conceive this
method of redeeming many lives that might be forfeit to the offended
laws; but which, being preserved, under salutary regulations, might
afterward become useful to society: and to your patriotism the plan
presented a prospect of commercial and political advantage. The following
pages will, it is hoped, serve to evince, with how much wisdom the
measure was suggested and conducted; with what beneficial effects its
progress has been attended; and what future benefits the parent country
may with confidence anticipate.

That your Lordship may long live to enjoy those grateful reflections
which a sense of having advanced the public welfare must be presumed to
excite; and that our most gracious sovereign, the father of his people,
may long, very long reign over these kingdoms, and continue to be served
by statesmen of tried talents and integrity, is the earnest prayer of,

MY LORD,
Your Lordship's much obliged,
and most devoted servant,
DAVID COLLINS

Poland Street,
May 25, 1798

* * * * *

PREFACE

To the public the following work is with respectful deference submitted
by its author, who trusts that it will be found to comprise much
information interesting in its nature, and that has not been anticipated
by any former productions on the same subject. If he should be thought to
have been sometimes too minute in his detail, he hopes it will be
considered, that the transactions here recorded were penned as they
occurred, with the feelings that at the moment they naturally excited in
the mind; and that circumstances which, to an indifferent reader, may
appear trivial, to a spectator and participant seem often of importance.
To the design of this work (which was, to furnish a complete record of
the transactions of the colony from its foundation), accuracy and a
degree of minuteness in detail seemed essential; and on reviewing his
manuscript, the author saw little that, consistently with his plan, he
could persuade himself to suppress.

For his labours he claims no credit beyond what may be due to the
strictest fidelity in his narrative. It was not a romance that he had to
give to the world; nor has he gone out of the track that actual
circumstances prepared for him, to furnish food for sickly minds, by
fictitious relations of adventures that never happened, but which are by
a certain description of readers perused with avidity, and not
unfrequently considered as the only passages deserving of notice.