Soon after the revolt of the negroes in 1791 he paid a short visit to San Domingo, in the welfare of which island he took a deep interest, endeavouring to obtain for it a loan from Jamaica. This was recommended by a Committee of the Assembly; but the matter met with public opposition, and the loan did not pass the House. In a long letter from his pen which appeared in the “Royal Gazette,” April 21, 1792, he says: For myself, I propose shortly to quit the island, and probably shall never return to it; but my wishes for its happiness, freedom and prosperity shall never be suppressed, so long as I have life and recollection. I have exerted myself in its service for the last five years with unabating zeal and perseverance, and, I hope, on some occasions, with success. In 1793 his seat in the Assembly was declared vacant, he having gone to England the previous year. While in the Assembly he was often called upon to assist in drawing up addresses and reports, and he now and then acted as chairman of committees. In England he settled permanently at Southampton as a West Indian merchant and banker. After contesting Southampton in vain in 1794, he was in 1796 elected M.P. for Grampound. He supported the slave trade with certain restrictions, and was admitted by Wilberforce to be a powerful opponent to abolition. He was, however, not unmindful of the great hardships done in Africa, and he had stated in Jamaica “that if all the nations of Europe would concur in a determination to relinquish the slave trade altogether, it ought to be relinquished.” In 1797 he succeeded Sir Joseph Banks as secretary of the Association for promoting the discovery of the interior parts of Africa, and he edited some of Mungo Park’s contributions to its Proceedings. He died at his residence in the Polygon at Southampton, in July 1800. He was buried in the catacombs of the church, but there is no recording tablet. His wife, whom he married in 1774, was Martha, daughter of Thomas Phipps, of Westbury. His vast wealth was inherited by his only surviving son, Zachary Hume Edwards, who was not of age when his father died; but he died on board the _Montague_ packet on his passage from Jamaica to England in 1812. An elder son had died at Winchester College in his seventeenth year, in 1794, of a “nervous malignant fever.”