BY THE RIGHT REVEREND BEILBY PORTEUS, D.D. BISHOP OF LONDON. Tonbon: Printed by Luke Harfard & Sons, FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRANDS AND F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. 1808. (10) 10. TO THE Governors, Legislatures, & Proprietors of Plantations in the British West-India Islands. GENTLEMEN, THE HE official connexion which I have with the British West-India Islands, and the Eccle-. siastical superintendance which to a certain degree my predecessors and myself have for a considerable length of time exercised over them, has always given me a lively interest in their spiritual welfare, and an earnest desire and endeavour to promote it, as far as the vast distance between those islands and this country would admit. But among the various classes of their inhabitants, my attention has been more particularly directed to that which is by far the most numerous of them all, and constitutes the great mass of people in all our islands; I mean the Negro Slaves employed in the cultivation of the lands possessed by the West-India Planters, whether resident on their plantations or in this kingdom. On these B my my thoughts have been anxiously employed for upwards of twenty years, and I have omitted no convenient opportunity of publicly expressing my sentiments concerning their situation, the necessity of improving it, and the mode in which that melioration of their condition might and ought to be carried into effect. Almost immediately after my appointment to the see of London, I addressed a Letter to the Planters and Proprietors in the islands, intreating them to pay a little more regard to their Negro Slaves than they had hitherto done; and more particularly to make some better provision for their instruction in the principles of morality and religion. Some years after this, I had the good fortune to recover, by a Chancery suit, an estate in Yorkshire, belonging to WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE IN VIRGINIA, which had been bequeathed to it by the great Mr. Boyle, for the advance or propagation of the Christian religion among Infidels; a purpose which had been attempted, but had completely failed. Having therefore obtained a decree in my favour, I was called upon by the Court of Chancery, as one of the trustees of that charity, to propose some other charitable institution in the room of Mr. Boyle's, but approaching as near as possible to his original idea. Accordingly, after very mature consideration, I recommended an establishment for the conversion and religious 5 |