CHAPTER XXI.
Labours of the committee continued to February, 1788 .-- Committee elect new members; vote thanks to Falconbridge and others; receive letters from Grove and others; circulate numerous publications; make a report; send circular letters to corporate bodies; release negroes unjustly detained; find new correspondents in Archdeacon Paley, the Marquis de la Fayette, Bishop of Cloyne, Bishop of Peterborough, and in many others.
The labours of the committee, during my absence, were as I have now explained them; but as I was obliged, almost immediately, on joining them, to retire into the country to begin my new work, I must give an account of their further services till I joined them again, or till the middle of February, 1788.
During sittings which were held from the middle of December, 1787, to the 18th of January, 1788, the business of the committee had so increased, that it was found proper to make an addition to their number.
Accordingly James Martin and William Morton Pitt, Esquires, members of parliament, and Robert Hunter, and Joseph Smith, Esquires, were chosen members of it.
The knowledge also of the institution of the society had spread to such an extent, and the eagerness among individuals to see the publications of the committee had been so great, that the press was kept almost constantly going during the time now mentioned.

No fewer than three thousand lists of the subscribers, with a circular letter prefixed to them, explaining the object of the institution, were ordered to be printed within this period, to which are to be added fifteen hundred of BENEZET'S _Account of Guinea_, three thousand of the DEAN of MIDDLEHAM'S _Letters_, five thousand _Summary View,_ and two thousand of a new edition of the _Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species_, which I had enlarged before the last of these sittings from materials collected in my late tour.
The thanks of the committee were voted during this period to Mr.
Alexander Falconbridge, for the assistance he had given me in my inquiries into the nature of the Slave Trade.
As Mr.Falconbridge had but lately returned from Africa, and as facts and circumstances, which had taken place but a little time ago, were less liable to objections (inasmuch as they proved the present state of things) than those which happened in earlier times, he was prevailed upon to write an account of what he had seen during the four voyages he had made to that continent; and accordingly, within the period which has been mentioned, he began his work.
The committee, during these sittings, kept up a correspondence with those gentlemen who were mentioned in the last chapter to have addressed them.

But, besides these, they found other voluntary correspondents in the following persons, Capell Lofft, Esq., of Troston, and the Reverend B.Brome, of Ipswich, both in the county of Suffolk.

These made an earnest tender of their services for those parts of the county in which they resided.

Similar offers were made by Mr.Hammond, of Stanton, near St.Ives, in the county of Huntingdon, by Thomas Parker, Esq., of Beverly, and by William Grove, Esq., of Litchfield, for their respective towns and neighbourhoods.
A letter was received also within this period from the society established at Philadelphia, accompanied with documents in proof of the good effects of the manumission of slaves, and with specimens of writing and drawing by the same.