ugh its several stages.

On the tenth of July, being now fully amended, it came for a third time
before the Lords; but it was no sooner brought forward than it met with the
same opposition as it had experienced before. Two new petitions appeared
against it, one from a certain class of persons in Liverpool, and another
from Miles Peter Andrews, esquire, stating that, if it passed into a law,
it would injure the sale of his gunpowder, and that he had rendered great
services to the government during the last war by his provision of that
article. But here the Lord Chancellor Thurlow reserved himself for an
effort, which, by occasioning only a day's delay, would in that particular
period of the session have totally prevented the passing of the bill. He
suggested certain amendments for consideration and discussion, which, if
they had been agreed upon, must have been carried again to the lower house
and sanctioned there before the bill could have been complete. But it
appeared afterwards, that there would have been no time for the latter
proceeding. Earl Stanhope, therefore, pressed this circumstance peculiarly
upon the Lords who were present. He observed, that the King was to dismiss
the parliament next day, and therefore they must adopt the bill as it
stood, or reject it altogether. There was no alternative, and no time was
to be lost. Accordingly he moved for an immediate division on the first of
the amendments proposed by Lord Thurlow. This having taken place, it was
negatived. The other amendments shared the same fate; and thus, at length,
passed through the upper house, as through an ordeal as it were of fire,
the first bill that ever put fetters upon that barbarous and destructive
monster, The Slave-trade.

The next day, or on Friday, July the eleventh, the King gave his assent to
it, and, as Lord Stanhope had previously asserted in the House of Lords,
concluded the session.

While the legislature was occupied in the consideration of this bill, the
Lords of the Council continued their examinations, that they might collect
as much light as possible previously to the general agitation of the
question in the next session of parliament. Among others I underwent an
examination. I gave my testimony first relative to many of the natural
productions of Africa, of which I produced the specimens. These were such
as I had collected in the course of my journey to Bristol and Liverpool,
and elsewhere. I explained, secondly, the los