gree, all the influence and exhortations of their
religious teachers.

4. "Although this society has been always most honourably
distinguished by the gentleness with which the negroes belonging to
its trust estates have been generally treated, yet even these (by the
confession of our missionaries) are in too abject, and depressed, and
uncivilized a state to be proper subjects for the reception of the
divine truths of revelation. They stand in need of some further marks
of the society's regard and tenderness for them, to conciliate their
affections, to invigorate their minds, to encourage their hopes,
and to rouse them out of that state of languor and indolence and
insensibility, which renders them indifferent and careless both about
this world and the next.

5. "A still further obstacle to the effectual conversion of the
Negroes has been the almost unrestrained licentiousness of their
manner, the habits of vice and dissoluteness in which they are
permitted to live, and the sad examples they too frequently see in
their managers and overseers. It can never be expected that people
given up to such practices as these, can be much disposed to receive a
pure and undefiled religion: or that, if after their conversion they
are allowed, as they generally are, to retain their former habits,
their christianity can be anything more than a mere name.

"These probably the society will, on inquiry, find to have been the
principal causes of the little success they have hitherto had in their
pious endeavors to render their own slaves real christians. And it is
with a view principally to the removal of these obstacles that the
following regulations are, with all due deference to better judgments,
submitted to their consideration.

"The first and most essential step towards a real and effectual
conversion of our Negroes would be the appointment of a missionary
(in addition to the present catechist) properly qualified for that
important and difficult undertaking. He should be a clergyman sought
out for in this country, of approved ability, piety, humanity,
industry, and a fervent, yet prudent zeal for the interests of
religion, and the salvation of those committed to his care; and should
have a stipend not less than 200 f. sterling a year if he has an
apartment and is maintained in the College, or 300 f. a year if he is
not.

"This clergyman might be called (for a reason to be hereafter
assigned) 'The Guardian of the Negroes'; and h