have levelled many of the difficulties which were before opposed to the religious improvement of the negro. His measures have been distinguished by zeal tempered with discretion-by an earnest and unceasing desire for the spiritual welfare of the slave, combined with a studied forbearance from encroachment on the private and recognized rights of the master. If his success has not been always commensurate with his wishes, the failure is attributable to causes over which he has had no control. The statements contained in the following lectures will exhibit the extent to which religious instruction has been carried.

It falls not within their scope to dwell on the melioration of the temporal circumstances of the slave. I may, however, briefly remark that, of late years,

it has been evidently progressive, though there remains still very much to be done. We may judge of the former condition of the negro from the feelings of astonishment with which the old residents, when alluding to the subject, speak of the change they have witnessed. There are some candid enough to attribute the improved treatment of this part of our population to the agitation of the slave question in the mother country. I join most cordially in this opinion, and it would be an unworthy deference to the feelings of those who oppose colonial improvement, to suppress my conviction that both masters and slaves have derived essential benefit from the subject having been viewed with freedom of debate on both sides, in the Parliament of Great Britain. I speak in no party spirit.

My conclusions are not drawn from the suggestions of others, or from any preconceived and unauthorized opinions of my own. They are the result of unprejudiced observation and experience.

The only favour I request from those into whose hands these Lectures may fall, is that they will read them with the same dispassionate and unprejudiced spirit as that in which they have been, as I trust, written. The really Christian master will find nothing in them which can convey to him the semblance of reproof; for in his practice he has anticipated every duty which I have endeavoured to enforce; and if I have drawn faithfully the character which ought to be exemplified in the proprietor of a plantation, he will recognize the model which I have had before me in himself. As my object is

not to dwell in laudatory language upon the good that exists in these colonies, but to point out the evil, in the hope of procuring its correction, I may incur the suspicion of inclining more to the side of blame than praise. I may even become obnoxious to the censure of persons whom I highly esteem, and whose favourable opinion I should be most anxious to retain. But a minister of the gospel must hazard any sacrifice rather than say, "Peace, when there is no peace,"1 or "keep back any thing that is profitable" from his hearers. Those who know me will do me the justice to believe that in the performance of what I consider as an act of duty. I have studiously avoided every expression that conceive could reasonably

Ezek. xiii. 10.

2 Acts xx.

1

20.

offend or hurt the feelings of any. They are fully aware that no one more deeply laments than I do, the painful excitement with which every subject connected with the West Indies is usually discussed, and that I regard as a real friend to the proprietors, neither him who holds forth their faults to high commendation, nor him who passes a sweeping and indiscriminate censure on every part of their system, and on every individual of their body.

Barbados, Nov. 3, 1832.