and might hereafter be collected for that purpose.  At this meeting it was resolved also, that no less than three members should form a quorum; that Samuel Hoare should be the treasurer; that the treasurer should pay no money but by order of the committee; and that copies of these resolutions should be printed and circulated, in which it should be inserted that the subscriptions of all such as were willing to forward the plans of the committee should be received by the treasurer or any member of it.

On the 24th of May the committee met again to promote the object of its institution.

The treasurer reported at this meeting, that the subscriptions already received amounted to one hundred and thirty-six pounds.

As I had foreseen long before this time that my Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was too large for general circulation, and yet that a general circulation of knowledge on this subject was absolutely necessary, I determined directly after the formation of the committee to write a short pamphlet consisting only of eight or ten pages for this purpose.  I called it A Summary View of the Slave Trade, and of the probable consequences of its Abolition.  It began by exhibiting to the reader the various unjustifiable ways in which persons living on the coast of Africa became slaves.  It then explained the treatment which these experienced on their passage, the number dying in the course of it, and the treatment of the survivors in the colonies of those nations to which they were carried.  It then announced the speedy publication of a work on the impolicy of the trade, the contents of which, as far as I could then see, I gave generally under the following heads:—­Part the first, it was said, would show that Africa was capable of offering to us a trade in its own natural productions as well as in the persons of men; that the trade in the persons of men was profitable but to a few; that its value was diminished from many commercial considerations; that it was also highly destructive to our seamen; and that the branch of it, by which we supplied the island of St. Domingo with slaves, was peculiarly impolitic on that account.  Part the second, it was said, would show that if the slaves were kindly treated in our colonies, they would increase; that the abolition of the trade would necessarily secure such a treatment to them, and that it would produce many other advantages which would be then detailed.

This little piece I presented to the committee at this their second meeting.  It was then duly read and examined; and the result was, that after some little correction it was approved, and that two thousand copies of it were ordered to be printed, with lists of the subscribers and of the committee, and to be sent to various parts of the kingdom.

On June the 7th, the committee met again for the despatch of business, when, among other things, they voted their thanks to Dr. Baker, of Lower Grosvenor-street, who had been one of my first assistants, for his services to the cause.