University of Virginia Library

Mr. Edward Rushton, of Liverpool, Bookseller. The Poems of this Author discover extraordinary powers of mind, and genuine feeling. During the years of youth, he served as Doctor, on board a Liverpool trader; and it was owing to this circumstance, that he felt so deeply the cruelties inflicted on our brethren, the Sons of Africa. He was unfortunately deprived of sight, on the coast of Guinea; and for upwards of thirty years laboured under that melancholy calamity, respected and pitied by all ranks of mankind. During this period, he used every exertion for the suppression of that disgraceful traffic, the Slave Trade. In a letter to General Washington, he pays him every praise for his talents shewn in the field or the senate; but censures his conduct with great severity for being a dealer in Slaves. This letter, which went through many editions, gained him the esteem of all who could boast a spirit of independence. His love of mankind dictated to him, as a proper subject for his Muse, the horrid custom of impressing seamen—a custom which has long thrown a foul stain on the British government. It is but justice to this philan-thropist to declare, he has written some of the most interesting songs of which our language can boast.

Posterity have a right to consider themselves deeply indebted to our British Cicero, the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. The last public act of that illustrious statesman, was the abolition of the Slave Trade; an inhuman traffic, by which the world was long degraded.