acts which would bear upon
this subject, refused to communicate them; and often after a long and
wearisome journey in search of an individual who could throw light
upon the subject, Clarkson had the mortification to find his lips
sealed by interest or timidity. As usual, the cause of oppression was
defended by the most impudent lying; the slave-trade was asserted to
be the latest revised edition of philanthropy. It was said that the
poor African, the slave of miserable oppression in his own country,
was wafted by it to an asylum in a Christian land; that the middle
passage was to the poor negro a perfect elysium, infinitely happier
than anything he had ever known in his own country. All this was said
while manacles, and hand-cuffs, and thumb-screws, and instruments to
force open the mouth, were a regular part of the stock for a slave
ship, and were hanging in the shop windows of Liverpool for sale.

For Clarkson's attention was first called to these things by observing
them in the shop window, and on inquiring the use of one of them, the
man informed him that many times negroes were sulky and tried to
starve themselves to death, and this instrument was used to force open
their jaws.

Of Clarkson's labor in this investigation some idea may be gathered
from his own words, when stating that for a season he was compelled to
retire from the cause, he thus speaks. "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 ear 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 labors 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 traveled 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 subj