This advice, though it was judicious, and founded on a knowledge of law proceedings, I found it very difficult to adopt.  My own disposition was naturally such, that whatever I engaged in I followed with more than ordinary warmth.  I could not be supposed, therefore, affected and interested as I then was, to be cool and tranquil on this occasion.  And yet what would my worthy friend have said, if in this first instance I had opposed him?  I had a very severe struggle in my own feelings on this account.  At length, though reluctantly, I obeyed; but as the passions which agitate the human mind, when it is greatly inflamed, must have a vent somewhere, or must work off, as it were, or in working together must produce some new passion or effect, so I found the rage which had been kindling within me subsiding into the most determined resolutions of future increased activity and perseverance.  I began now to think that the day was not long enough for me to labour in.  I regretted often the approach of night, which suspended my work, and I often welcomed that of the morning, which restored me to it.  When I felt myself weary, I became refreshed by the thought of what I was doing; when disconsolate, I was comforted by it.  I lived in hope that every day’s labour would furnish me with that knowledge which would bring this evil nearer to its end; and I worked on under these feelings, regarding neither trouble nor danger in the pursuit.

CHAPTER XV.

[Sidenote:  Author confers with the inhabitants of Bridgewater relative to a petition to parliament in behalf of the abolition; returns to Bristol; discovers a scandalous mode of procuring seamen for the Slave Trade, and of paying them; makes a comparative view of their loss in this and in other trades; procures imports and exports.—­Examines the construction and admeasurement of slave ships; of the Fly and Neptune.—­Difficulty of procuring evidence.—­Case of Gardiner, of the Pilgrim; of Arnold, of the Ruby; some particulars of the latter in his former voyages.]

Having heard by accident that the inhabitants of the town of Bridgewater had sent a petition to the House of Commons, in the year 1785, for the abolition of the Slave Trade, as has been related in a former part of the work, I determined, while my feelings were warm, to go there, and to try to find out those who had been concerned in it, and to confer with them as the tried friends of the cause.  The time seemed to me to be approaching when the public voice should be raised against this enormous evil.  I was sure that it was only necessary for the inhabitants of this favoured island to know it to feel a just indignation against it.  Accordingly I set off.  My friend George Fisher, who was before mentioned to have been of the religious Society of the Quakers, gave me an introduction to the respectable family of Ball, which was of the same religious persuasion.  I called upon Mr. Sealey, Anstice, Crandon, Chubb, and others.