They answered, that I might treat the History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade as a species of biography, or as the history of a part of my own life: that people, who had much less weighty matters to communicate, wrote their own histories; and that no one charged them with vanity for so doing.
I own I was not convinced by this answer.

I determined, however, in compliance with their wishes, to examine the objection more minutely, and to see if I could overcome it more satisfactorily to my own mind.
With this view, I endeavoured to anticipate the course which such a history would take.

I saw clearly, in the first place, that there were times, for months together, when the committee for the abolition of the Slave Trade was labouring without me, and when I myself for an equal space of time was labouring in distant parts of the kingdom without them.

Hence I perceived that, if my own exertions were left out, there would be repeated chasms in this history; and, indeed, that it could not be completed without the frequent mention of myself.

And I was willing to hope that this would be so obvious to the good sense of the reader, that if he should think me vain-glorious in the early part of it, he would afterwards, when he advanced in the perusal of it, acquit me of such a charge.