TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book. All changes noted in the ERRATA on page 68 have been applied to the etext. The erratum for p. 21 should have said l. 34, not l. 3. Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PRESENT PEACE, As far as it is relative to the COLONIES, AND THE AFRICAN TRADE. _Magna est veritas & prævalebit._ LONDON: Printed for W. BRISTOW, at the West End of St. Paul’s Church-yard. MDCCLXIII. [Price One Shilling.] TO THE BRITISH PLANTERS. GENTLEMEN, An uninterested desire of rendering service to the public, and not an idle whim, or vanity to appear in print, has induced the editors of the following facts to publish them. Author is a title they lay no claim to. By their unornamented energy alone is meant to gain the reader’s attention, and to enforce the facts advanced; therefore, without further apology, they are presented to you in a plain dress, to point out some measures that were taken to mislead the legislature, whereby the African trade, in the year 1750, was put upon such a plan, as, by the event, has proved extreamly detrimental to the British colonies. On that account, the following sheets can be addressed to none so properly as to you. We flatter ourselves it will evidently appear by the contents of the following pamphlet, that the forts on the coast of Africa, are by no means upon a proper establishment; likewise that the present method of carrying on the African trade to those parts where the forts are situated, by the very high price given for Negroes there, which occasions the profit arising to be divided between the _European_ merchants and the _African_ traders, but must become extreamly burthensome and disadvantageous to you, we believe every _real planter_ will allow.