Such was the outline of the state of these islands in 1822. Severe
and frequent as the censures are which are passed in the foregoing
pages, the writer is not conscious that they are in any instance
unjust or exaggerated, or that praise has been withheld wherever it
might be due. The unprejudiced, honourable, and well-informed, will,
he hopes, think so, the opinion of others is indifferent to him:
they will perhaps too believe, that his object has neither been to
flatter nor to wound, but, if a sketch like this had originally any
object, a hope that when their true state was better known these
islands might be better appreciated--perhaps better governed; that
a cruelly-abused class of men (the natives) might one day find their
condition ameliorated; and lastly, that when this fair and rich portion
of the earth shall be visited by men of science, a few general remarks
on their state at any given period, however ill drawn up, might be of
some use. Who indeed can but reflect with pain, that while the torch
of science has blazed in the western hemisphere, from Greenland to the
Antarctic, bearing with it light, and life, and hope, and blessings,
few are even aware how very much it has yet to illumine in the East!