360 THE GIANTS AND THE PIGMIES. 



rolls which Clarkson had examined, that the Guinea 

 trade was not the nursery of British seamen, but its 

 grave ; and they published a picture of an African 

 slaver, copied from a vessel which was lying in the 

 Mersey, and certain measurements were made, which, 

 being put into feet and inches, justified the statement 

 of a member in the House, that never was so much 

 human suffering condensed into so small a space. 



Lord Chancellor Thurlow and two other members of 

 the Cabinet were opposed to abolition, and therefore 

 Mr Pitt could not make it a government measure ; and 

 so although it was called the battle between the giants 

 and the pigmies ; although Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, 

 "Windham, and Wilberforce, the greatest orators and 

 statesmen of the day, were on one side, and the two 

 members for Liverpool on the other, the brute votes 

 went with the pigmies, and the bill was lost. 



But now the nation was beginning to be moved. 

 The Committee distributed books, and hired columns 

 in the newspapers. They sealed their letters with a 

 negro in chains kneeling, and the motto, " Am I not 

 a man and a brother ? " Wedgwood made cameos 

 with the same design; ladies wore them in their 

 bracelets or their hair-pins ; gentlemen had them in- 

 laid in gold on the lids of their snuff boxes. Cowper 

 sent to the Committee the well - known poem, 

 " Fleecy locks and black complexion; " the Committee 

 printed it on the finest hot-pressed paper, folded it up 

 in a small and neat form, gave it the appropriate title 

 of "A subject for conversation at the tea-table," and 

 cast it forth by thousands upon the land. It was set 

 to music, and sung as a street ballad. People crowded 

 at shop windows to see the picture of the ship in which 

 the poor negroes were packed like herrings in a cask. 



