Slave Trade the subject of his contemplation.  He had already severely condemned it in his valuable poem The Task.  But now he had written three little fugitive pieces upon it.  Of these, the most impressive was that which he called The Negro’s Complaint, and of which the following is a copy:—­