SIR,

LXVII.

To Dr. Wetherel.

Sept. 6, 1780.

IT having been suggested to me by a most respectable friend, that it would be proper, and was in fact the due form, to apprise you and the vice-chancellor, as soon as possible, of my being no longer a candidate for the University, I sent to the houses of those gentlemen who honoured me with forming my committee, thinking it more regular that they should make the declaration of my having declined a poll; but as they are out of town, I am necessitated to trouble you with this letter. If Dr. Scott should stand the poll, I am ready to perform my promise of giving him my vote, as I am no more his competitor. Since I have taken up my pen (which it was by no means my intention to do), I can. not help saying that the conduct of some of my friends in respect of me gives me surprise, and (for their sakes rather than my own) uneasiness. If I have not been able to prove my attachment to my fellow-collegiates, it is because they never called for my service: if they had, they should have found that no man would have exerted himself

with more activity to serve them; nor was I deficient in zeal, I well remember, when you, in particular, required my exertions. I am conscious of haing deserved very well of the college; and if any of its members are so unkind as to think otherwise, I will show my sense of their unkindness, by persisting, till my last hour, in deserving well of them. After this, I should little have expected that my letters, couched in the most sincere and affectionate terms, and absolutely unexceptionable if they had been fairly represented, would have been repeated by detached sentences (which might have made no small alteration in the sense) in several companies in the University; still less should I have expected to find myself charged with misrepresenting (a serious word!) facts, of which I would, if necessary, make a deposition; and with writing, what it must have appeared, from strong internal evidence, that I could not have writtên; because it contained a mistake as to the number of our lay-fellows, which I (who know and esteem Mr. Ray) could never have made. Least of all could I have expected to be accused of wishing to overturn a constitution, which I prize because I understand it, and which I would sacrifice my life to preserve: all these charges God and my conscience enable me to bear with the coolest indifference, and with little abatement of that respect with which I ever have been, &c.

LXVIII.

To the Rev. Edmund Cartwright.

DEAR SIR, September 8, 1780. YOUR last favour I have this instant received, and am obliged to answer it in the greatest haste. I hope you have, by this time, received my letter, in which I informed you that I had declined a poll at Oxford, but was as much obliged to you and my other friends as if your kindness had been attended with the most brilliant success. I saw an advertisement in the paper, that Dr. Scott had declined.

I have been told, that the very ode to which you are so indulgent, lost me near twenty votes: this, however, I am unwilling to believe. I am, &c.

WILLIAM JONES.

SOME OBSERVATIONS RESPECTING THE SLAVE

TRADE.*

"I PASS with haste by the coast of Africa, whence my mind turns with indignation at the abominable traffic in the human species, from which a part of our countrymen dare to derive their most inauspicious wealth. Sugar, it has been said, would be dear, if it were not worked by Blacks in the Western islands; as if the most laborious, the most dangerous works, were not carried on in every country, but chiefly in England, by free men: in fact, they are so carried on with infinitely more advantage; for there is an alacrity in a consciousness of freedom, and a gloomy sullen indolence in a consciousness of slavery: but let sugar be as dear as it may'; it is better to eat none, to eat honey, if sweetness only be palatable; better to eat aloes or coloquintida, than violate a primary law of nature, impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice; than rob one human creature of those eternal rights, of which no law upon earth can justly deprive him."

These have been extracted from a discourse drawn up by Mr. Jones, and containing the purport of a speech intended to have been made at a meeting of the freeholders of Middlesex, on the 9th of September, 1780.

LXIX.

To Lord Althorpe.

(No date.) I THOUGHT myself peculiarly unfortunate last Friday, in my way to London: at Chatham, where I had the pleasure indeed of seeing lady Rothes restored to perfect health, I sought in vain for Mr. Langton among the new ravelines and counterscarps; and at Dartford I had the mortification to find, that you, my dear lord, were not in camp, where I was not without hope of passing an evening, which, I am persuaded, would have been equally agreeable to us both. After a very tedious and uncomfortable passage, I arrived at Margate on Wednesday night, having been out of England a month exactly, half of which time I spent at Paris. In this interval, I have seen, not indeed so many men or so many cities as the hero of the Odyssey, but a sufficient number of both to have enlarged very considerably the sphere of my knowledge. I have heard much and thought more; but the result of all I have heard and thought is, that the war, which I have invariably and deliberately condemned, as no less unjust than impolitic, will continue very long to desolate the country of our brethren, and exhaust our own. The principal object of my late excursion