Their tea, and went on as before,
because, what was there to do? - "Hadn't every body always done it? and
if they didn't do it, wouldn't somebody else?"
It is true that for many years individuals at different times had
remonstrated, written treatises, poems, stories, and movements had
been made by some religious bodies, particularly the Quakers, but the
opposition had amounted to nothing practically efficient.
The attention of Clarkson was first turned to the subject by having it
given out as the theme for a prize composition in his college class,
he being at that time a sprightly young man, about twenty-four years
of age. He entered into the investigation with no other purpose than
to see what he could make of it as a college theme.
He says of himself, "I had expected pleasure from the invention of
arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them
together, and from the thought, in the interim, that I was engaged in
an innocent contest for literary honor; but all my pleasures were
damped by the facts which were now continually before me."
"It was but one gloomy subject from morning till night; in the daytime
I was uneasy, in the night I had little rest; I sometimes never closed
my eyelids for grief."
It became not now so much a trial for academical reputation as to
write a work which should be useful to Africa. It is not surprising
that a work written under the force of such feelings should have
gained the prize, as it did. Clarkson was summoned from London to
Cambridge, to deliver his prize essay publicly. He says of himself, on
returning to London, "The subject of it almost wholly engrossed my
thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while on the road.
I stopped my horse occasionally, dismounted, and walked."
"I frequently tried to persuade myself that the contents of my essay
could not be true; but the more I reflected on the authorities on
which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight
of Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf
by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind,
that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time that somebody
should see these calamities to an end."
These reflections, as it appears, were put off for a while, but
returned again.
This young and noble heart was of a kind that could not comfort itself
so easily for a brother's sorrow as many do.
He says of himself, "In the course of the autumn of the same year, I
walked frequently into the woods, that I might think of the subject in
solitude, and find relief to my mind there; but there the question
still recurred, 'Are these things true?' Still, the answer followed as
instantaneously, 'They are;' still the result accompanied it - surely
some person should interfere.
