It was even said that he had contrived to incline the King himself to the same view; to have persuaded him that the trade was indispensable to the prosperity of our manufacturers, and, in the Chancellor's words, "that it was his royal duty to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the negroes." And more than once, when bills to limit or wholly suppress the trade had been passed by the Commons, the same mischievous influence defeated them in the Lords.

The last years of Pitt's first administration were too fully occupied with the affairs of Ireland, negotiations with foreign powers, and the great war with France, to enable him to keep pace with his friend's zeal on the subject.

But in his second administration, occupied though he was with a recurrence of the same causes, he found time to prepare and issue an Order in Council prohibiting the importation of slaves into our fresh colonial acquisitions, and the employment of British ships to supply the Dutch, French, and Spanish islands.
And this Order in Council paved the way for the total abolition.

One of the earliest proceedings of the new ministry was the introduction by the Attorney-general, Sir Arthur Pigott, of a bill to extend and make it perpetual; to forbid "the importation of African negroes by British ships into the colonies conquered by or ceded to us in war; or into the colonies of any neutral state in the West Indies.

For at present every state that had colonies in America or the West Indies, and that was not actually at war with us, availed itself of the opportunity of British shipping to carry on the trade." It was resisted as vehemently as any former measure with the same object, and partly on the new ground that it would in no degree stop the trade or diminish the sufferings of the Africans, but would merely rob our ship-owners of their profits to enrich the Americans.