Could I have wished for a more favourable reception?—­But mark the issue.  He was the nearest relation of a rich person concerned in the traffic; and if he were to come forward with his evidence publicly, he should ruin all his expectations from that quarter.  In the same week I have visited another at a still greater distance.  I have met with similar applause.  I have heard him describe scenes of misery which he had witnessed, and on the relation of which he himself almost wept.  But mark the issue again.—­“I am a surgeon,” says he:  “through that window you see a spacious house.  It is occupied by a West Indian.  The medical attendance upon his family is of considerable importance to the temporal interests of mine.  If I give you my evidence I lose his patronage.  At the house above him lives an East Indian.  The two families are connected:  I fear, if I lose the support of one, I shall lose that of the other also:  but I will give you privately all the intelligence in my power.”

The reader may now conceive the many miserable hours I must have spent, after such visits, in returning home; and how grievously my heart must have been afflicted by these cruel disappointments, but more particularly where they arose from causes inferior to those which have been now mentioned, or from little frivolous excuses, or idle and unfounded conjectures, unworthy of beings expected to fill a moral station in life.  Yes, O man! often in these solitary journeyings have I exclaimed against the baseness of thy nature, when reflecting on the little paltry considerations which have smothered thy benevolence, and hindered thee from succouring an oppressed brother.  And yet, on a further view of things, I have reasoned myself into a kinder feeling towards thee.  For I have been obliged to consider ultimately, that there were both lights and shades in the human character; and that, if the bad part of our nature was visible on these occasions, the nobler part of it ought not to be forgotten.  While I passed a censure upon those, who were backward in serving this great cause of humanity and justice, how many did I know, who were toiling in the support of it!  I drew also this consolation from my reflections, that I had done my duty; that I had left nothing untried or undone; that amidst all these disappointments I had collected information, which might be useful at a future time; and that such disappointments were almost inseparable from the prosecution of a cause of such magnitude, and where the interests of so many were concerned.  Having now given a general account of my own proceedings, I shall state those of the committee; or show how they contributed, by fulfilling the duties of their several departments, to promote the cause in the interim.

In the first place they completed the rules, or code of laws, for their own government.