rejected at another time as ridiculous, obtained now easy credit. The
massacres too and the ruin, though only conjectural, they admitted also.
Hence some of them deserted our cause wholly, while others, wishing to do
justice as far as they could to the slaves on the one hand, and to their
own countrymen on the other, adopted a middle line of conduct, and would go
no further than the regulation of the trade.

While these preparations were making by our opponents to prejudice the
minds of those, who were to be the judges in this contest, Mr. Pitt
presented the privy council report at the bar of the House of Commons; and
as it was a large folio volume, and contained the evidence upon which the
question was to be decided, it was necessary that time should be given to
the members to peruse it. Accordingly the twelfth of May was appointed,
instead of the twenty-third of April, for the discussion of the question.

This postponement of the discussion of the question gave time to all
parties to prepare themselves further. The merchants and planters availed
themselves of it to collect petitions to parliament from interested persons
against the abolition of the trade, to wait upon members of parliament by
deputation, in order to solicit their attendance in their favour, and to
renew their injurious paragraphs in the public papers. The committee for
the abolition availed themselves of it to reply to these; and here Dr.
Dickson, who had been secretary to Governor Hey, in Barbadoes, and who had
offered the committee his Letters on Slavery before mentioned and his
services also, was of singular use. Many members of parliament availed
themselves of it to retire into the country to read the report. Among the
latter were Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt. In this retirement they
discovered, notwithstanding the great disadvantages under which we had
laboured with respect to evidence, that our cause was safe, and that, as
far as it was to be decided by reason and sound policy, it would triumph.