When this determination was made I was at Teston, writing a long letter to the privy council on the ill usage and mortality of the seamen employed in the Slave-trade, which it had been previously agreed should be received as evidence there.  I thought it proper, however, before I took my departure, to form a system of questions upon the general subject.  These I divided into six tables.  The first related to the productions of Africa, and the disposition and manners of the natives.  The second, to the methods of reducing them to slavery.  The third, to the manner of bringing them to the ships, their value, the medium of exchange, and other circumstances.  The fourth, to their transportation.  The fifth, to their treatment in the Colonies.  The sixth, to the seamen employed in the trade.  These tables contained together one hundred and forty-five questions.  My idea was that they should be printed on a small sheet of paper, which should be folded up in seven or eight leaves, of the length and breadth of a small almanac, and then be sent in franks to our different correspondents.  These, when they had them, might examine persons capable of giving evidence, who might live in their neighbourhoods or fall in their way, and return us their examinations by letter.

The committee having approved and printed the tables of questions, I began my tour.  I had selected the southern counties from Kent to Cornwall for it.  I had done this, because these included the great stations of the ships of war in ordinary; and as these were all under the superintendence of Sir Charles Middleton, as comptroller of the navy, I could get an introduction to those on board them.  Secondly, because sea-faring people, when they retire from a marine life, usually settle in some town or village upon the coast.

Of this tour I shall not give the reader any very particular account.  I shall mention only those things which are most worthy of his notice in it.  At Poole in Dorsetshire I laid the foundation of a committee, to act in harmony with that of London for the promotion of the cause.  Moses Neave, of the respectable society of the Quakers, was the chairman; Thomas Bell, the secretary, and Ellis.  B. Metford and the reverend Mr. Davis and others the committee.  This was the third committee, which had been instituted in the country for this purpose.  That at Bristol, under Mr. Joseph Harford as chairman, and Mr. Lunell as secretary, had been the first.  And that at Manchester, under Mr. Thomas Walker as chairman, and Mr. Samuel Jackson as secretary, had been the second.

As Poole was a great place for carrying on the trade to Newfoundland, I determined to examine the assertion of the Earl of Sandwich in the House of Lords, when he said, in the debate on Sir William Dolben’s bill, that the Slave-trade was not more fatal to seamen than the Newfoundland and some others.  This assertion I knew at the time to be erroneous, as far as my own researches had been concerned:  for out of twenty-four