I have detained you very long on this topic: but I have dwelt the more largely on the vileness and degradation of the Negro race, because it appears to me to be the grand master vice of the colonial system. If duly considered, and traced into its almost infallible operations, it will establish the prevalence of all the other evils which have been specified; for it is of a nature so subtle and powerful, as to extend its effects into every branch of negro management; and wherever its influence does extend, it has a natural and sure tendency to lessen the enjoyments of the Slaves, and to aggravate their sufferings. If all the various other causes which operate unfavourably on the condition and treatment of the Slaves could be done away, it contains within itself the pregnant source of numerous, most important, and, so long as it continues, incurable mischiefs. Let me, therefore, once more conjure the West Indian Proprietors to give their due weight to all the foregoing facts and considerations; to observe how low a point in the scale of being is now allotted to the Negro race; and to estimate duly the effects on their treatment, and comforts, and feelings, which must necessarily result from such vileness and degradation. I cannot quit this head without once more assuring them, that it is unspeakably painful to me to appear to be charging the bulk of the resident White population of the West Indies with having too low an estimate of the Negroes as a race, and of the consideration and comforts which are due to them. But the nature of my undertaking renders it my duty to state facts, such as I really believe them to be. If I have fallen into any error, I shall be most willing to correct it, and shall be sincerely thankful to any one who will set me right. But I will frankly own, also, to the resident West Indians, that, judged at the bar of equity and candour, we in this country are more in fault than they in that. Of them it can only be said, that causes of powerful, and, where great numbers of human beings are concerned, of almost infallible operation, have produced their natural effects. We have no such excuse to allege. We have not been familiarized by habit, or misled by interest, or prejudice, or party spirit, into contemplating without pain, a system from which, at first, both they and we must have shrunk back with horror. We cannot allege, that all the consequences, greatly as they are to be deplored, are not such as we might have anticipated with ease, or rather might have predicted with certainty, reasoning from the acknowledged principles both of speculation and experience. Could we not have foretold what would necessarily be the consequences of a system of slavery continued for centuries, where the Slaves, as in the West Indies, were to be of a peculiar race and colour, and under all the other circumstances of the African Negroes? We cannot, at least, plead a prejudice in favour of slavery, in consequence of having long been