Marsh-street, and most of them were then kept by Irishmen.  The scenes witnessed in these houses were truly distressing to me; and yet, if I wished to know practically what I had purposed, I could not avoid them.  Music, dancing, rioting, drunkenness, and profane swearing, were kept up from night to night.  The young mariner, if a stranger to the port, and unacquainted with the nature of the Slave-trade, was sure to be picked up.  The novelty of the voyages, the superiority of the wages in this over any other trades, and the privileges of various kinds, were set before him.  Gulled in this manner he was frequently enticed to the boat, which was waiting to carry him away.  If these prospects did not attract him, he was plied with liquor till he became intoxicated, when a bargain was made over him between the landlord and the mate.  After this his senses were kept in such a constant state of stupefaction by the liquor, that in time the former might do with him what he pleased.  Seamen also were boarded in these houses, who, when the slave-ships were going out, but at no other time, were encouraged to spend more than they had money to pay for; and to these, when they had thus exceeded, but one alternative was given, namely, a slave-vessel, or a gaol.  These distressing scenes I found myself obliged frequently to witness, for I was no less than nineteen times occupied in making these hateful rounds.  And I can say from my own experience, and all the information I could collect from Thompson and others, that no such practices were in use to obtain seamen for other trades.

The treatment of the seamen employed in the Slave-trade had so deeply interested me, and now the manner of procuring them, that I was determined to make myself acquainted with their whole history; for I found by report, that they were not only personally ill-treated, as I have already painfully described, but that they were robbed by artifice of those wages, which had been held up to them as so superior in this service.  All persons were obliged to sign articles, that, in case they should die or be discharged during the voyage, the wages then due to them should be paid in the currency where the vessel carried her slaves, and that half of the wages due to them on their arrival there should be paid in the same manner, and that they were never permitted to read over the articles they had signed.  By means of this iniquitous practice the wages in the Slave-trade, though nominally higher in order to induce seamen to engage in it, were actually lower than in other trades.  All these usages I ascertained in such a manner, that no person could doubt the truth of them.  I actually obtained possession of articles of agreement belonging to these vessels, which had been signed and executed in former voyages.  I made the merchants themselves, by sending those seamen, who had claims upon them, to ask for their accounts current with their respective ships, furnish me with such documents as would have been evidence against them in any court of law.  On whatever branch of the system I turned my eyes, I found it equally barbarous.  The trade was, in short, one mass of iniquity from the beginning to the end.