One
Anecdote Will Be A Specimen Of The Energy With Which Clarkson Pursued
Evidence.
It had been very strenuously asserted and maintained that
the subjects of the slave trade were only such unfortunates
As had
become prisoners of war, and who, if not carried out of the country in
this manner, would be exposed to death or some more dreadful doom in
their own country. This was one of those stories which nobody
believed, and yet was particularly useful in the hands of the
opposition, because it was difficult legally to disprove it. It was
perfectly well known that in very many cases slave traders made direct
incursions into the country, kidnapped and carried off the inhabitants
of whole villages; but the question was, how to establish it. A
gentleman whom Clarkson accidentally met on one of his journeys
informed him that he had been in company, about a year before, with a
sailor, a very respectable-looking young man, who had actually been
engaged in one of these expeditions; he had spent half an hour with
him at an inn; he described his person, but knew nothing of his name
or the place of his abode; all he knew was, that he belonged to a ship
of war in ordinary, but knew nothing of the port. Clarkson determined
that this man should be produced as a witness, and knew no better way
than to go personally to all the ships in ordinary, until the
individual was found. He actually visited every seaport town, and
boarded every ship, till in the very _last_ port, and on the very
_last_ ship, which remained, the individual was found, and found
to be possessed of just the facts and information which were
necessary.
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