Note 1 — Chapter I

Irving, like many other youths, had been induced by an ardent curiosity, and an enterprising spirit, to engage as a writer to the Royal African Company1, at a time when the traffic in slaves was legally pursued, as one source of riches to a great commercial nation. Yet it may with candour be presumed, that he, and many a youth entering upon the same path, with the same laudable impulses, had they anticipated the peril to which they exposed their humane principles, by engaging themselves in a trade so repugnant to nature, religion, and justice, would rather have undergone personal hazard and difficulty in their native land, so that they might have fostered that divine principle, which is the noble and distinguishing characteristic of man—of free-born man.