The works, which Mr. Ramsay wrote upon this subject, were, the Essay, just mentioned, in 1784.  An Enquiry, also, into the Effects of the Abolition of the Slave-trade, in 1784.  A Reply to personal Invectives and Objections, in 1785.  A Letter to James Tobin, Esq., in 1787.  Objections to the Abolition of the Slave-trade, with Answers:  and an Examination of Harris’s Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade, in 1788;—­and An Address on the proposed Bill for the Abolition of the Slave-trade, in 1789.  In short, from the time when he first took up the cause, he was engaged in it till his death, which was not a little accelerated by his exertions.  He lived however to see this cause in a train for parliamentary inquiry, and he died satisfied, being convinced, as he often expressed, that the investigation must inevitably lead to the total abolition of the Slave-trade.

In the next year, that is, in the year 1785, another advocate was seen in monsieur Necker, in his celebrated work on the French Finances, which had just been translated into the English language from the original work, in 1784.  This virtuous statesman, after having given his estimate of the population and revenue of the French West Indian colonies, proceeds thus:  “The colonies of France contain, as we have seen, near five hundred thousand slaves, and it is from the number of these poor wretches that the inhabitants set a value on their plantations.  What a dreadful prospect! and how profound a subject for reflection!  Alas! how little are we both in our morality and our principles!  We preach up humanity, and yet go every year to bind in chains twenty thousand natives of Africa!  We call the Moors barbarians and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at the risk of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their masters, and excite all those bloody scenes, which are the usual preliminaries of this traffic!” He goes on still further in the same strain.  He then shows the kind of power, which has supported this execrable trade.  He throws out the idea of a general compact, by which all the European nations should agree to abolish it.  And he indulges the pleasing hope, that it may take place even in the present generation.

In the same year we find other coadjutors coming before our view, but these in a line different from that, in which any other belonging to this class had yet moved.  Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established church, and Mr. John Chubb, suggested to Mr. William Tucket, the mayor of Bridgewater, where they resided, and to others of that town, the propriety of petitioning parliament for the abolition of the Slave-trade.  This petition was agreed upon, and, when drawn up, was as follows:—­

    “The humble petition of the inhabitants of Bridgewater showeth,