never to despair; for that, whatever checks and discouragements we may meet with, “no virtuous effort is ever ultimately lost.”  And finally, it cannot be otherwise than useful to us to form the opinion, which the contemplation of this subject must always produce, namely, that many of the evils, which are still left among us, may, by an union of wise and virtuous individuals, be greatly alleviated, if not entirely done away:  for if the great evil of the Slave-trade, so deeply entrenched by its hundred interests, has fallen prostrate before the efforts of those who attacked it, what evil of a less magnitude shall not be more easily subdued?  O may reflections of this sort always enliven us, always encourage us, always stimulate us to our duty!  May we never cease to believe, that many of the miseries of life are still to be remedied, or to rejoice that we may be permitted, if we will only make ourselves worthy by our endeavours, to heal them!  May we encourage for this purpose every generous sympathy that arises in our hearts, as the offspring of the Divine influence for our good, convinced that we are not born for ourselves alone, and that the Divinity never so fully dwells in us, as when we do his will; and that we never do his will more agreeably, as far as it has been revealed to us, than when we employ our time in works of charity towards the rest of our fellow-creatures!

CHAPTER II.

As it is desirable to know the true sources of events in history, so this will be realized in that of the abolition of the Slave-trade—­Inquiry as to those who favoured the cause of the Africans previously to the year 1787—­All these to be considered as necessary forerunners in that cause—­First forerunners were Cardinal Ximenes—­the Emperor Charles the Fifth—­Pope Leo the Tenth—­Elizabeth queen of England—­Louis the Thirteenth of France.

It would be considered by many, who have stood at the mouth of a river, and witnessed its torrent there, to be both an interesting and a pleasing journey to go to the fountain-head, and then to travel on its banks downwards, and to mark the different streams in each side, which should run into it and feed it.  So I presume the reader will not be a little interested and entertained in viewing with me the course of the abolition of the Slave-trade, in first finding its source, and then in tracing the different springs which have contributed to its increase.  And here I may observe that, in doing this, we shall have advantages, which historians have not always had in developing the causes of things.  Many have handed down to us events, for the production of which they have given us but their own conjectures.  There has been often indeed such a distance between the events themselves and the lives of those who have recorded them, that the different means and motives belonging to them have been lost through time.  On the present occasion, however, we shall have the peculiar satisfaction of