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 commitee 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 commitee, and to be sent to various parts of the kingdom.

On June the seventh the commitee met again for the dispatch 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.

At this commitee John Barton, one of the members of it, stated that he was commissioned by the author of a poem, entitled The Wrongs of Africa, to offer the profits, which might arise from the sale of that work, to the commitee, for the purpose of enabling them to pursue the object of their institution.  This circumstance was not only agreeable, inasmuch as it showed us, that there were others who felt with us for the injured Africans, and who were willing to aid us in our designs, but it was rendered still more so, when we were given to understand that the poem was written by Mr. Roscoe, of Liverpool, and the preface to it by the late Dr. Currie, who then lived in the same place.  To find friends to our cause rising up from a quarter, where we expected scarcely any thing but opposition, was very consolatory and encouraging.  As this poem was well written, but cannot now be had, I shall give the introductory part of it, which is particularly beautiful, to the perusal of the reader.  It begins thus,—­

  “Offspring of Love divine, Humanity! 
  To whom, his eldest born, th’ Eternal gave
  Dominion o’er the heart; and taught to touch
  Its varied stops in sweetest unison;
  And strike the string that from a kindred breast
  Responsive vibrates! from the noisy haunts
  Of mercantile confusion, where thy voice
  Is heard not; from the meretricious glare
  Of crowded theatres, where in thy place
  Sits Sensibility, with, watry eye,
  Dropping o’er Fancied woes her useless tear;—­
  Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills;
  And execrate the wrongs, that Afric’s sons,
  Torn from their natal shore, and doom’d