CHAPTER XXIII.
Continuation to the middle of July .-- Anxiety of Sir William Dolben to lessen the horrors of the Middle Passage till the great question should be discussed; brings in a bill for that purpose; debate upon it .-- Evidence examined against it; its inconsistency and falsehoods .-- Further debate upon it .-- Bill passed, and carried to the Lords; vexatious delays and opposition there; carried backwards and forwards to both houses .-- At length finally passed .-- Proceedings of the committee in the interim; effects of them.
It was supposed, after the debate, of which the substance has been just given, that there would have been no further discussion of the subject till the next year; but Sir William Dolben became more and more affected by those considerations which he had offered to the house on the ninth of May.

The trade, he found, was still to go on.

The horrors of the transportation, or Middle Passage, as it was called, which he conceived to be the worst in the long catalogue of evils belonging to the system, would of course accompany it.

The partial discussion of these, he believed, would be no infringement of the late resolution of the house.
He was desirous, therefore, of doing something in the course of the present session, by which the miseries of the trade might be diminished as much as possible, while it lasted, or till the legislature could take up the whole of the question.

This desire he mentioned to several of his friends; and as these approved of his design, he made it known on the twenty-first of May in the House of Commons.
He began by observing, that he would take up but little of their time.
He rose to move for leave to bring in a bill for the relief of those unhappy persons, the natives of Africa, from the hardships to which they were usually exposed in their passage from the coast of Africa to the colonies.