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PREFACE.
operation in carrying it into effect. The undertaking, throughout, was entirely independent of any Anti-Slavery Society. The party were not, in any sense of the word agents ; but private persons, yet engaged in what was properly a public object. The expenses of the individual with whom the design originated, were defrayed by himself; and those of two others, his professed associates, were liber ally borne by a few friends, who felt a deep interest in the result of the inquiry. Soon after their arrival at Barbados, Dr. LLOYD and JOHN SCOBLE sailed for British Guiana ; and the latter sub sequently returned to England, being the bearer of impor tant information respecting the present state of Slavery in the colonies comprised in that province. The present volume relates principally to Antigua and Jamaica. The first of these important islands is now a scene of new and distinct interest ; as affording practical evidence of the safety and rising prosperity, consequent on immediate and com plete Emancipation. Jamaica was investigated with a soli citude due to the anomalous condition of the largest negro population in the British West Indies. To these islands the public attention is thus more emphatically invited. Should it be objected, that in the following Narrative, details of a nature, tending, in certain instances, to the dis credit of personal character, have been disclosed, it may be pleaded, that such information has a most important bearing upon the great question ; and that it was legitimately acimmediately on their ministers, but which was imperative also on themselves, of preaching or publishing the gospel to the imported African slaves In the few instances where the endea vour was made by proprietors to christianize their slaves, according to their own belief and form of worship, the opposition to the measure was so strong, that it led to repeated prohibitory laws, some of which possess the harshest features of persecution. I allude to the pious, though unsuccessful exertions of the early colonists, of the Society of Friends. Theirs is the praise of having first attempted, amidst obloquy and suffering, to preach the gospel in this island to the heathen African slave."—(pp. 11. 1 2 . )