I am exceedingly concerned to have suffered[?]
so many days to elapse between the reception of your kind
letter by me and this reply, my apology must be the confession
of a hope only extinguished by the lines on the other page, that
I might have been able to have composed, at least a Sonnet
in commemoration of the more auspicious circumstances in which
the recent legislative enactment has placed the question of Slavery.
If you still think worth your favour, the little communication
which I have the pleasure of rendering so long ago, I thought that
it might not be unbecoming on my part, to enable you to append
to it, or place in its company some memento that the writer was not
insensible to the fact of the virtual, though in reality still prospective
abolition of Slavery under British authority. How imperfectly I
have succeeded in this aim, the lines on the first page will, I am
afraid afford but too clear evidence: whether or not therefore, they
may be thought worth your acceptance, on the group above mentioned,
must depend upon the view you take of the reason given, as compared
with the demerit of the lines themselves. One happy feature in the
theory of slavery, as now espoused is that however many old captives,
and many who are neither old nor ailing, will die without seeing the
day of actual emancipation, they will have the satisfaction of leaving
that to their children which themselves never possessed -- the heritage
of freedom -- and surely, it is not a light thing for us to say, that the
registers of the West Indies shall no more record the birth of a slave.