The trade was, in short, one mass of iniquity from the beginning
to the end.
I employed myself occasionally in the Merchants-hall, in making copies of
the muster-rolls of ships sailing to different parts of the world, that I
might make a comparative view of the loss of seamen in the Slave-trade,
with that of those in the other trades from the same port. The result of
this employment showed me the importance of it: for, when I considered how
partial the inhabitants of this country were to their fellow-citizens, the
seamen belonging to it, and in what estimation the members of the
legislature held them, by enforcing the Navigation-Act, which they
considered to be the bulwark of the nation, and by giving bounties to
certain trades, that these might become so many nurseries for the marine, I
thought it of great importance to be able to prove, as I was then capable
of doing, that more persons would be found dead in three slave-vessels from
Bristol, in a given time, than in all the other vessels put together,
numerous as they were, belonging to the same port.
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