A series of thirty nine letters, "from an English Officer", written during the first British occupation of South Africa from 1795 to 1803. Information on African slavery had particularly been requested by the author's correspondent in Britain, and almost half of the book (letters viii-xxiii) discusses the problem of slavery at length. The author is concerned that the "factious spirit" (55) of the European revolutionary wars is being extended to South Africa, but he justifies the British role there as a liberating one. As his abolitionist ideas suggest, a "free and enlightened country" would intervene for "the violated rights of humanity" to "remove the foul stain that blots the European character" (57). He is clearly influenced by abolitionist political discourse, citing the maxim "that what is morally wrong, can never be politically right" (57). The letters describe the diverse population of slaves in the Cape Colony. Several letters also reflect more widely on the history of slavery and the slave trade in Europe, Africa and the Americas since antiquity, reaffirming national pride in Britain, as a "land of freedom" under the "fostering influence" of its constitution (80), and suggesting ways in which colonial slavery could gradually be abolished.