A Defence of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the West Indies; Including a Refutation of the Charges in Mr. Marryat's Thoughts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, &C. and in Other Publications with Facts and Anecdotes Illustrative of the Moral State of th (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the enjoyment of many important civil tights, for which, in truth, they are not, in every case prepared; but without any religious instruction, except such as is offered by voluntary charity; without education of the lowest kind; without any attempt to civilize or moralize them; without even the forms of marriage; and, of course, without the domestic relations: being left to vegetate and die on the soil, without ever feeling the powers of immortal man, except in those misdirections which give ferocity to their resentments, cunning to their fraud, and impetuosity to their appetites. Such, however, is the condition, at this moment, of by far the greater part of the slave population of our colonies; and, in this condition, have lived and died the successive millions, who, from the commencement of the slave trade, have passed through the life of toil and injury our laws, or our practice had assigned them, to depose before the bar of Eternal Justice, the general neglect of a Christian people, to promote, in any efficient degree, their1 moral happiness. Did such neglect exist in an English county, it would be contemplated with horror, and immediately relieved; all the difference, . however, lies between the breadth of a river, and that of a sea. The West Indies are, not less than our counties, portions of the British empire; their inhabitants not less its subjec.ts; the duty of a Christian go chapter{Section 4vernment to provide for their religious instruction, or to protect those from insult and injury who would instruct them, the same; and whatever local and accidental reasons may. exist against affording them the full participation of our civil rights, none can exist for refusing them the benefits of our religion. If this be pleaded, then indeed it would lay the strongest ...