16
by any of the demonstrations of anti-slavery sentiment. The sermons of Bishops, the vigorous essays of Laymen, the harrowing recitals of returned West India Clergymen, the strains of Poetry, the bold, restless, and uncompromising zeal of the Dissenters, not even the vigorous and successful assaults upon the system by Granville Sharp, had, as yet, been able to disturb their equanimity. During the preceding two years, in the midst of the absorbing interest and the deep sensation created by Mr. Clarkson's Essay and his labors, they seemed unmoved, and acted as though secure. But the earnestness and the assiduity of the anti-slavery men, at this time, aroused them. The possibility of not being allowed to retain, undisputed and undisturbed, all the advantages they at present enjoyed, seemed at length presented to their minds. Now appeared to them the time to assume some position; and they stood up in conscious strength and importance, folding about them the panoply of power, and gathering around them the myrmidons of trade, wealth, and luxury—determined to resist any attempts to put an end to this detestible traffic.
The contest had commenced, and it was carried on with vigor. Two great antagonistic principles were placed in battle array, each with fixed, unyielding, determinate purpose. On one side was the great landed interest of England, the aristocracy, the West India planting power, and the aggregate of the mercantile influence of the country. Indeed, there is hardly any interest in a great commercial empire like England, that did not feel the influence of this system, and was not subjected by it to a measurable degree of control. It entered into every ramification of society. It permeated every institution of the land. It wound itself round every establishment. It stretched out its long arms of power and authority to individuals of every rank and every sphere of life. I employ Mr. Clarkson's own description, as the most accurate and distinct: "The slave trade," says he, "was not an interest of a few individuals, nor of one body, but of many bodies of men. It was interwoven into the system of the commerce and of the revenue of nations. Hence the merchant, the planter, the mortgagee, the manufacturer, the politician, the legislator, the cabinet minister, lifted up their voices against the annihilation." "Both the Lords and Commons of England were interested in West India plantations, and the Established Church was a sharer in their unholy gains."[1] It exerted a controlling influence upon individuals, from the king on his throne down to the peasant in his hut and the sailor on the shrouds; and all classes, from the king down to the sailor and the peasant, were enlisted in its behalf, and stood up its defenders.
Suck was the stern and formidable array which presented itself in 1788, in maintenance and defence of the slave trade.
On the other side were associated a few individuals, mostly unknown to fame, without power or patronage, without the advantage of noble
