I could translate my Latin Dissertation.
I could enlarge it usefully. I could see how the public received it, or
how far they were likely to favour any serious measures, which should
have a tendency to produce the abolition of the slave-trade. Upon this,
then, I determined; and in the middle of the month of November, 1785, I
began my work.'

"Such is the characteristic and ingenuous account given by Clarkson of
his introduction to that work to which the energies of his life were
devoted, and in reference to which, and to the account whence the
foregoing extract has been made, one of the most benevolent and gifted
writers of our country[2] has justly observed,--

[2] Coleridge.

"'This interesting tale is related, not by a descendant, but a
cotemporary; not by a distant spectator, but by a participator of the
contest; and of all the many participators, by the man confessedly the
most efficient; the man whose unparalleled labours in this work of love
and peril, leave on the mind of a reflecting reader the sublime doubt,
which of the two will have been the greater final gain to the moral
world,--the removal of the evil, or the proof, thereby given, what
mighty effects single good men may realize by self-devotion and
perseverance.'

"When Mr. Clarkson went to London to publish his book, he was introduced
to many friends of the cause of Abolition, who aided in giving it
extensive circulation. Whilst thus employed, he received an invitation,
which he accepted, to visit the Rev. James Ramsay, vicar of Teston, in
Kent, who had resided nineteen years in the island of St. Christopher.

"Shortly afterwards, dining one day at Sir Charles Middleton's,
(afterwards Lord Barham,) the conversation turned upon the subject, and
Mr. Clarkson declared that he was ready to devote himself to the cause.
This avowal met with great encouragement from the company, and Sir C.
Middleton, then Comptroller to the Navy, offered every possible
assistance. The friends of Mr. Clarkson increased, and this encouraged
him to proceed. Dr. Porteus, then Bishop of Chester, and Lord Scarsdale,
were secured in the House of Lords. Mr. Bennet Langton, and Dr. Baker,
who were acquainted with many members of both houses of parliament; the
honoured Granville Sharpe, James and Richard Phillips, could be depended
upon, as well as the entire body of the Society of Friends, to many of
whom he had been introduced by Mr. Joseph Hancock, his fellow-townsman.
Seeki