their white neighbours. A few years
afterwards the land in Nova Scotia being found too poor to answer, and
the climate too cold for their constitutions, a number of them, to the
amount of between thirteen and fourteen hundred, volunteered to form a
new colony, which was then first thought of, at Sierra Leone.
Accordingly, having been conveyed there, they realized the object in
view; and they are to be found there, they or their descendants, most of
them in independent and some of them in affluent circumstances, at the
present day.

A second case may be taken from what occurred at the close of the
second, or last American war. It may be remembered that a large British
naval force, having on board a powerful land force, sailed in the year
1814, to make a descent on the coast of the southern States of America.
The British army, when landed, marched to Washington, and burnt most of
its public buildings. It was engaged also at different times with the
American army in the field. During these expeditions, some hundreds of
slaves in these parts joined the British standard by invitation. When
the campaign was over, the same difficulty occurred about disposing of
these as in the former case. It was determined at length to ship them to
Trinidad _as free labourers_. But here, that is, at Trinidad, an
objection was started against receiving them, but on a different ground
from that which had been started in the similar case in Nova Scotia. The
planters of Trinidad were sure that no free Negroes would ever work,
and therefore that the slaves in question would, if made free and
settled among them, support themselves _by plunder_. Sir Ralph Woodford,
however, the governor of the island, resisted the outcry of these
prejudices. He received them into the island, and settled them where he
supposed the experiment would be most safely made. The result has shown
his discernment. These very men, formerly slaves in the Southern States
of America and afterwards emancipated in a body at Trinidad, are now
earning their own livelihood, and with so much industry and good conduct
that the calumnies originally spread against them have entirely died
away.

A third case may comprehend those Negroes, who lately formed what we
call our West Indian black regiments. Some of these had been originally
purchased in Africa, not as slaves but recruits, and others in Jamaica
and elsewhere. They had all served as soldiers in the West Indies. At
length certain