These statements, and those of others on the same side of the question, had a great effect, as may easily be conceived, upon the feelings of those of the council who were present.  Some of them began immediately to be prejudiced against us.  There were others who even thought that it was almost unnecessary to proceed in the inquiry, for that the Trade was actually a blessing.  They had little doubt that all our assertions concerning it would be found false.  The Bishop of London himself was so impressed by these unexpected accounts, that he asked me if Falconbridge, whose pamphlet had been previously sent by the commitee to every member of the council, was worthy of belief, and if he would substantiate publicly what he had thus written.  But these impressions unfortunately were not confined to those who had been present at the examinations.  These could not help communicating them to others.  Hence in all the higher circles (some of which I sometimes used to frequent) I had the mortification to hear of nothing but the Liverpool evidence, and of our own credulity, and of the impositions which had been practised upon us:  of these reports the planters and merchants did not fail to avail themselves.  They boasted that they would soon do away all the idle tales which had been invented against them.  They desired the public only to suspend their judgment till the privy council report should be out, when they would see the folly and wickedness of all our allegations.  A little more evidence, and all would be over.  On the twenty-second of March, though the commitee of council had not then held its sittings more than a month, and these only twice or thrice a week, the following paragraph was seen in a morning paper:—­“The report of the commitee of privy council will be ready in a few days.  After due examination it appears that the major part of the complaints against this Trade are ill-founded.  Some regulations, however, are expected to take place, which may serve in a certain degree to appease the cause of humanity.”

But while they who were interested had produced this outcry against us, in consequence of what had fallen from their own witnesses in the course of their examinations, they had increased it considerably by the industrious circulation of a most artful pamphlet among persons of rank and fortune at the West end of the metropolis, which was called, Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade.  This they had procured to be written by R. Harris, who was then clerk in a slave-house in Liverpool, but had been formerly a clergyman and a Jesuit.  As they had maintained in the first instance, as has been already shown, the humanity of the traffic, so, by means of this pamphlet they asserted its consistency with revealed religion.  That such a book should have made converts in such an age is surprising; and yet many, who ought to have known better, were carried away by it; and we had now absolutely to contend, and almost to degrade ourselves by doing so, against the double argument of the humanity and the holiness of the trade.