Quarto. xxix, [7], 8, [2], 9-668pp. With a list of subscribers. Bound by W. & G. Baird of Belfast in later half-calf, brown cloth boards, contrasting red calf lettering-piece. Minor shelf-wear. Endpapers browned, binder's ticket and armorial bookplate of Anglo-Irish British Army officer and politician Hugh McCalmont (1845-1924) to FEP, very occasional light spotting.

A well-informed account of the primary events of British controlled Barbados, from the foundation of the colony to the close of the eighteenth century, by white West Indian native John Poyer (d. 1825).

Although the welfare of the colony was inextricably bound up with the institution of slavery, Poyer is reluctant to dwell on the debt the island owed to the trafficking of enslaved African. In his lengthy prefatory remarks, the author addresses his decision not to take notice 'of the general state of west Indian slavery', before launching into an invective reproach of 'gross calumnies' propagated by 'transatlantic fellow-subjects' concerning the poor treatment of slaves in the colony. Poyer proceeds to provide testimonies of travellers who all, conveniently, express amazement at the 'felicity of the West Indian slaves', in order to not only defend the planters of Barbados 'whose hearts throb with the finest sensibilities of humanity', but also to support his unabashed conjecture that 'the situation of slaves in the West Indies [is] more desirable than that of the lower classes of whites in Great Britain'.