CHAPTER XX.
_Labours of the commitee during the author's journey--Quakers the first to notice its institution--General Baptists the next--Correspondence opened with American societies for Abolition--First individual who addressed the commitee was Mr.William Smith--Thanks voted to Ramsay--commitee prepares lists of persons to whom to send its publications--Barclay, Taylor, and Wedgwood elected members of the commitee--Letters from Brissot, and others--Granville Sharp elected chairman--Seal ordered to be engraved -- Letters from different correspondents as they offered their services to the commitee._ The commitee, during my absence, had attended regularly at their posts.
They had been both vigilant and industrious.

They were, in short, the persons, who had been the means of raising the public spirit, which I had observed first at Manchester, and afterwards as I journeyed on.

It will be proper, therefore, that I should now say something of their labours, and of the fruits of them.

And if, in doing this, I should be more minute for a few pages than some would wish, I must apologize for myself by saying that there are others, who would be sorry to lose the knowledge of the particular manner in which the foundation was laid, and the superstructure advanced, of a work, which will make so brilliant an appearance in our history as that of the abolition of the Slave-trade.
The commitee having dispersed five hundred circular letters, giving an account of their institution, in London and its neighbourhood, the Quakers were the first to notice it.

This they did in their yearly epistle, of which the following is an extract:--"We have also thankfully to believe there is a growing attention in many, not of our religious Society, to the subject of Negro-slavery; and that the minds of the people are more and more enlarged to consider it as an aggregate of every species of evil, and to see the utter inconsistency of upholding it by the authority of any nation whatever, especially of such as punish, with loss of life, crimes whose magnitude bears scarce any proportion to this complicated iniquity." The General Baptists were the next; for on the twenty-second of June, Stephen Lowdell and Dan Taylor attended as a deputation from the annual meeting of that religious body, to inform the commitee, that those, whom they represented, approved their proceedings, and that they would countenance the object of their institution.
The first individual, who addressed the commitee, was Mr.William Smith, the present member for Norwich.