their discharge as free men.  This happened in the spring of 1819. Many hundreds of them were set at liberty at once upon this occasion.  Some of these were afterwards marched into the interior, where they founded Waterloo, Hastings, and other villages.  Others were shipped to the Isles de Loss, where they made settlements in like manner.  Many, in both cases, took with them their wives, which they had brought from the West Indies, and others selected wives from the natives on the spot.  They were all settled upon grants given them by the Government.  It appears from accounts received from Sir Charles M’Carthy, the governor of Sierra Leone, that they have conducted themselves to his satisfaction, and that they will prove a valuable addition to that colony.

A fourth case may comprehend what we call the captured Negroes in the colony now mentioned.  These are totally distinct from those either in the first or in the last of the cases which have been mentioned.  It is well known that these were taken out of slave-ships captured at different times from the commencement of the abolition of the slave trade to the present moment, and that on being landed they were made free.  After having been recruited in their health they were marched in bodies into the interior, where they were taught to form villages and to cultivate land for themselves.  They were made free as they were landed from the vessels, from fifty to two or three hundred at a time.  They occupy at present twelve towns, in which they have both their churches and their schools.  Regents Town having been one of the first established, containing about thirteen hundred souls, stands foremost in improvement, and has become a pattern for industry and good example.  The people there have now fallen entirely into the habits of English society.  They are decently and respectably dressed.  They attend divine worship regularly.  They exhibit an orderly and moral conduct.  In their town little shops are now beginning to make their appearance; and their lands show the marks of extraordinary cultivation.  Many of them, after having supplied their own wants for the year, have a surplus produce in hand for the purchase of superfluities or comforts.

Here then are four cases of slaves, either Africans or descendants of Africans, emancipated in considerable bodies at a time.  I have kept them by themselves, became they are of a different complexion from those, which I intend should follow.  I shall now reason upon them.  Let me premise, however, that I shall consider the three first of the cases as one, so that the same reasoning will do for all.  They are alike indeed in their main features; and we must consider this as sufficient; for to attend minutely to every shade of difference[5], which may occur in every case, would be to bewilder the reader, and to swell the size of my work unnecessarily, or without conferring an adequate benefit to the controversy on either side.