is to
be operated in our own plantations, by rendering, in a length of time,
all foreign supply unnecessary. It was my wish, whilst the slavery
continued, and the consequent commerce, to take such measures as to
civilize the coast of Africa by the trade, which now renders it more
barbarous, and to lead by degrees to a more reputable, and, possibly, a
more profitable connection with it, than we maintain at present.

I am sure that you will consider as a mark of my confidence in yours and
Mr. Pitt's honor and generosity, that I venture to put into your hands
a scheme composed of many and intricate combinations, without a full
explanatory preface, or any attendant notes, to point out the principles
upon which I proceeded in every regulation which I have proposed towards
the civilization and gradual manumission of negroes in the two
hemispheres. I confess I trust infinitely more (according to the sound
principles of those who ever have at any time meliorated the state of
mankind) to the effect and influence of religion than to all the rest of
the regulations put together.

Whenever, in my proposed reformation, we take our _point of departure_
from a state of slavery, we must precede the donation of freedom by
disposing the minds of the objects to a disposition to receive it
without danger to themselves or to us. The process of bringing _free_
savages to order and civilization is very different. When a state of
slavery is that upon which we are to work, the very means which lead to
liberty must partake of compulsion. The minds of men, being crippled
with that restraint, can do nothing for themselves: everything must be
done for them. The regulations can owe little to consent. Everything
must be the creature of power. Hence it is that regulations must be
multiplied, particularly as you have two parties to deal with. The
planter you must at once restrain and support, and you must control at
the same time that you ease the servant. This necessarily makes the work
a matter of care, labor, and expense. It becomes in its nature complex.
But I think neither the object impracticable nor the expense
intolerable; and I am fully convinced that the cause of humanity would
be far more benefited by the continuance of the trade and servitude,
regulated and reformed, than by the total destruction of both or either.
What I propose, however, is but a beginning of a course of measures
which an experience of the effects of the evil and the ref