After due
examination it appears that the major part of the complaints against this
Trade are ill-founded. Some regulations, however, are expected to take
place, which may serve in a certain degree to appease the cause of
humanity."
But while they who were interested had produced this outcry against us, in
consequence of what had fallen from their own witnesses in the course of
their examinations, they had increased it considerably by the industrious
circulation of a most artful pamphlet among persons of rank and fortune at
the West end of the metropolis, which was called, Scriptural Researches on
the Licitness of the Slave-trade. This they had procured to be written by
R. Harris, who was then clerk in a slave-house in Liverpool, but had been
formerly a clergyman and a Jesuit. As they had maintained in the first
instance, as has been already shown, the humanity of the traffic, so, by
means of this pamphlet they asserted its consistency with revealed
religion. That such a book should have made converts in such an age is
surprising; and yet many, who ought to have known better, were carried away
by it; and we had now absolutely to contend, and almost to degrade
ourselves by doing so, against the double argument of the humanity and the
holiness of the trade.
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