prized of it, without thinking the worse of me, in a moral refpect, on that account. Of fuch men as these chriftianity may juftly make her boast. In all, however, we must make allowance for human frailties, from which no men, not even the apostles, were exempt.

With respect to the facts mentioned in this difcourfe, I can only fay that I was far from wishing to exaggerate any thing; but have taken them from fuch accounts as appeared to me to be the most to be depended upon; and as the tracts from which I collected them are in very common circulation, I have no occafion to quote any of them. Under humane mafters, flaves may, no doubt, enjoy a certain degree of happiness; but still they are flaves, subject to the wills, and confequently the caprices, of others; and there is no proper fecurity from the greateft outrages, but in the protection of law.

I am happy to hear fince this Difcourfe was fent to the prefs, that one planter, who employs a very great number of flaves, has

had

had no occafion to purchase any fresh ones these twenty years. This may convince us that a stoppage of the importation would not be a great hardship upon the planters in general. It would only compel them to find their own intereft in treating their flaves well, and in favouring their propagation.

On the other hand, I must add that I have been informed by a person who refided in Jamaica, that it is ufual for the flaves, after they are purchased, to fhudder at the fight of a fire, or kitchen utensils, imagining that they are to be killed and eaten, till older flaves convince them that nothing of that kind is intended. What the poor creatures muft fuffer with this idea on their minds all the voyage, and the terror it must imprefs on the country in general, in which thousands who are never taken know they are liable to it, is not to be estimated, and for which no good treatment of slaves can compenfate. This is what a brute cannot be made to fuffer, and fhews how improper and unnatural this trafficking with the buman fpecies must be.

Which of these three, thinkeft thou, was neighbout to him that fell among the thieves? And he said, be that shewed mercy unto him. Then faid: Jefus unto him, Go thou ...and do likewife.

2

LUKE X. 36, 37•

My chriftian brethren,

I DO not know whether it be more in the character of men, or in that of chriftians, that I shall now take the liberty to address you. But if you feel as becomes either, you cannot but sympathize with the miferable and oppreffed of the human race, how remote: foever they be from yourselves in every other refpect. You will confider all mankind as brethren,' and neighbours, intitled to every good office that it may be in your power to render them. As men, and as chriftians, obfervant of the instructions of our great mafter in my text, we should interest ourselves not only for our relations, and particular friends; not only for our countrymen ;

B

countrymen; not only for Europeans, but for the diftreffed inhabitants of Afia, Africa, or America; and not only for chriftians, but for Jews, Mahometans, and Infidels. And as we ought to feel for our fellow men, we ought, to the utmost extent of our influence, to exert ourselves to relieve their diftreffes.

Does not, then, the cafe of the African Negroes, who have long been unjustly enflaved, and have been made to fuffer numberlefs miferies, the leaft of which is mere fervitude, in our West Indies, deferve our compaffion, and loudly call for our friendly interpofition in their favour? And furely they are not the lefs intitled to it because their oppreffors are our countrymen, and because we have derived, or have imagined that we have derived, benefit from their op. preffion. Now, then, that it has pleased God, who, for reasons just and wife, no doubt (because fuch is his character) but often unfearchable by us, permits the rife and progress of all the evils that we see and lament, has awakened the attention of many

in our nation to this great and growing enormity, and to interest great numbers in favour of the unhappy fufferers; let not us be the laft, though we cannot have the honour of being the firft, to join heartily in the measures that are now taking for their relief; it being propofed to recommend their case to the confideration of parliament the prefent feffion, and the friends of the measure thinking that a general application from all parts of the country, and especially from towns of note like this, will tend to promote it, and almost ensure its fuccefs.

Thoroughly to intereft you, and to engage your warmeft zeal in the caufe, no thing, my brethren, I am confident, will be requifite, befides ftating the fimple facts; of the magnitude of which few perfons, not perfonally concerned in this traffic of the human fpecies, and the treatment to which flaves are subject, are fufficiently apprized. Indeed, had the fhocking scenes to which the attention of the public is now invited been generally known before, the evil could not have grown to its present B 2 height,