Numberless facts had been related by eye-witnesses, called in support of the abolition, so dreadfully atrocious, that they appeared incredible; and seemed rather, to use the expression of Ossian, like "the histories of the days of other times." These procured for the trade a species of acquittal, which it could not have obtained, had the committee been authorised to administer an oath.

He apprehended also, in this case, that some other persons would have been rather more guarded in their testimony.

Captain Knox would not then perhaps have told the committee, that six hundred slaves could have had comfortable room at night in his vessel of about one hundred and forty tons; when there could have been no more than five feet six inches in length, and fifteen inches in breadth, to about two thirds of his number.
The same gentleman had also dwelt upon the Slave-trade as a nursery for seamen.

But it had appeared by the muster-rolls of the slave-vessels, then actually on the table of the House, that more than a fifth of them died in the service, exclusive of those who perished when discharged in the West Indies; and yet he had been instructed by his constituents to maintain this false position.

His reasoning, too, was very curious; for, though numbers might die, yet as one half, who entered, were landsmen, seamen were continually forming.