They voted thanks to Mr. Hughes, vicar of Ware in Hertfordshire, for his excellent Answer to Harm’s Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade, and they enrolled him among their honorary and corresponding members.  Also thanks to William Roscoe, esquire, for his Answer to the same.  Mr. Roscoe had not affixed his name to this pamphlet any more than to his poem of The Wrongs of Africa.  But he made himself known to the commitee as the author of both.  Also thanks to William Smith and Henry Beaufoy, esquires, for having so successfully exposed the evidence offered by the slave-merchants against the bill of Sir William Dolben, and for having drawn out of it so many facts, all making for their great object, the abolition of the Slave-trade.

As the great question was to be discussed in the approaching sessions, it was moved in the commitee to consider of the propriety of sending persons to Africa and the West Indies, who should obtain information relative to the different branches of the system as they existed in each of these countries, in order that they might be able to give their testimony, from their own experience, before one or both of the houses of parliament, as it might be judged proper.  This proposition was discussed at two or three several meetings.  It was however finally rejected, and principally on the following grounds:  First, It was obvious, that persons sent out upon such an errand would be exposed to such dangers from various causes, that it was not improbable that both they and their testimony might be lost.  Secondly, Such persons would be obliged to have recourse to falsehoods, that is, to conceal or misrepresent the objects of their destination, that they might get their intelligence with safety; which falsehoods the commitee could not countenance.  To which it was added, that few persons would go to these places, except they were handsomely rewarded for their trouble; but this reward would lessen the value of their evidence, as it would afford a handle to the planters and slave-merchants to say that they had been bribed.

Another circumstance, which came before the commitee, was the following:  Many arguments were afloat at this time relative to the great impolicy of abolishing the Slave-trade, the principal of which was, that, if the English abandoned it, other foreign nations would take it up; and thus, while they gave up certain national profits themselves, the great cause of humanity would not be benefited, nor would any moral good be done by the measure.  Now there was a presumption that, by means of the society instituted in Paris, the French nation might be awakened to this great subject, and that the French government might in consequence, as well as upon other considerations, be induced to favour the general feeling upon this occasion.  But there was no reason to conclude, either that any other maritime people, who had been engaged in the Slave-trade, would relinquish it, or that any other,