WILL E A V M THI tife, no compof Lordfhi always Countr and h culiar vour rank i which tigation flavery which me, of which which RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM CHARLES COLYEAR, EARL OF PORTM OR E, VISCOUNT MILSINTOWN. MY LORD, THE dignity of the subject of this little Treatife, not any perfuafion of its merits as a literary compofition, encourages me to offer it to your Lordship's patronage. The caufe of freedom has always been found fufficient, in every age and country, to attract the notice of the generous and humane; and it is therefore, in a more peculiar manner, worthy of the attention and favour of a perfonage, who holds a diftinguished rank in that illuftrious ifland, the very air of which has been determined, upon a late inveftigation of its laws, to be an antidote against flavery. I feel a fatisfaction in the opportunity, which the publication of this treatife affords me, of acknowledging your Lordship's civilities, which can only be equalled by the respect, with which I am, Your Lordship's much obliged, and obedient fervant, THOMAS CLARKSON Extract from Cowper's Poem, called, THE TASK. "I would not have a flave to till my ground, No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Juft eftimation priz'd above all price, "I had much rather be myself the flave And wear the bonds, than faften them on him." THE PRE FAC E. A S the fubject of the following work has fortunately become of late a topick of converfation, I cannot begin the preface in a manner more fatisfactory to the feelings of the benevolent reader, than by giving an account of those humane and worthy perfons, who have endeavoured to draw upon it that share of the publick attention which it has obtained. Among the well difpofed individuals, of different nations and ages, who have humanely exerted themselves to suppress the abject perfonal flavery, introduced in the original cultivation of the European colonies in the western world, Bartholomew de las Cafas, the pious bishop of Chiapa, in the fifteenth century, feems to have been the firft. This amiable man, during his refidence in Spanish America, was fo fenfibly affected at the treatment which the miferable Indians underwent, that he returned to Spain, to make a publick remonstrance before the celebrated emperor Charles the fifth, declaring, that heaven would one day call him to an account for thofe cruelties, which he then had it in his power to prevent. The speech which he made on the occafion, is now extant, and is a moft perfect picture of benevolence and piety. But his intreaties, by the oppofition of avarice, were rendered ineffectual: and I do not find by any books which I have read upon the fubject, that any other perfon interfered till the laft century, when Morgan Godwyn, a British clergyman, difting uifhed himself in the cause. The prefent age has alfo produced fome zealous and able oppofers of the colonial flavery. For about the middle of the prefent century, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, two refpectable members of the religious fociety called. Quakers, devoted much of their time to the fubject. The former travelled through feveral parts of North |