Day after day we beat our opponents out of the field, as many of the company acknowledged, to their no small notification, in their presence.

Thus, while we served the cause by discovering all that could be said against it, we served it by giving numerous individuals proper ideas concerning it, and of interesting them in our favour.
The second effect which I experienced was, that from this time I could never get any one to come forward as an evidence to serve the cause.
There were, I believe, hundreds of persons in Liverpool, and in the neighbourhood of it, who had been concerned in this traffic, and who had left it, all of whom could have given such testimony concerning it as would have insured its abolition.

But none of them would now speak out.
Of these, indeed, there were some, who were alive to the horrors of it, and who lamented that it should still continue.

But yet even these were backward in supporting me.

All that they did was just privately to see me, to tell me that I was right, and to exhort me to persevere: but as to coming forward to be examined publicly, my object was so unpopular, and would become so much more so when brought into parliament, that they would have their houses pulled down, if they should then appear as public instruments in the annihilation of the trade.