Mr. Ashmore*, dated from Par Boson, and representing your distress for want of necessaries; on which I applied again to Mr. Pitt,-but Government has not yet ordered any assistance.

"All last winter I exerted my utmost efforts to form a Company of Merchants, under the title of the St. George's Bay Company, to carry on an honest and honourable trade with Africa, in order to discourage and supersede the detestable traffic in Slaves. This Company now consists of one hundred members, who would have sent you some relief long before this time, if they could have obtained a Royal Charter of Incorporation, to secure the separate property of the several Members from any claims upon them, beyond the amount of their respective subscriptions to the joint stock of the Company. But the desired Charter is not yet obtained, and therefore the Company cannot enter into any such joint expenses as might be sufficient to procure your re-establishment ; but have merely ordered a small temporary relief to be sent by the Lapwing, entrusted to the care of the person appointed to be their chief factor, in case a Charter for a trading Company should at last be obtained: and he is not empowered to give you the clothing and provisions now sent out, but merely to supply them gradually, in return for such labour and assistance as you may be able to afford him, or for such African goods or produce as you may happen to have by you, of equal value in exchange.

"He will endeavour to treat with King Naimbanna, and King Jammy, and the other Chiefs, for a restoration of your late settlement on the Mountains of Sierra Leone, which, having been twice purchased of them for the King of England, is now undoubtedly become English territory; so that if they delay to restore it, and should presume to deny the fulfilling the covenants they have signed (including their promises of being friendly to the settlers), they will draw upon themselves a very severe retaliation of vengeance from the King of England, as soon as any of the ships of war can be spared from their present destination. But I hope they will be just and wise, and prevent a war against them, by restoring the purchased land as an act of common justice and right, remembering that the intention of making that settlement was really with a view to promote the improvement and welfare of the natives of Africa, as well as for your good and ours;-it being thought the best mode of establishing an honest and honourable trade in the natural productions of the soil of Africa, in return for good English manufactures, and instead of the bloody and wicked trade in their brethren the

• Neither of these letters has been found among Mr. Sharp's papers.

Negro Slaves; for that is an unnatural crime, which, in time, if continued, will surely draw down the vengeance of God on themselves and all the nations that deal with them in that abominable traffic, and perhaps they themselves will at last be conquered, and sent away naked into slavery, in retaliation for the multitudes of poor Blacks that they have wickedly sold to the English, Dutch, and French slave-dealers.

They should also be reminded, that one of the first promoters of the New Settlement was also the first promoter of the freedom of Africans in England, and has spent large sums of money to maintain the natural rights of Black men on their first coming over from Africa, as well as from the West Indies; so that no Negro or Black man can now be claimed as a slave, in England, or Scotland, or Ireland. Therefore that same friend to Blacks thinks he has some right to claim their particular friendship, and that King Naimbanna, and King Jammy, and the other African Chiefs, as being themselves Black men, will favour and promote his endeavours to establish the laws of freedom and natural right in Africa, agreeably to the regulations of the plan intended to have been observed in the New Settlement, as such natural justice will be the most effectual means of promoting their own happiness and welfare."

The following contains many similar sentiments more accurately and cautiously expressed, probably also with better hopes, as the Charter was now on the eve of being granted to the Sierra Leone Company.

To the worthy British Settlers, late Inhabitants of the Territory purchased by the King of Great Britain, in Sierra Leone, called the Province of Freedom. "Dear Friends, "Leadenhall Street, London, 22d January, 1791. "The several accounts I received last year of your misfortunes gave me most sincere concern; and much more so, because it was not in my power, as an individual, to send you any immediate assistance, having already sunk above 1400/. of my own private fortune in endeavouring to promote your welfare, partly in sending out settlers and farther assistance by the Myro brig in 1788, and partly in assisting poor People of Colour here, who are desirous of going to the settlement, and supporting several settlers returned from thence; which heavy expenses have swallowed up all that I could possibly spare. My hopes, therefore, of promoting your welfare must now rest in the St. George's Bay Company-a number of merchants and gentlemen of the first fortune and credit

in London, who have associated to carry on an honourable trade with Africa, in such articles only as are the natural produce of the soil, raised or procured by the honest industry of the inhabitants, that the Natives may no longer be tempted to oppress and enslave each other.

"The Company have appointed Mr. Alexander Falconbridge, the bearer of this letter, to be their chief agent; and his brother, Mr. William Falconbridge, to be his assistant. They are strictly enjoined to have no concern whatever in the Slave Trade, to which indeed they are very far from having the least inclination, being both of them sincere friends to the People of Colour, and to the natural and equal rights of men, and lovers also of justice, peace, and quiet; so that you may safely confide in their advice; and be assured that they will do the best in their power to make a reconciliation with the Native Chiefs, that they may restore the land which they absolutely sold to the King of Great Britain and his heirs for ever.

