XXVI PREFACE TO THE 



to the fulness of their gratitude, their honest pride and lively 

 sensibility, at beholding, in a son of their beloved sovereign, 

 the generous assertor of their rights, and the strenuous and 

 able defender of their injured characters, and insulted honour ! 

 The condescending and unsolicited interposition of the duke of 

 Clarence on this occasion, is the more valuable, as, happily for 

 the planters, it is founded on his royal highness's personal obser- 

 vation of their manners, and knowledge of their dispositions, 

 acquired on the spot. Thus patronised and protected, while 

 they treat with silent scorn and deserved contempt the base ef- 

 forts of those persons who, without the least knowledge of 

 the subject, assail them with obloquy and outrage, they find a 

 dignified support, in the consciousness of their own inno- 

 cence, even under the misguided zeal and unfavourable prepos- 

 sessions of better men. It might indeed be hoped, for the in- 

 terests of truth and humanity, that such men would now 

 frankly acknowledge their error, and ingeniously own, that 

 we have been most cruelly traduced, and ignominiously treat- 

 ed; or if this be too much to ask, we may at least expect, that 

 gentlemen of education and candour will no longer persist in 

 affording countenance to the vulgar prejudices of the envious 

 and illiberal, by giving currency to suggestions which they 

 cannot possibly know to be true, and which we know to be 

 false. 



London, 1793, 



