These in their fright seemed to have lost the right use of their eyes, or to have looked through a magnifying glass.

With these the argument of emancipation, which they would have rejected at another time as ridiculous, obtained now easy credit.

The massacres too and the ruin, though only conjectural, they admitted also.
Hence some of them deserted our cause wholly, while others, wishing to do justice as far as they could to the slaves on the one hand, and to their own countrymen on the other, adopted a middle line of conduct, and would go no further than the regulation of the trade.
While these preparations were making by our opponents to prejudice the minds of those, who were to be the judges in this contest, Mr.Pitt presented the privy council report at the bar of the House of Commons; and as it was a large folio volume, and contained the evidence upon which the question was to be decided, it was necessary that time should be given to the members to peruse it.

Accordingly the twelfth of May was appointed, instead of the twenty-third of April, for the discussion of the question.
This postponement of the discussion of the question gave time to all parties to prepare themselves further.

The merchants and planters availed themselves of it to collect petitions to parliament from interested persons against the abolition of the trade, to wait upon members of parliament by deputation, in order to solicit their attendance in their favour, and to renew their injurious paragraphs in the public papers.