Sir William Young, 2nd Baronet

[6] On 30 October 1791, Young took a break from British politics and departed on a trip for several months in which he explored Barbados, St Vincent, Tobago, and Grenada, failing to save his plantations from bankruptcy and learn about the sugar industry and slave trade in the West Indies.

[6] He later documented part of his travels in the appendix of the second edition of An Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo by Bryan Edwards in 1801, a book that defended the slave trade,[9] in which he also served as chief editor.

[6] He printed a posthumous work of his grandfather, Brook Taylor, entitled Contemplatio Philosophica for private circulation in 1793, prefaced by a life of the author, and with an appendix containing letters by Bolingbroke, Bossuet, and others.

[10] Notable works by Young also included The rights of Englishmen, or, The British constitution of government compared with that of a democratic republic (1793); Considerations on Poorhouses and Workhouses: their Pernicious Tendency (1796), Instructions for the Armed Yeomanry (1797) and The West Indian Commonplace Book (1807).

On returning home to England to resume his MP duties for St Mawes in 1792, he advocated the amelioration of conditions for slaves, arguing that the trade of human beings from Africa to the islands would naturally die out without the need for parliamentary intervention.