By The Labors Of Clarkson And His Contemporaries An
Incredible Excitement Was Produced Throughout All England.
The
pictures and models of slave ships, accounts of the cruelties
practised in the trade, were circulated with an industry which left
not a man, woman, or child in England uninstructed.
In disseminating
information, and in awakening feeling and conscience, the women of
England were particularly earnest, and labored with that whole-hearted
devotion which characterizes the sex.
It seems that after the committee had published the facts, and sent
them to every town in England, Clarkson followed them up by journeying
to all the places, to see that they were read and attended to. Of the
state of feeling at this time Clarkson gives the following account: -
"And first I may observe, that there was no town through which I
passed in which there was not some one individual who had left off the
use of sugar. In the smaller towns there were from ten to fifty, by
estimation, and in the larger from two to five hundred, who made this
sacrifice to virtue. These were of all ranks and parties. Hich and
poor, churchmen and dissenters, had adopted the measure. Even grocers
had left off trading in the article in some places. In gentlemen's
families, where the master had set the example, the servants had often
voluntarily followed it; and even children, who were capable of
understanding the history of the sufferings of the Africans, excluded,
with the most virtuous resolution, the sweets, to which they had been
accustomed, from their lips.
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