which was then lying in the Roads. Both these scenes Mr. Wadstrom had
witnessed. I had collected also by this time, one thousand of my Essays on
the Impolicy of the Slave-trade, which had been translated into the French
language. These I now wished to distribute, as preparatory to the motion of
Mirabeau, among the National Assembly. This distribution was afterwards
undertaken and effected by the Archbishop of Aix, the Bishop of Chartres,
the Marquis de la Fayette, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, the Comte de
Mirabeau, Monsieur Necker, the Marquis de Condorcet, Messieurs Petion de
Villeneuve, Bergasse, Claviere and Brissot, and by the Marchioness de la
Fayette, Madame Necker, and Madame de Poivre, the latter of whom was the
widow of the late Intendant of the Isle of France.

This distribution had not been long begun, before I witnessed its effects.
The virtuous Abbé Gregoire, and several members of the National Assembly,
called upon me. The section of the slave-ship, it appeared, had been the
means of drawing them towards me. They wished for more accurate information
concerning it. Indeed it made its impression upon all who saw it. The
Bishop of Chartres once told me, that, when he first espoused our cause, he
did it at once; for it seemed obvious to him that no one could, under the
Christian dispensation, hold another as his slave; and it was no less
obvious where such an unnatural state existed, that there would be great
abuses; but that, nevertheless, he had not given credit to all the tales
which had been related of the Slave-trade, till he had seen this plate;
after which there was nothing so barbarous which might not readily be
believed. The Archbishop of Aix, when I first showed him the same plate,
was so struck with horror, that he could scarcely speak: and when Mirabeau
first saw it, he was so impressed by it, that he ordered a mechanic to make
a model of it in wood, at a considerable expense. This model he kept
afterwards in his dining-room. It was a ship in miniature, about a yard
long, and little wooden men and women, which were painted black to