This difficulty may be supposed to have been more than ordinarily great.
Many evils of a public nature, which existed in former times, were the
offspring of ignorance and superstition, and they were subdued of course by
the progress of light and knowledge. But the evil in question began in
avarice. It was nursed also by worldly interest. It did not therefore so
easily yield to the usual correctives of disorders in the world. We may
observe also, that the interest by which it was thus supported, was not
that of a few individuals, nor of one body, but of many bodies of men. It
was interwoven again into the system of the commerce and of the revenue of
nations. Hence the merchant--the planter--the mortgagee--the
manufacturer--the politician--the legislator--the cabinet-minister--lifted
up their voices against the annihilation of it. For these reasons the
Slave-trade may be considered, like the fabulous hydra, to have had a
hundred heads, every one of which it was necessary to cut off before it
could be subdued. And as none but Hercules was fitted to conquer the one,
so nothing less than extraordinary prudence, courage, labour, and patience,
could overcome the other.
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