SOUTH AMERICA. 
265 
damned his own handicraft in wing-making ; “de- fourth 
vovitque suas artes.’ Prudence is a cardinal 
virtue :— 
“Omnia consulta mente gerenda tegens.” 
Foresight is half the battle. u Hombre apercebido, 
medio combatido,” says Don Quixote, or Sancho, I 
do not remember which. Had queen Bess weighed 
well in her own mind the probable consequences of 
this lamentable traffic, it is likely she would not have 
been owner of two vessels in Sir John Hawkins’s 
squadron, which committed the first robbery in negro 
flesh on the coast of Africa. As philanthropy is the 
very life and soul of this momentous question on 
slavery, which is certainly fraught with great diffi¬ 
culties and danger, perhaps it would be as well at 
present for the nation to turn its thoughts to poor 
ill-fated Ireland, where oppression, poverty, and 
rags make a heart-rending appeal to the feelings of 
the benevolent. 
But to proceed. There was another thing which 
added to the dulness of Barbadoes, and which seemed 
to have considerable effect in keeping away strangers 
from the island. The legislature had passed a most 
extraordinary bill, by virtue of which every person 
who arrives at Barbadoes is obliged to pay two 
dollars, and two dollars more on his departure from 
it. It is called the alien bill; and every Barbadian 
who leaves or returns to the island, and every Eng¬ 
lishman too, pays the tax ! 
Finding no vessel here for Trinidad, I embarked Embarks 
in a schooner for Demerara, landed there after being rara. 
