ny. I was
instrumental in detecting them on one of these occasions myself. When Mr.
Dalzell was examined, he was not wholly unknown to me. My Liverpool
muster-rolls told me that he had lost fifteen seamen out of forty in his
last voyage. This was a sufficient ground to go upon; for generally, where
the mortality of the seamen has been great, it may be laid down that the
mortality of the slaves has been considerable also. I waited patiently till
his evidence was nearly closed, but he had then made no unfavourable
statements to the house. I desired, therefore, that a question might be put
to him, and in such a manner, that he might know that they, who put it, had
got a clew to his secrets. He became immediately embarrassed. His voice
faltered. He confessed with trembling, that he had lost a third of his
sailors in his last voyage. Pressed hard immediately by other questions, he
then acknowledged that he had lost one hundred and twenty or a third of his
slaves also. But would he say that these were all he had lost in that
voyage? No: twelve others had perished by an accident, for they were
drowned. But were no others lost besides the one hundred and twenty and the
twelve? None, he said, upon the voyage, but between twenty and thirty
before he left the Coast. Thus this champion of the merchants, this
advocate for the health and happiness of the slaves in the middle passage,
lost nearly a hundred and sixty of the unhappy persons committed to his
superior care, in a single voyage!

The evidence, on which I have now commented, having been delivered, the
counsel summed up on the seventeenth of June, when the commitee proceeded
to fill up the blanks in the bill. Mr. Pitt moved that the operation of it
be retrospective, and that it commence from the tenth instant. This was
violently opposed by Lord Penrhyn, Mr. Gascoyne, and Mr. Brickdale, but was
at length acceded to.

Sir William Dolben then proposed to apportion five men to every three tons
in every ship under one hundred and fifty tons burthen, which had the space
of five feet between the decks, and three men to two tons in every vessel
beyond one hundred and fifty tons burthen, which had equal accommodation in
point of height between the decks. This occasioned a very warm dispute,
which was not settled for some time, and which gave rise to some beautiful
and interesting speeches on the subject.

Mr. William Smith pointed out in the clearest manner many of the
contradiction