This influential pamphlet, published in multiple editions, argued that in order to successfully set an example to the rest of Europe on the slave trade, Britain would first have to abolish slavery: "Then, and not till then, we shall speak to the surrounding nations with the all-commanding eloquence of sincerity and truth" (3). It emphasises the "sacred unalienable right" (8) of enslaved peoples to freedom, the unconstitutionality of slavery, and declares abolitionism a "holy war" (18) in which immediate and collective action must be taken: "The hydra-headed monster of slavery will never be destroyed by other means, than the united expression of individual opinion, and the united exertion of individual resolution" (19).