XXVlll PREFACE TO THE 



of sound policy and humanity ; to myself, because it gives 

 me an opportunity of shewing, that the sentiments which I 

 have expressed on the same subject are justified by his high 

 authority. 



This is not a business of selfishness or faction; nor (like 

 many of those questions which are daily moved in parliament 

 merely to agitate and perplex government) can it be dismissed 

 by a vote. It will come forward again and agai;i, and haunt 

 administration in a thousand hideous shapes, until a more li- 

 beral policy shall take place ; for no folly can possibly exceed 

 the notion, that any measures pursued by Great Britain will 

 prevent the American States from having, some time or other? 

 a commercial intercourse with our West Indian territories on 

 their own terms. With a chain of coast of twenty degrees of 

 latitude, possessing the finest harbours for the purpose in the 

 world, all lying so near to the sugar colonies, and the track 

 to Europe, with a country abounding in every thing the 

 islands have occcasion for, and which they can obtain no 

 where else; all these circumstances, necessarily and naturally 

 lead to a commercial intercourse between our islands and trr. 

 United States. It is true, we may ruin our sugar colonies, 

 and ourselves also, in the attempt to prevent it ; but it is an ex- 

 periment which God and nature have marked out as impossi- 

 ble to succeed. The present restraining system is forbidding 

 men to help each other ; men who, by their necessities, their 

 climate and productions, are standing in perpetual need of mu- 

 tual assistance, and able to supply it. 



I write with the freedom of History; for it is the cause of 

 Humanity that I plead. At the same time there is not a man, 

 living who is more desirous than myself of testifying, by every 

 possible means, the sensibility and affection which are due to 

 our gracious SOVEREIGN, for that paternal solicitude and mu- 

 nihcent interposition, in favour of his remotest subjects, to 

 which it is owing that the Bread Fruit, and other valuable 



o 



productions of the most distant regions, now flourish in 

 the British West Indies. These are indeed " imperial \vorks, 



