We cannot pass from this part of our report without recording the kindness and hospitality which we everywhere experienced during our sojourn in Antigua.  Whatever may have been our apprehensions of a cool reception from a community of ex-slaveholders, none of our forebodings were realized.  It rarely Falls to the lot of strangers visiting a distant land, with none of the contingencies of birth, fortune, or fame, to herald their arrival, and without the imposing circumstance of a popular mission to recommend them, to meet with a warmer reception, or to enjoy a more hearty confidence, than that with which we were honored in the interesting island of Antigua.  The very object of our visit, humble, and even odious as it may appear in the eyes of many of our own countrymen, was our passport to the consideration and attention of the higher classes in that free colony.  We hold in grateful remembrance the interest which all—­not excepting those most deeply implicated in the late system of slavery—­manifested in our investigations.  To his excellency the Governor, to officers both civil and military, to legislators and judges, to proprietors and planters, to physicians, barristers, and merchants, to clergymen, missionaries, and teachers, we are indebted for their uniform readiness in furthering our objects, and for the mass of information with which they were pleased to furnish us.  To the free colored population, also, we are lasting debtors for their hearty co-operation and assistance.  To the emancipated, we recognise our obligations as the friends of the slave, for their simple-hearted and reiterated assurances that they should remember the oppressed of our land in their prayers to God.  In the name of the multiplying hosts of freedom’s friends, and in behalf of the millions of speechless but grateful-hearted slaves, we render to our acquaintances of every class in Antigua our warmest thanks for their cordial sympathy with the cause of emancipation in America.  We left Antigua with regret.  The natural advantages of that lovely island; its climate, situation, and scenery; the intelligence and hospitality of the higher orders, and the simplicity and sobriety of the poor; the prevalence of education, morality, and religion; its solemn Sabbaths and thronged sanctuaries; and above all, its rising institutions of liberty—­flourishing so vigorously,—­conspire to make Antigua one of the fairest portions of the earth.  Formerly it was in our eyes but a speck on the world’s map, and little had we checked if an earthquake had sunk, or the ocean had overwhelmed it; but now, the minute circumstances in its condition, or little incidents in its history, are to our minds invested with grave interest.

None, who are alive to the cause of religious freedom in the world, can be indifferent to the movements and destiny of this little colony.  Henceforth, Antigua is the morning star of our nation, and though it glimmers faintly through a lurid sky, yet we hail it, and catch at every ray as the token of a bright sun which may yet burst gloriously upon us.