Let any one read the “Crisis of our Sugar Colonies” with seriousness, and he will acknowledge the amount, the variety, the probability, of the dangers to which our West Indian settlements are exposed. Their reality as well as their magnitude must equally be confessed by every man whose judgment is not totally obscured by interest, or whose discernment is not altogether blinded by familiarity with the objects which he views. [Sidenote: Our population drained.] The next of the important topics to which I lately alluded is one on which, from prudential motives, I will press lightly; but which I must commend to the most serious attention of my readers, not merely from considerations of humanity, but even of self-interest. The West Indies have long been regarded as the grave of our soldiers and seamen, but never surely with so much reason as of late years. For a new disease has broken out, so terribly wasteful in its effects, and so little subject hitherto to the controul of medicine, as to furnish too just cause for fearing lest there should be such a constant drain of the population of the mother country, as from the numbers consumed on the one hand, perhaps even still more on the other, from the dangerous effects on our naval and military service (I trust I shall be understood, though, from motives of caution, I rather hint than express my meaning) to render the protection of our transatlantic colonies incompatible with our internal security. This is a topic on which I will not press; but in proportion as I abstain from the alarming discussion, lest I should in any degree aggravate one of the evils which I apprehend, let it be deeply and seriously weighed by every considerate mind. Even independently of interest, shall not the voice of humanity be heard? Is it nothing to send the brave defenders of our country, and the flower of our youth, to a pestilential climate, where they fall not in the field of battle, not contending with the enemies of their country, but where they perish unknown, and therefore ingloriously, often even falling the victims of their own fears, from beholding such multitudes around them continually swept away.[53]