ABSTRACT
The ‘moral Steam-Engine, or the Giant with one idea’ as Coleridge called him, first became interested in the slave trade after graduating from St John’s College, Cambridge in 1783 when he won the members’ prize for the Latin essay. Clarkson spent the autumn of 1787 in the hazardous task of collecting reliable first-hand information against the trade, interviewing sailors in Bristol and Liverpool and scouring the country for creditable witnesses to provide testimony against the trade. Clarkson’s The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament was the first substantial account of the struggle. The extract included here is the third part of Clarkson’s prize-winning essay which describes the conditions of slavery in the European colonies.
