Furnished then in this manner, I began my work.  But no person can tell the severe trial which the writing of it proved to me.  I had expected pleasure from the invention of the arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them together, and from the thought in the interim that I was engaged in an innocent contest for literary honour.  But, all my pleasure was damped by the facts which were now continually before me.  It was but one gloomy subject from morning to night.  In the day-time I was uneasy.  In the night I had little rest.  I sometimes never closed my eye-lids for grief.  It became now not so much a trial for academical reputation, as for the production of a work, which might be useful to injured Africa.  And keeping this idea in my mind ever after the perusal of Benezet, I always slept with a candle in my room, that I might rise out of my bed and put down such thoughts as might occur to me in the night, if I judged them valuable, conceiving that no arguments of any moment should be lost in so great a cause.  Having at length finished this painful task, I sent my Essay to the vice-chancellor, and soon afterwards found myself honoured as before with the first prize.

As it is usual to read these Essays publicly in the senate-house soon after the prize is adjudged, I was called to Cambridge for this purpose.  I went and performed my office.  On returning however to London, the subject of it almost wholly engrossed my thoughts.  I became at times very seriously affected while upon the road.  I stopped my horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked.  I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true.  The more, however, I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit.  Coming in sight of Wades Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse.  Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end.  Agitated in this manner, I reached home.  This was in the summer of 1785.

In the course of the autumn of the same year I experienced similar impressions.  I walked frequently into the woods, that I might think on the subject in solitude, and find relief to my mind there.  But there the question still recurred, “Are these things true?” Still the answer followed as instantaneously “They are.”  Still the result accompanied it, “Then surely some person should interfere.”  I then began to envy those who had seats in parliament, and who had great riches, and widely extended connexions, which would enable them to take up this cause.  Finding scarcely any one at that time who thought of it, I was turned frequently to myself.  But here many difficulties arose.  It struck me, among others, that a young man of only twenty-four years of age could not have that solid judgment or knowledge