Mr. Allen was evidently much concerned with the activity of the French in West Indian waters. He says: "As to the slave-trade, it is too well known that the French are now under contract with the Spanish Assiento to supply them with four or five thousand negroes yearly and the greater profits and advantages which they reap from this trade has encouraged them to send many strong ships yearly to the coast of Africa which have not only taken many of our own ships on that coast, but also destroyed several of our many forts and settlements and likewise made several new settlements of their own, all which has been frequently represented both in the governing and legislative bodies of Britain, and no effectual reconciling remedy taken yet." He continues, that the channel of Spanish trade is quite altered from Jamaica "and the French, a nation whom we least suspected in trade, have of late years engrossed much of the greatest part thereof to themselves." He tries to rouse the British to the need of regaining the Spanish market in America, which was slowly slipping away from them, by a strenuous appeal to his Majesty to encourage such commerce by underselling the French. After giving a list of commodities and manufactures proper for this trade, he adds the postscript: "If Queen Anne, at the treaty of Utrecht, obtained so valuable a branch of trade as the Assiento contract by the success of the Duke of Marlboro alone, which according to stipulation was for two millions in shares annually, but doubly augmented under that contract in other goods (tho' given up by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle with our right of logwood) how much more ought we to insist on valuable terms since the reduction of Cuba, the key to the South Sea trade?" While the British people, like all people under a mass suggestion, were giving themselves up to jubilating and celebrating, the politicians in Parliament and elsewhere to controversies on technical questions, the business world of London and the great industrial and manufacturing centers of the country were considering investments in West Indian trade and calculating the profits to be made thereby. After all human nature is very much alike the world over. That the British as victors were also not different from other conquerors by force of arms and exacted requisitions and even without any formalities and ceremonies appropriated the treasures that seemed worth taking possession of, is evident from many data in the chronicles of those days. Not only were the royal chests taken, but also the property of private corporations, and individuals. Some documents relating to the "right of bells" have been presented and are interesting reading. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Cleaveland, Artillery Commander of the island, addressed the following communication to Bishop Senor D. Pedro Agustino Morell of Santa Cruz, and to other priests: