I actually obtained possession of articles of agreement belonging to these vessels, which had been signed and executed in former voyages.

I made the merchants themselves, by sending those seamen, who had claims upon them, to ask for their accounts current with their respective ships, furnish me with such documents as would have been evidence against them in any court of law.

On whatever branch of the system I turned my eyes, I found it equally barbarous.

The trade was, in short, one mass of iniquity from the beginning to the end.
I employed myself occasionally in the Merchants-hall, in making copies of the muster-rolls of ships sailing to different parts of the world, that I might make a comparative view of the loss of seamen in the Slave-trade, with that of those in the other trades from the same port.

The result of this employment showed me the importance of it: for, when I considered how partial the inhabitants of this country were to their fellow-citizens, the seamen belonging to it, and in what estimation the members of the legislature held them, by enforcing the Navigation-Act, which they considered to be the bulwark of the nation, and by giving bounties to certain trades, that these might become so many nurseries for the marine, I thought it of great importance to be able to prove, as I was then capable of doing, that more persons would be found dead in three slave-vessels from Bristol, in a given time, than in all the other vessels put together, numerous as they were, belonging to the same port.
I procured also an account of the exports and imports for the year 1786, by means of which I was enabled to judge of the comparative value of this and the other trades.
In pursuing another object, which was that of going on board the slave-ships, and learning their construction and dimensions, I was greatly struck, and indeed affected, by the appearance of two little sloops, which were fitting out for Africa, the one of only twenty-five tons, which was said to be destined to carry seventy; and the other of only eleven, which was said to be destined to carry thirty slaves.