8 PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH Africa, and the abolition of the slave trade : the greatest merit is due to the individuals who have subscribed to such institutions ; their motives have been unexceptionable, but we grossly deceive ourselves, and the whole is an illusion ! The French, as it were, have taken the staff out of our hands ; and whilst we are in vain endeavouring to abolish the trade in slaves, hy the capture of slave-ships at sea , they are insidiously cultivating the growth of cotton, coffee, sugar, indigo, and other colonial produce, on the banks ofthe Senegal river ; insomuch that if we shall continue thus supinely to disregard their important African agricultural operations, the result in a few years will probably be, that they will be able to undersell us in West-India produce, in the markets of continental Europe ; for they can cultivate, with free negroes at Senegal, colonial produce at considerably less expense than our West-India cultivation. The voyage, also, is not half the distance ; so that the continental market for the sale of West-India produce will be shortly supplied from Senegal, from whence it Many naval officers concur in thinking, that to suppress the slave trade, by interrupting the ships, would employ all the navy of Great Britain ; and entail a war-expense on the nation ; besides the enormous expense that will be necessarily incurred by the various commissions dispatched to Sierra Leone, Havannah, &c. &c. for the adjudication of slave-causes. To which may be added, our expensive presents to Spain and Portugal, to induce those powers to coalesce in the abolition ; which there is too much reason to apprehend will be evaded by the subjects of those powers.