But, encouraging as they were, I never lost sight of the objection, which
is the subject of this chapter; nor did I ever fail to declare, that
though, considering the part I had taken in this great cause, I might be
qualified better than some others, yet it was a task too delicate for me to
perform. I always foresaw that I could not avoid making myself too
prominent an object in such a history, and that I should be liable, on that
account, to the suspicion of writing it for the purpose of sounding my own
praise.
With this objection my friends were not satisfied. They answered, that I
might treat the History of the Abolition of the Slave-trade as a species of
biography, or as the history of a part of my own life: that people, who had
much less weighty matters to communicate, wrote their own histories; and
that no one charged them with vanity for so doing.
I own I was not convinced by this answer. I determined, however, in
compliance with their wishes, to examine the objection more minutely, and
to see if I could overcome it more satisfactorily to my own mind.
Pages:
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262