Matters now began to look rather disheartening, I mean as far as my grand object was concerned. There was but one other port left, and this was between two and three hundred miles distant. I determined, however, to go to Plymouth. I had already been more successful in this tour, with respect to obtaining general evidences than in any other of the same length; and the probability was, that as I should continue to move among the same kind of people, my success would be in a similar proportion according to the number visited. These were great encouragements to me to proceed. At length I arrived at the place of my last hope. On my first day's expedition I boarded forty vessels, but found no one in these who had been on the coast of Africa in the Slave Trade. One or two had been there in king's ships; but they had never been on shore. Things were now drawing near to a close; and, notwithstanding my success as to general evidence in this journey, my heart began to beat. I was restless and uneasy during the night. The next morning I felt agitated again between the alternate pressure of hope and fear; and in this state I entered my boat. The fifty-seventh vessel, which I boarded in this harbour was the Melampus frigate. One person belonging to it, on examining him in the captain's cabin, said he had been two voyages to Africa; and I had not long discoursed with him before I found, to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man. I found, too, that he unravelled the question in dispute precisely as our inferences had determined it. He had been two expeditions up the river Calabar in the canoes of the natives. In the first of these, they came within a certain distance of a village. They then concealed themselves under the bushes, which hung over the water from the banks. In this position they remained during day-light; but at night they went up to it armed, and seized all the inhabitants, who had not time to make their escape. They obtained forty-five persons in this manner. In the second, they were out eight or nine days, when they made a similar attempt, and with nearly similar success. They seized men, women, and children, as they could find them in the huts. They then bound their arms, and drove them before them to the canoes. The name of the person, thus discovered on board the Melampus, was Isaac Parker. On inquiring into his character from the master of the division, I found it highly respectable. I found, also, afterwards, that he had sailed with Captain Cook, with great credit to himself, round the world. It was also remarkable that my brother, on seeing him in London, when he went to deliver his evidence, recognised him as having served on board the Monarch man-of-war, and as one of the most exemplary men in that ship.
I returned now in triumph. I had been out only three weeks, and I had found out this extraordinary person, and five respectable witnesses besides. These, added to the three discovered in the last journey, and to those provided before, made us more formidable than at any former period; so that the delay of our opponents, which we had looked upon as so great an evil, proved in the end truly serviceable to our cause.
On going into the committee-room of the House of Commons on my return, I found that the examinations were still going on in the behalf of those who were interested in the continuance of the trade; and they went on beyond the middle of April, when it was considered that they had closed. Mr. Wilberforce moved accordingly, on the 23rd of the same month, that Captain Thomas Wilson, of the royal navy, and that Charles Berns Wadstrom and Henry Hew Dalrymple, Esqrs., do attend as witnesses on the behalf of the abolition. There was nothing now but clamour from those on the opposite side of the question. They knew well that there were but few members of the House of Commons, who had read the privy council report. They knew, therefore, that if the question were to be decided by evidence, it must be decided by that which their own witnesses had given before parliament. But this was the evidence only on one side. It was certain, therefore, if the decision were to be made upon this basis, that it must be entirely in their favour. Will it then be believed that in an English House of Commons there could be found persons, who could move to prevent the hearing of any other witnesses on this subject; and, what is more remarkable, that they should charge Mr. Wilberforce, because he proposed the hearing of them, with the intention solely of delay? Yes, such persons were found; but happily only among the friends of the Slave Trade. Mr. Wilberforce, in replying to them, could not help observing that it was rather extraordinary that they, who had occasioned the delay of a whole year, should charge him with that of which they themselves had been so conspicuously guilty. He then commented for some time on the injustice of their motion. He stated, too, that he would undertake to remove from disinterested and unprejudiced persons many of the impressions which had been made by the witnesses against the abolition; and he appealed to the justice and honour of the house in behalf of an injured people; under the hope that they would not allow a decision to be made till they had heard the whole of the case. These observations, however, did not satisfy all those who belonged to the opposite party. Lord Penrhyn contended for a decision without a moment's delay. Mr. Gascoyne relented; and said, he would allow three weeks to the abolitionists, during which their evidence might be heard. At length, the debate ended; in the course of which Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox powerfully supported Mr. Wilberforce; when the motion was negatived without any attempt at a division.
The witnesses in behalf of the abolition of the Slave Trade now took possession of the ground which those in favour of it had left. But what was our surprise, when only three of them had been heard, to find that Mr. Norris should come forward as an evidence! This he did to confirm what he had stated to the privy council as to the general question; but he did it more particularly, as it appeared afterwards, in the justification of his own conduct: for the part which he had taken at Liverpool, as it related to me, had become a subject of conversation with many. It was now well known what assistance he had given me there in my pursuit; how he had even furnished me with clauses for a bill, for the abolition of the trade; how I had written to him, in consequence of his friendly co-operation, to come up as an evidence in our favour; and how at that moment he had accepted the office of a delegate on the contrary side. The noise which the relation and repetition of these and other circumstances had made, had given him, I believe, considerable pain. His friends, too, had urged some explanation as necessary. But how short-sighted are they who do wrong! By coming forward in this imprudent manner, he fixed the stain only the more indelibly on himself; for he thus imposed upon me the cruel necessity of being examined against him; and this necessity was the more afflicting, to me, because I was to be called upon not to state facts relative to the trade, but to destroy his character as an evidence in its support. I was to be called upon, in fact, to explain all those communications which have been stated to have taken place between us on this subject. Glad indeed should I have been to have declined this painful interference. But no one would hear of a refusal. The Bishop of London, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Wilberforce considered my appearance on this occasion as an imperious duty to the cause of the oppressed. It may be perhaps sufficient to say that I was examined; that Mr. Norris was present all the time; that I was cross-examined by counsel; and, that after this time, Mr. Norris seemed to have no ordinary sense of his own degradation; for he never afterwards held up his head or looked the abolitionists in the face, or acted with energy as a delegate, as on former occasions.
