chap, ii.] WEST INDIES. 237 
sed; some of these gentlemen, unacquainted with 
local circumstances, and misled by the popular 
outcry, humanely gave orders to emancipate all 
their slaves, at whatever expense; but are since 
convinced, that their benevolent purposes cannot be 
carried into effect, consistently, even with the hap¬ 
piness of the negroes themselves.—The Reverend 
Society established in Great Britain for propagating 
the Gospel in foreign parts, are themselves under 
this very predicament. That venerable body hold 
a plantation in Barbadoes under a devise of colonel 
Codrington; and they have found themselves, not 
only under the disagreeable necessity of support¬ 
ing the system of slavery which was bequeathed to 
them with the land, but are induced also, from the 
purest and best motives, to purchase occasionally a 
certain number of negroes, in order to divide the 
work, and keep up the stock. They well know 
that moderate labour, unaccompanied with that 
wretched anxiety to which the poor of England are 
subject in making provision for the day that is pas¬ 
sing over them, is a state of comparative felicity: 
and they know also, that men in savage life have 
no incentive to emulation: persuasion is lost on 
such men, and compulsion to a certain degree, is 
humanity and charity. 
The question then, and the only question where¬ 
in the character of the planters is concerned, is this: 
—Making due allowance for human frailty under 
the influence of a degree of power ever danger- 
