For gold, in fact, though not in name, a slave And droves on droves were sent to find a grave Oh miserable race to slavery born! Yet when we look beyond this world's unrest, More miserable then the oppressors than the opprest! Oh foul reproach; but not for Spain alone; Oh shall not Justice, trumpet-tongued, proclaim PREFACE. THE manuscript mentioned in the title having been placed, under certain conditions, at my disposal, is now presented to the public. It is an appeal to the imagination and the passions, conveyed in the form of a narrative, supported by unimpeachable evidence; and aspiring to awaken or increase its readers' sympathy with our colonial slaves. Should any one decline to listen to an address of this kind, he is bound to refuse whatever instruction is offered under a similar shape. The consequence will be, a rejection of the principles taught in the parables of the New Testament; for these also are an appeal to the imagination and the passions; while the miracles of Jesus Christ speak to the senses, and his exhortations to the conscience. As to the additions made by the Editor to the original papers, they are inserted without any distinctive marks; but for the whole publication he is exclusively responsible, He only begs, that the demerits of the work may be imputed to himself, and its excellencies to another; and, these points premised, all his anxiety is, that the Memoirs, and their appendages, may not injure their great object. The Abolitionists of the present day, like their predecessors who began the conflict forty years since, have much reason to regret the interference of idle talkers and intemperate writers, with a question quite independent of such allies. With regard, indeed, to those opponents who shelter their indifference, or hostility, under the plea that a good cause has been ill managed; it is not, we trust, too late to remind them, that no person of a serious mind examine a matter otherwise a than on its abstract merits. If the evidences of Christianity itself depended upon the character of many of its adherents, it must long ago have been forgotten among the dreams of imposture. The name of Judas would alone have sunk its loftiest pretensions: and none, who have the least acquaintance with Ecclesiastical History, will need to be informed, that the spirit of the traitor has never been exorcised from the visible church. It is equally notorious, that the Protestant cause has been frequently conducted with the fraud, selfishness, and worldly policy so justly charged upon the Jesuits; and-to come nearer to the bosoms of numbers who complain of the Anti-Slavery partythe Established Churches of these dominions have been, and are now, defended by sectarian weapons. But, as Henry V. said-Shakespeare being his interpreter- there is no King, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.' Another class of opponents is determined to reject all testimony from witnesses once connected with a system they afterwards endeavour to undermine. On this principle, the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul should be examined with the utmost suspicion and severity; as one of these confessors denied his Master, and the other openly avowed himself to have been formerly a persecutor and blasphemer. By the same rule, the evidence of Mr. Blanco White against Catholicism ought to have been hissed out of court: it is little better than perjury in disguise. But who does not know, that it has always been an established practice with mankind, to receive with enthusiasm deserters from an enemy's camp? Of this, the Archbishop of Spalato, in the seventeenth century, will ever be a memorable example; and, at the present moment, Mr. Blanco White himself is cherished among us— and, I believe, most deservedly-as a faithful witness of what he has seen and heard. To this settled order of things the colonial question has formed, however, a mysterious exception. Certain persons are not to be credited, because they were once planters and proprietors of slaves. How is this deviation from the beaten track of the world to be explained? The subject presents also another mystery. I mean the apathy, and even the impatience and irritability, manifested, with regard to the Abolition, by numbers of the Christian philanthropists of these busy times. Their conduct is a direct contrast to the spirit awakened throughout their own body, when the cause of the African was first debated. In 1787, their exertions in favour of the Negroes were unanimous, rapid, and efficient. In 1827, they are either slumbering on their arms: or, in effect, subsidizing the colonists. The circumstance is more extraordinary, as we live in days when activity in doing good-whatever be the motive-is become fashionable. Never was the machinery of benevolence worked with greater skill, precision, and perseverance. But, in some quarters, the cause of the slaves is forgotten, or ridiculed; or it is even opposed by persons so intensely absorbed in schemes of charity, as-for so the accusation runs-to postpone their domestic and more imperative duties till tomorrow. Is this, because the Abolitionists cannot bring forward, on their hustings, stories of triumph equivalent to the splendid success announced at the anniversaries of Missionary and Bible societies? Alas! our details are too generally those of languid operation, of retrograde movements, and even of confusion and discomfiture! And why-but, for one reason, because we have so few auxiliaries! Let it be at length recollected, that the Slave Trade and Slavery are identical; that the earnestness once displayed by the moralists of this country, to annihilate the commerce in human beings, ought to have been continued against the oppression of the same beings, either as transferred from a slave-ship to a slave-colony, or as descended from the exiles of Africa, and inheritors of their affliction. 'I think,' said the late Right Hon. William Windham, that too much distinction has been made between two things so closely connected with each other, as Slavery and the Slave Trade. They |