on the Subject to
the Serious Attention of People in general," made its appearance; and
another followed it, written by William Fox, of London, "On the Propriety
of abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum." These pamphlets took the same
ground. They inculcated abstinence from these articles as a moral duty;
they inculcated it as a peaceable and constitutional measure; and they laid
before the reader a truth, which was sufficiently obvious, that if each
would abstain, the people would have a complete remedy for this enormous
evil in their own power.

While these things were going on, it devolved upon me to arrange all the
evidence on the part of the abolition under proper heads, and to abridge it
into one volume. It was intended that a copy of this should be sent into
different towns of the kingdom, that all might know, if possible, the
horrors (as far as the evidence contained them) of this execrable trade;
and as it was possible that these copies might lie in the places where they
were sent, without a due attention to their contents, I resolved, with the
approbation of the committee, to take a journey, and for no other purpose
than personally to recommend that they might be read.

The books, having been printed, were dispatched before me. Of this tour I
shall give the reader no other account than that of the progress of the
remedy, which the people were then taking into their own hands. And first I
may observe, that there was no town, through which I passed, in which there
was not some one individual who had left off the use of sugar. In the
smaller towns there were from ten to fifty by estimation, and in the larger
from two to five hundred, who had made this sacrifice to virtue. These were
of all ranks and parties. Rich and poor, churchmen and dissenters, had
adopted the measure. Even grocers had left off trading in the article, in
some places. In gentlemen's families, where the master had set the example,
the servants had often voluntarily followed it; and even children, who were
capable of understanding the history of the sufferings of the Africans,
excluded, with the most virtuous resolution, the sweets, to which they had
been accustomed, from their lips. By the best computation I was able to
make from notes taken down in my journey, no fewer than three hundred
thousand persons had abandoned the use of sugar.

Having travelled over Wales, and two thirds of England, I found it would be
impossible to visit Scotland