The idea with these was, that unless the discussion on this subject was terminated, all would be lost.

Thus, under a combination of effects arising from the publication of the Rights of Man, the rise and progress of the French revolution, and the insurrections of the Negros in the different islands, no one of which events had any thing to do with the abolition of the Slave-trade, the current was turned against us; and in this unfavourable frame of mind many members of parliament went into the House, on the day fixed for the discussion, to discharge their duty with respect to this great question.
On the eighteenth of April Mr.Wilberforce made his motion.

He began by expressing a hope, that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction of the truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the Slave-trade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and religion, but by sound policy.

He stated that he should argue the matter from evidence.

He adverted to the character, situation, and means of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner.
He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade.