[Footnote A:  After this the examinations wholly dropped in the House of Lords.]

After this decision the question was in a desperate state; for if the Commons would not renew their own resolution, and the Lords would not abolish the foreign part of the Slave-trade, what hope was there of success?  It was obvious too, that in the former House, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas voted against each other.  In the latter, the Lord Chancellor Thurlow opposed every motion in favour of the cause.  The committee therefore were reduced to this;—­either they must exert themselves without hope, or they must wait till some change should take place in their favour.  As far as I myself was concerned, all exertion was then over.  The nervous system was almost shattered to pieces.  Both my memory and my hearing failed me.  Sudden dizzinesses seized my head.  A confused singing in the ears followed me, wherever I went.  On going to bed the very, stairs seemed to dance up and down under me, so that, misplacing my foot, I sometimes fell.  Talking too, if it continued but half an hour, exhausted me, so that profuse perspirations followed; and the same effect was produced even by an active exertion of the mind for the like time.  These disorders had been brought on by degrees in consequence of the severe labours necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause.  For seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred persons with my own hand.  I had some book or other annually to write in behalf of the cause.  In this time I had travelled more than thirty-five thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of these journeys in the night.  All this time my mind had been on the stretch.  It had been bent too to this one subject; for I had not even leisure to attend to my own concerns.  The various instances of barbarity, which had come successively to my knowledge within this period, had vexed, harassed, and afflicted it.  The wound which these had produced, was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from the reiterated refusal of persons to give their testimony, after I had travelled hundreds of miles in quest of them.  But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the persecution, begun and pursued by persons interested in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined against them; and whom, on account of their dependent situation in life, it was most easy to oppress.  As I had been the means of bringing these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin.  From their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and ungrateful to have fled[A].  These different circumstances, by acting together, had at length brought me into the situation just mentioned; and I was therefore obliged, though very reluctantly, to be borne out of the field, where I had placed the great honour and glory of my life.