"The present intention of the British Government is, to invest the general property of the King's land in the care of the St. George's Bay Company, that it may be better protected for the future; and the Company will grant free lots of land to all the settlers who will engage to support the British Government according to the former Regulations, provided they will promise not to trade with any other merchants than the agents of the Company, who will either purchase their produce at the market price of the country, or permit them to ship it for England on board the Company's vessels, at a reasonable allowance for freight and the expenses of maintaining the factory; and the Company will supply them with British goods at a moderate profit.

"The settlers must also resolve to keep perfect order, peace, and quiet, among themselves, by maintaining a constant guard night and day, by rotation of all the males above sixteen years of age, that all offenders against the peace may be immediately seized and imprisoned, and tried by a jury of the settlers at the next Court: and Courts must be frequently held for the maintenance of justice; for I have received grievous complaints from several individuals among you, concerning the want of due order and justice; and you must attribute the loss of the settlement, in great measure, to that neglect of order and justice, and military discipline, which if you had maintained, and had employed yourselves industriously in forming proper earth-works or trenches round your town, the Natives would not have dared to meddle with you. Your own experience will now sufficiently convince you of the necessity of joining heartily with Mr. Falconbridge, in forming such works of defence as he shall think necessary for

the safety of the settlement, in case he shall be able to recover the land, and, of course, he will pay your wages, according to the value of labour in that country, for whatever time you are employed in the service of the Company.

"Sincerely wishing you success, and that the blessing of God may attend every honest exertion of your industry, (of which I cannot doubt, provided you will sincerely endeavour to maintain his laws of justice and righteousness among you,) I remain your constant friend and humble servant,

GRANVILLE SHARP."

The foregoing documents have fully shown the virtuous endeavour of a Christian to establish and uphold a state of entire social freedom and justice. Hourly observation of the world forbids us to wonder that his pure views found insuperable obstacles in the adverse interests amidst which he attempted to establish it, as well as in the vices and errors of the very men for whose sake the experiment was made. With men of whatsoever description, casually selected from their kind, hopes of such a nature must have proved equally fallacious; more especially while the experiment was to be supported by the power only of a single hand. Granville, vigilant and resolute, maintained the guard of his enterprise to the last moment of possible safety, and then submitted with humility to his defeat, convinced that he had aimed at an achievement beyond the grasp of mortality.

His enthusiasm differed in this point from the feverish fervour which too often assumes its name. His hopes were frequently eccentric, his expressions of them nearly as much so: his conduct was that of temper, of prudence, of rational hope, and diligent precaution. But although his strong mind perceived the necessity of having recourse to the accessory strength of the Company, which was now formed and incorporated by an Act of Parliament, he must have been more or less than man not to have regretted the demolition of that ideal fabric of happiness, which he had wished to raise for an afflicted portion of mankind. The Writer of these Memoirs has witnessed the struggle of his mind on this occasion: yet his memoranda contain no remarks of this nature; and once only on paper such remarks appear to have escaped the fence of his piety and courage, in a letter

to a friend whose name is not mentioned; and even then the communication appears less to have been voluntary, than extorted by feelings of personal regard, and an anxious concern for the health of the friend to whom he writes.

"Sir,

"Leadenhall Street, London, 5th October, 1791. "Dr. Lettsom having informed me that you have again expressed a desire to receive from me some accounts respecting the new settlement on the coast of Africa, for the sake of the poor free Blacks in America, it is necessary for me to acquaint you that I long ago, on your first requisition, wrote out for you a very full account of it, which probably never reached your hands. Having afterwards received similar applications from John Jay, Esq. in behalf of the Blacks at New York, and from the Rev. Mr. Hopkins, in behalf of the Blacks at Rhode Island, I sent to both these gentlemen copies of what I had written for you, and several copies also of the printed Regulations; so that the free Blacks of America have not wanted information on the subject: but I suppose the accounts they have since heard of the many disadvantages that the poor settlers have laboured under for want of pecuniary asssistance, and their subsequent misfortunes, may probably have prevented any further application from these gentlemen; and the inducements to go thither are still further curtailed (at least I apprehend they will be deemed so in your esteem) by the new Act of Parliament in favour of the Sierra Leone Company; because the community of settlers, though they are now restored to their actual possessions in the settlement, are no longer proprietors of the whole district as before, as the land has been granted, since they were driven out, to the Sierra Leone Company; so that they can no longer enjoy the privileges of granting land by the free vote of their own Common Council, as before, nor the benefits of their former Agrarian Law, nor the choice of their own Governor and other officers, nor any other circumstances of perfect freedom proposed in the Regulations: all these privileges are now submitted to the appointment and controul of the Company, and no settler can trade independently of it.

"I am very sure that such restraints cannot accord with your ideas of perfect liberty and justice. But I could not prevent this humiliating change: the settlement must have remained desolate, if I had not thus far submitted to the opinions of the associated subscribers. However, all slavery, and the oppression of involuntary labour, are absolutely prohibited, and the laws of England are to be established. I hope to prevail on the Company to