inhabitants of this country were to their fellow-citizens, the
seamen belonging to it, and in what estimation the members of the
legislature held them, by enforcing the Navigation-Act, which they
considered to be the bulwark of the nation, and by giving bounties to
certain trades, that these might become so many nurseries for the marine, I
thought it of great importance to be able to prove, as I was then capable
of doing, that more persons would be found dead in three slave-vessels from
Bristol, in a given time, than in all the other vessels put together,
numerous as they were, belonging to the same port.

I procured also an account of the exports and imports for the year 1786, by
means of which I was enabled to judge of the comparative value of this and
the other trades.

In pursuing another object, which was that of going on board the
slave-ships, and learning their construction and dimensions, I was greatly
struck, and indeed affected, by the appearance of two little sloops, which
were fitting out for Africa, the one of only twenty-five tons, which was
said to be destined to carry seventy; and the other of only eleven, which
was said to be destined to carry thirty slaves. I was told also that which
was more affecting, namely, that these were not to act as tenders on the
coast, by going up and down the rivers, and receiving three or four slaves
at a time, and then carrying them to a large ship, which was to take them
to the West Indies, but that it was actually intended, that they should
transport their own slaves themselves; that one if not both of them were,
on their arrival in the West Indies, to be sold as pleasure-vessels, and
that the seamen belonging to them were to be permitted to come home by what
is usually called the run.

This account of the destination of these little vessels, though it was
distressing at first, appeared to me afterwards, on cool reasoning, to be
incredible. I thought that my informants wished to impose upon me, in order
that I might make statements which would carry their own refutation with
them, and that thus I might injure the great cause which I had undertaken.
And I was much inclined to be of this opinion, when I looked again at the
least of the two; for any person, who was tall, standing upon dry ground by
the side of her, might have overlooked every thing upon her deck. I knew
also that she had been built as a pleasure-boat for the accommodation of
only six persons upon the Seve