That inhuman traffic had been carried on to a very great extent for many years by Liverpool merchants, and, of course, the law prohibiting the traffic a law wise and humane, in itself, but injurious to the interests of individuals was resisted in Parliament by all the commercial wealth of Liverpool and Bristol, the two principal ports in which the merchants resided who were engaged in the slave traffic.

Even in 1811, many fine ships were lying idle in the docks, which had been built expressly for that business; and their grated air-ports, high and solid bulwarks, peculiar hatchways, large and unsightly poops, all gave evidence of the expensive arrangements and great importance of the "Guineamen" of those days.
It was expected that our cargo would be completed immediately after our arrival at Liverpool, and the ship despatched on her way around Cape Horn; but the tobacco which we had taken on board in Boston, being an article on which an enormous duty was exacted, was the cause of trouble and delay.

Consultations with the authorities in London were necessary, and weeks elapsed before Captain Bacon could get the ship out of the clutches of the revenue department.

In the mean time the crew remained by the ship, but took their meals at a boarding house on shore, as was the custom in Liverpool.

They were all furnished with American protections; but some of them, unwilling to rely on the protecting power of a paper document, which in their cases told a tale of fiction, adopted various expedients to avoid the press-gangs which occasionally thridded the streets, and even entered dwellings when the doors were unfastened, to capture sailors and COMPEL them to VOLUNTEER to serve their king and country.
One of these unfortunate men, after having successfully dodged the pressgangs for a fortnight, and living meanwhile in an unenviable state of anxiety, was pounced upon by some disguised members of a pressgang as he left the boarding house one evening.