public, that I need scarcely regret the want of time to offer here new demonstrations of its truth. It can be doubted only by those who will not listen or read on the subject; or whose prejudices are quite invincible.

The national mischiefs, however, produced by this commerce and the colonial system which it generates, are more and greater than even abolitionists have yet stated. They are evils sustained at the great expence of that commercial welfare which they are falsely alledged to promote; and by a still more ruinous waste of our national wealth. They have cost us tenfold as many millions as they have truly returned.

The bankruptcies among our merchants, and the losses among our manufacturers, produced by the Slave trade, and by West India speculations in new lands, those kindred bubbles with which it is always associated, notoriously and greatly exceed, in number and extent, the gains and the fortunes produced by them.

I quarrel with no theorists here; unless they would push their maxims to preposterous extremes. Be it admitted, that the wrecks of individual enterprize are often public emolument: still there must be limits to the practical application of such theories. A nation cannot profit by the adventures of its citizens, when private ruin is the ordinary event; and success the rare exception.

Hazardous, and in a general view, unsuccessful, as these speculations have always been, they are now become infinitely more so. Before the markets of Europe were shut to our West India produce, the prices of

Sugar were so far from yielding a profit on the

Planter's capital, that they hardly paid his annual expences, and the charges of sending his commodity to Europe. War has admit, contributed to these effects. But war, alas! is now become a perennial evil. Nor could peace bring any mitigation that could possibly turn the balance in favour of the planters at large. In fact, sugar planting has long been, on an average, a losing business; and is now become from the natural progress of causes inherent to the existing system, independently of the evils of war, but above all from the continuance of the slave trade, a speculation which, to the great majority of adventurers, is and must be ruinous.* That men are found still to engage in it, is no argument whatever to the contrary; any more than the great

* That the sugar planters, in the old islands, have, for many years, been progressively sinking deeper and deeper in ruin, is a fact quite undisputed among those who know any thing of the ease. In a late publication, by a gentleman of high commercial character, and intimately connected with the sugar colonies, it is held that estates in St. Kitt's, an island famous for the quantity and quality of its produce, do not produce on an average, for a series of years, 4 per cent. on the capital invested. Yet the legal interest of that island is 8 per cent.; and many planters are glad to obtain money at that rate. The incumbrances on estates in the West Indies, notoriously bear a large proportion to the whole value of the capital it requires little calculation therefore to shew, that enormous losses must be incurred; and on whom do they chiefly fall, but English creditors ?-See letter to William Manning, Esq. M. P. by C. Bosanquet, Esq. p. 17.

If further proof be wanted, that sugar planting is become a ruinous employment for our commercial capital, I refer to Sir William Young's late work; and to the last menifǝsto of the Jamaca Assembly, printed by order of the House of Commons, February 25th, 1805. Bankruptcy is there described as the almost universal lot of the planters of that island.

sale of lottery tickets, is a proof that the chances are on the whole beneficial to the purchasers.

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The West India lottery, from the unhappy and extreme inequalities of sugar crops, has still a few tempting prizes and so it would, perhaps, if upon the general capital embarked, there were a loss of per cent. The successful adventures, like the 20,000l. prizes at Guildhall, are blazoned in every walk of English commerce; while the blanks are unnoticed and forgot. New dupes therefore are continually fonnd; and while millions are periodically sunk by our planters, and slave traders, by our merchants and monied men who trust them, and by our manufacturers who trust the merchants; the nation, like a simple lottery club, is fatally persuaded, that it is beneficial to follow the game.

Mean time, the accursed system begotten and upheld in all its abuses by the Slave trade, produces a state of interior weakness and danger in these colonies, which has made them, both in peace and war, most expensive incumbrances on the revenues of the parent state; and fatal drains on our regular army. The West Indies have probably cost us more money since 1792, than all our military operations on the Continent, and subsidies to our allies, united; and the waste of our regular infantry which they have occasioned within the same period, has beyond doubt, greatly exceeded the whole collective losses of our army, by sickness, or the sword, in every other service. *

Sir William Young, has given in his late work, authentic returns, whereby it appears that out of 19,676 men, mustered

Were there no other objections to the Slave Trade, than that it is continually adding to the extent of mercantile capital, thus wastefully applied, and colonies thus dreadfully maintained, it would be a sufficient reason for its abolition. But this horrible commerce, at the same time, forms an insuperable obstacle to benign improvements in our sugar colonies; and tends to perpetuate every mischief, moral and political, that belongs to their interior system. While a slave market exists, neither wholesome laws, nor individual benevolence, will ever be able to meliorate the general lot of those wretched beings, who toil under the whips of the drivers. It would be as rational to attempt to bring a sea marsh into tillage, without first embanking against the tide.

That the propositions last advanced, are not wholly consistent with the delusive representations of self interested men, and with the prejudices of the illinformed, I too well know; and yet I cannot consistently with the plan of the present work, proceed to demonstrate their truth. Should the grand abolition controversy not soon be shortened, by the force of those admitted principles on which it ought to be decided, the public shall ere long, be possessed of some precise

in the windward and leeward islands from 1796, to 1802, we lost by death, no less than 17,173. But this account, I apprehend, contains no part of the army employed in St. Domingo, or Jamaica; nor does it embrace the losses during the years 1793,-4, and during which the yellow fever was peculiarly destructive.

See West India Common Place Book, page 218.

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and systematic information respecting colonial slavery; and I trust then to satisfy every man who will take the pains to reason upon well established premises, that all these propositions and remarks, as to the ill effects of this commerce in the colonies, are irrefragably true. Mean time, I will rather leave them unargued to the reflections of the discerning reader, than forbear to notice such powerful considerations, among the reasons for abolishing the Slave trade.

There are other and higher views however, upon which, without assuming any thing that can be the subject of controversy or doubt, we may arrive at the same practical conclusion.

The esteem of foreign nations, is obviously of consequence to us at all times, and especially at this singular conjuncture.-We feel it to be so; for we have endeavoured to conciliate their good opinion and friendship, by very costly sacrifices. Buonaparte too, is of the same mind; for he is scarcely more intent upon ruining our commerce, than destroying our reputation on the continent; and beyond doubt, it would tend much to preclude our effectual interposition, at some future and auspicious season, between his ambition, and the remnant of Europe that has yet escaped his sword, if he could succeed in persuading the world, that we are a sordid, selfish, and unprincipled people, whose gold is their god, and who would spread desolation through the earth, for the sole purpose of extending their com merce. It might also further his present plan, of en