that its termination will be injurious to their interests, than the Abolitionists are, that its continuance is every moment threatening them with ruin. But when the Colonists tell us that the system which we recommend to them, would be injurious to their own and the national welfare, in opposition to the repeatedly avowed opinions of those great statesmen, in the sense of national interest entertained by the one or by the other of whom they have all, in every other instance, concurred; are we not also entitled to say, that their system has at least had a full and fair trial, and that the issue of this experiment has been to bring our old colonies in general into such an extremity of distress and embarrassment, as even the realizing of the utmost apprehensions which our opponents have entertained from the abolition could scarcely exceed? [Sidenote: Present West Indian System ruinous.] Here again an immense field opens to our view. But I must take a most hasty survey of it; otherwise it would be no difficult task to prove, that the Slave Trade, and the system of management with which it is intimately associated, has, in various ways, tended to this unprosperous issue. The eyes of the public have been dazzled by the sight of some splendid fortunes, which, it is understood, have been rapidly acquired; while the liberal, not to say profuse, tempers and habits of the West Indian gentlemen, tempers and habits naturally generated by a system of slavery, as well as by a tropical climate, and which are powerfully promoted by the prodigious variations in the annual returns of their estates, tend to keep up the delusion. But West Indian speculations, which have often been called a lottery, are, like the lottery, on the whole a very losing game. This will be the more readily assented to, when it is stated, that in Jamaica, by far the largest of our colonies, taking the whole island together, the planters capital, as was stated in 1789 to the Privy Council, by a Committee of the Council of the island, does not yield more than about 4 per cent.; and this, it is to be observed, is not obtained by all adventurers in about an equal proportion; but as some derive great gains, others are proportionably losers. In some few of the smaller islands, the profit on the capital was stated to be somewhat, but only a little more. The facility of purchasing labourers afforded by the Slave Trade has tempted multitudes to their ruin. Sometimes a great number of Slaves, for which no adequate preparations were made, have been put to the most unhealthy and laborious of all employments, the clearing of new land, and forming of new settlements. Accordingly, it has followed for the most part but too naturally, that the Slaves have perished, and the estate has been either thrown up, or sold for the benefit of the creditors.