ΤΟ THE RESIDENT AND NON-RESIDENT HOLDERS OF SLAVE PROPERTY IN THE WEST INDIES, THE FOLLOWING LECTURES WITH THE EARNEST PRAYER THAT THE DUTIES RECOMMENDED IN THEM, MAY BE FAITHFULLY AND FEARLESSLY PERFORMED BY THEMSELVES, AND BY THEIR SUBORDINATE AGENTS, ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. THE following Lectures (with the exception of the last) were preached at the Cathedral in Barbados, before large congregations of the white inhabitants. My object was to impress on the community the necessity of attending to the moral and religious welfare of their slave population. The subjects are not new. Most of them have, within the last few years, been at times prominently insisted upon in the pulpit (though not in a connected and consecutive form) by myself or by my brethren in the ministry. The lectures are now published with a view to disseminate more widely the suggestions which my residence in the West Indies, from the establishment there of episcopacy, has enabled me to offer, as well to non-resident proprietors in England, as to their agents and subordinate officers on estates in these colonies. I am aware that many of the facts and opinions introduced in them will meet, at best, with a hesitating and reluctant approval. Why, it will be asked, thus draw forth the faults of our ancestors, or even expose our own defects? Why disturb us with the language of reproof, or with exhortations to measures of doubtful expediency? Quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero Auriculas? My answer is, because the case requires that there should be no concealment of the truth, and because the official situation in which the author is placed, not |
