of the greatest kingdoms in Europe, and the encouragement of virtue, that will consolidate their foundations. Look into the historic page, and see, as in a mirror, your perilous situation. You stand on a precipice; deep is the abyss beneath. That you should fall into it, God forbid! To sce fruitful countries rendered a desert, populous cities reduced to a heap of ruins, how affecting the spectacle! Have not such disasters befallen the most favoured nations, and the most famous cities of antiquity? Is not their God, and ours, as gracious to reward virtue, and as just to punish vice now, as ever he was? Then ; Christendom, fear! Enslavers, oppressors, murderers of mankind, tremble! Slavery, oppression, murder, God eternally hates. Such cruelties he can, and he will punish. If just, just to his word, just to himself, just to his creatures, he must do it, he cannot but do it. May a sincere repentance, a speedy and exemplary reformation be the happy means of preventing the ruin you have incurred! Thus was sinful Nineveh spared; and thus may you be saved from impending ruin. By the authority of heaven, by the terrors and by the mercies of the Almighty, I adjure you to consider your ways; to repent and reform; to suppress speedily, effectually, and finally suppress, in all in all your territories, oppression and cru

elty, of every name, and of every form! Whom do you, by your emisaries, enslave, oppress, and murder? I tell you the sons and daughters of Adam; and Adam was the son of God. Is a child supposed, in temper and conduct, to resemble its father? Man was formed in the likeness, and after the image, of his divine Maker. Shall the rational offspring of God be degraded to a level with brutes; and, in various instances, treated worse than brutes? And shall not their common father be affronted, and to an awful degree, offended? The thought of his displeasure, and severe, but just resentment, who can bear?

A sudden reverse of fortune may befal you. Far is it from unprecedented or uncommon, for individuals, families, nations, in great dignity and power, to be suddenly sunk to a state of almost unequalled adversity and wretchedness. Unacquainted, indeed, is he with the history of mankind, to whom examples of such sudden reverses, are not familiar. Highly favoured have the nations of Christendom been. Flourishing is the present state of many of these nations. how precarious is worldly prosperity! The greater the height of prosperity any nation has attained, the more dreadful its downfal, when prosperity is metamorphized into adversity.

But

is the history of the world, but a long catalogue of such vicissitudes, revolutions and changes? The fashion, external form and appearance, of this world passeth away. How often, and how suddenly, is the scene changed! In every age, and in every country, new forms and appearances are seen. Christians of every denomination; men of every description; your prosperity and happiness I ardently wish. Happy may you all be in time! Happy may you all be, when time is no more.

As my former connexion with Great Britain, and present attachment to it, naturally inspire me with the warmest wishes for its welfare, I cannot but take the liberty, before I dismiss this subject,. to expostulate, for a few moments, with the British ministry, and the members of both houses of parliament, on the iniquity and dangerous consequences, of the toleration, I might have said encouragement, which they give to the commerce and slavery of the human race, particularly the African.

I write, or endeavour to write, pure nature : my pen and my soul are reciprocally combined in exhibiting the simple truth, and he must be wilfully blind, who will not see it. I allow that the

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sophistry of philosophical unbelievers, as well as the virulence of invective, requires to be decorated with the brilliancy of diction, majesty of sentiment, sublimity of stile, flippancy of language, and the flowers of rhetoric; but plain truth is most resplendent when delivered in plain terms-and such is the nature of our understanding, that we cannot refrain from admiring it when most clearly discriminated; we are forced to acquiesce, and are no longer free to doubt; and this impossibility to doubt is called conviction, evidence, demonstration. We cannot appeal from it without ceasing to be reasonable; to doubt contrary to all reason, is extravagance; to pretend to doubt when the evidence leaves doubting impossible, is adding insincerity to folly, is the quintessence of absurdity, and is an insult to common sense!! Can any person doubt the inconsistency of slavery? It is impossible.

To the British Ministry and the Members of both Houses of Parliament.

GENTLEMEN,

SENSIBLE I am that I now address the most respectable, the most illustrious, and the most inintelligent of men. With great diffidence on my own part, and with great deference to you, do I now appear before you. Great is the power, distinguished are the opportunities, of doing good to the brave nation, over which you preside, and to the world of mankind, in the east and the west, the north and the south, which an all-disposing Providence has put into your hands; and, when the day of final retribution shall arrive, you will be approved or disapproved, rewarded or punished, according as you shall then be found to have employed your authority, your talents, and your influence, in a worthy or unworthy manner. Of great magnitude and importance is the political vessel, which you have undertaken to steer. Tempestuous is the ocean on which you navigate. Dangerous are the rocks and quicksands to which you are exposed, while your political horizon seems impregnated with impending storms. The Omniscient, gentlemen is my witness, that