The hearing of evidence continued to go on in behalf of the abolition of the trade. No less than twenty-four witnesses altogether were heard in this session. And here it may not be improper to remark, that during the examination of our own witnesses, as well as the cross-examination of those of our opponents, no counsel were ever employed. Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. William Smith undertook this laborious department; and as they performed it with great ability, so they did it with great liberality towards those who were obliged to come under their notice, in the course of this fiery ordeal.
The bill of Sir William Dolben was now to be renewed. On this occasion the enemies of the abolition became again conspicuous; for on the 26th of May, they availed themselves of a thin house to propose an amendment, by which they increased the number of the slaves to the tonnage of the vessel. They increased it, too, without taking into the account, as had hitherto been done, the extent of the superficies of the vessels which were to carry them. This was the third indecorous attempt against what were only reasonable and expected proceedings in the present session. But their advantage was of no great duration; for the very next day, the amendment was rejected on the report by a majority of ninety-five to sixty-nine, in consequence, principally, of the private exertions of Mr. Pitt. Of this bill, though it was renewed in other years besides the present, I shall say no more in this History; because it has nothing to do with the general question. Horrible as it yet left the situation of the poor slaves in their transportation, (which the plate has most abundantly shown,) it was the best bill which could be then obtained; and it answered to a certain degree the benevolent wishes of the worthy baronet who introduced it: for if we could conclude, that these voyages were made more comfortable to the injured Africans, in proportion as there was less mortality in them, he had undoubtedly the pleasure of seeing the end, at least partially, obtained; though he must always have felt a great drawback from it, by reflecting that the survivors, however their sufferings might have been a little diminished, were reserved for slavery.
The session was now near its close; and we had the sorrow to find, though we had defeated our opponents in the three instances which have been mentioned, that the tide ran decidedly against us, upon the general question, in the House of Commons. The same statements which had struck so many members with panic in the former sessions, such as that of emancipation, of the ruin and massacre of the planters, and of indemnification to the amount of seventy millions, had been industriously kept up, and this by a personal canvass among them. But this hostile disposition was still unfortunately increased by considerations of another sort. For the witnesses of our opponents had taken their ground first. No less than eleven of them had been examined in the last sessions. In the present, two-thirds of the time had been occupied by others on the same side. Hence the impression upon this ground also was against us; and we had yet had no adequate opportunity of doing it away. A clamour was also raised, where we thought it least likely to have originated. They (the planters), it was said, had produced persons in elevated life, and of the highest character, as witnesses; whereas we had been obliged to take up with those of the lowest condition. This idea was circulated directly after the introduction of Isaac Parker, before mentioned, a simple mariner, and who was now contrasted with the admirals on the other side of the question. This outcry was not only ungenerous, but unconstitutional. It is the glory of the English law, that it has no scale of veracity which it adapts to persons, according to the station which they may be found to occupy in life. In our courts of law, the poor are heard as well as the rich; and if their reputation be fair, and they stand proof against the cross-examinations they undergo, both the judge and the jury must determine the matter in dispute by their evidence. But the House of Commons was now called upon by our opponents, to adopt the preposterous maxim of attaching falsehood to poverty, or of weighing truth by the standard of rank and riches.
But though we felt a considerable degree of pain in finding this adverse disposition among so many members of the Lower House, it was some consolation to us to know that our cause had not suffered with their constituents,—the people. These were still warmly with us. Indeed, their hatred of the trade had greatly increased. Many circumstances had occurred in this year to promote it. The committee, during my absence in France, had circulated the plate of the slave-ship throughout all England. No one saw it but he was impressed. It spoke to him in a language which was at once intelligible and irresistible. It brought forth the tear of sympathy in behalf of the sufferers, and it fixed their sufferings in his heart. The committee, too, had been particularly vigilant during the whole of the year with respect to the public papers. They had suffered no statement in behalf of those interested in the continuance of the trade to go unanswered. Dr. Dickson, the author of the Letters on Slavery, before mentioned, had come forward again with his services on this occasion; and, by his active co-operation with a sub-committee appointed for the purpose, the coast was so well cleared of our opponents, that, though they were seen the next year again, through the medium of the same papers, they appeared only in sudden incursions, as it were, during which they darted a few weapons at us; but they never afterward ventured upon the plain to dispute the matter, inch by inch, or point by point, in an open and manly manner.
But other circumstances occurred to keep up a hatred of the trade among the people in this interval, which, trivial as they were, ought not to be forgotten. The amiable poet Cowper had frequently made the Slave Trade the subject of his contemplation. He had already severely condemned it in his valuable poem The Task. But now he had written three little fugitive pieces upon it. Of these, the most impressive was that which he called The Negro's Complaint, and of which the following is a copy:—
Forced from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne;
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though theirs they have enroll'd me,
Minds are never to be sold.