TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number],and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book.
The cover image was created by the transcriberand is placed in the public domain.
All changes noted in the ERRATA on page 68 havebeen applied to the etext. The erratum for p. 21 should have said l. 34, not l. 3.Each change is indicatedby a dotted gray underline.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.These are indicated by a dashed blue underline.
Magna est veritas & prævalebit.
LONDON:
Printed for W. Bristow, at the West End of St. Paul’s
Church-yard. MDCCLXIII.
[Price One Shilling.]
Gentlemen,
AN uninterested desire of rendering serviceto the public, and not an idlewhim, or vanity to appear in print, hasinduced the editors of the following facts topublish them. Author is a title they lay noclaim to.
By their unornamented energy alone is meantto gain the reader’s attention, and to enforcethe facts advanced; therefore, without furtherapology, they are presented to you in a plaindress, to point out some measures that weretaken to mislead the legislature, whereby theAfrican trade, in the year 1750, was put uponsuch a plan, as, by the event, has proved extreamlydetrimental to the British colonies. Onthat account, the following sheets can be addressedto none so properly as to you.
We flatter ourselves it will evidently appearby the contents of the following pamphlet,that the forts on the coast of Africa, are by nomeans upon a proper establishment; likewisethat the present method of carrying on the Africantrade to those parts where the forts are situated,by the very high price given for Negroesthere, which occasions the profit arising to be[ii]divided between the European merchants andthe African traders, but must become extreamlyburthensome and disadvantageous toyou, we believe every real planter will allow.
We cannot admit certain individuals to beesteemed real planters, notwithstanding theymay have one or more plantations, when at thesame time they are concerned as merchants inthe colonies, who procure the ships from thecoast of Africa to be consigned to them; ofwhich it is conjectured (and not without foundation)many of them are part owners; forthese apparent reasons, it being their interestto keep up the price of Negroes so consigned tothem, as all such advance encreases theircommissions. Therefore, in our humble opinion,no attention ought to be paid to any remonstrancefrom people so much interested, orfrom those merchants who reside in Europe,that are connected with them, against any proposalst