Colonies."[27] This marks a noticeable change of attitude from the
strong words of two years previous: the former was a definitive promise;
this is a temporary resolve, which probably represented public opinion
much better than the former. On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably
forced on the student of this first national movement against the
slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and
insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the
final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before. The
whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and
importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than
the platitudes of many of the Revolutionists had assumed.

The effect of the movement on the slave-trade in general was to begin,
possibly a little earlier than otherwise would have been the case, that
temporary breaking up of the trade which the war naturally caused.
"There was a time, during the late war," says Clarkson, "when the slave
trade may be considered as having been nearly abolished."[28] The prices
of slaves rose correspondingly high, so that smugglers made
fortunes.[29] It is stated that in the years 1772-1778 slave merchants
of Liverpool failed for the sum of £710,000.[30] All this, of course,
might have resulted from the war, without the "Association;" but in the
long run the "Association" aided in frustrating the very designs which
the framers of the first resolve had in mind; for the temporary stoppage
in the end created an extraordinary demand for slaves, and led to a
slave-trade after the war nearly as large as that before.


30. ~The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War.~ The Declaration
of Independence showed a significant drift of public opinion from the
firm stand taken in the "Association" resolutions. The clique of