While the foreign Slave-bill was thus passing its stages in the Commons, Dr. Horsley, bishop of Rochester, who saw no end to the examinations, while the witnesses were to be examined at the bar of the House of Lords, moved, that they should be taken in future before a committee above-stairs.  Dr. Porteus, bishop of London, and the Lords Guildford, Stanhope, and Grenville, supported this motion.  But the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, aided by the Duke of Clarence, and by the Lords Mansfield, Hay, Abingdon, and others, negatived it by a majority of twenty-eight.

At length the bill itself was ushered into the House of Lords.  On reading it a second time, it was opposed by the Duke of Clarence, Lord Abingdon, and others.  Lord Grenville and the Bishop of Rochester declined supporting it.  They alleged, as a reason, that they conceived the introduction of it to have been improper pending the inquiry on the general subject of the Slave-trade.  This declaration brought up the Lords Stanhope and Lauderdale, who charged them with inconsistency as professed friends of the cause.  At length the bill was lost.  During these discussions the examination of the witnesses was resumed by the Lords; but only two of them were heard in this session[A].

[Footnote A:  After this the examinations wholly dropped in the House of Lords.]

After this decision the question was in a desperate state; for if the Commons would not renew their own resolution, and the Lords would not abolish the foreign part of the Slave-trade, What hope was there, of success?  It was obvious too, that in the former House, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas voted against each other.  In the latter, the Lord Chancellor Thurlow opposed every motion in favour of the cause.  The committee therefore were reduced to this;—­either they must exert themselves without hope, or they must wait till some change should take place in their favour.  As far as I myself was concerned, all exertion was then over.  The nervous system was almost shattered to pieces.  Both my memory and my hearing failed me.  Sudden dizziness seized my head.  A confused singing in the ears followed me, wherever I went.  On going to bed the very stairs seemed to dance up and down under me, so that, misplacing my foot, I sometimes fell.  Talking too, if it continued but half an hour, exhausted me, so that profuse perspirations followed; and the same effect was produced even by an active exertion of the mind for the like time.  These disorders had been brought on by degrees in consequence of the severe labours necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause.  For seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred persons with my own hand.  I had some book or other annually to write in behalf of the cause.  In this time I had travelled more than thirty-five thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of these journeys in the night.  All this time my mind had been on the stretch.  It had been bent too to