in

any the smallest instance, they steal to supply their most pressing wants, they are unavoidably subjected to a cruel punishment. How often does a poor slave, pressed by the cravings of hunger, which he is unable to resist, receive, from a savage manager, a hundred lashes, for breaking a very few of the canes, which, with the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow, he planted? With what resistless force does that equitable and humane Jewish law, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, come home to every feeling person's heart in this case? For offences still less, if possible, have I seen the unhappy slaves scourged in the cruellest manner. One slave, to escape the fury of his cruel master, plunged into a copper of boiling sugar, and immediately expired. For the most trifling faults, if they can, with any degree of propriety, be called faults, they sometimes have their ears cut off. One I saw, in the most cruel manner, cut and mangled with a cutlass. An old woman, bowed down with years, I saw flogged, in the severest manner, purely to gratify the caprice of a cruel tyrant. If we attempt to paint, in proper colours, the enormity of such conduct, we immediately labour under a penury of language; all language is defective and inadequate. Such monsters we leave to the righteous judgment of heaven. Is not the situation of slaves, in instances now ad

duced, incomparably worse than the condition of the very brutes? Often do the latter commit depredations. Are they, on this account, tortured? No; far less put to death. There are not wanting instances, in which planters have given orders to their watchmen, not to bring home slaves they might find breaking canes, but to hide them, as the phrase is, that is, kill and bury them privately. In this manner many are murdered, and murdered with impunity. But shall the perpetrators of such attrocious crimes. pass for ever unpunished? It is impossible. The blood of the murdered Africans cries from the earth; and the cry has already ascended to heaven. There is a period approaching, at which the Lord shall come to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; and then shall the earth disclose her blood, and no more cover or conceal her slain.

The brutal owners of the unhappy slaves seem to consider them as property which they may use, and of which they may dispose, in any manner they please; without responsibility either to God Α poor female slave, the savage master seems to caress, for his own unworthy purposes, in the evening, and in the morning he scourges her for the most trivial fault. She is a slave to him; and he is a greater slave to his

or man.

own unruly, beastly passions. Miserable man! Miserable is every one that is in his power.

Having had occasion to mention the female part of this servile race, a question naturally occurs-How are the female slaves treated during a state of pregnancy? Do they, in any degree, experience the indulgences, which such a situation indispensably requires? No, no. What! Does not their pregnancy exempt them, at least in part, from hard labour? No, from the commencement to the end of it, they are kept even in what is called the field gang, at the hard labour of hoeing, rather plowing, the land, on which the sugar cane is to be planted. The unhappy consequence is, numerous abortions happen among them. For the sake of humanity, I am extremely sorry to add, that I have seen some women in this condition, even during their ninth month, beaten, and afterwards confined in a dungeon, for faults of the most trivial kind. How is the unhappy woman accommodated during the time of her delivery? She is obliged to bring forth her tender offspring in a hut, at once dark and damp. Her fare, in this delicate situation, consists of a small quantity of horse-bean, corn, or corn-meal. The fatal effect of such inhumane usage, is the death of thousands of infants by convulsions and other

.

diseases. Unhappy women! Unhappy children! The latter I retract. Happily are such infants delivered from the misery, to which they must otherwise have been unavoidably subjected. A few weeks after she is delivered, the unhappy mother is, by a cruel and peremptory order, called to her former labour. Her unhappy infant she must fasten to her back, or lay in a furrow; exposed to a scorching sun, or heavy rains, without shelter or cover, except it be the skin of a kid, or, if it can be procured, a rag of cloth. For the support of this wretched infant, the still more wretched mother has but a small extra allowance until it be weaned. Nor, during the time of suckling her infant, has she any indulgence whatever, except it be an exemption from picking grass in the evening. This, indeed, is no inconsiderable mitigation of her misery. For, in consequence of the scarcity of grass, this foraging business is the unhappy occasion of the murder of numberless slaves. It often happens, that when these forlorn wretches are unable to procure their bundle, or quantity of grass, in time, they flee, to escape immediate punishment, and hide themselves in the woods, or the mountains. But woeful is the punishment that inevitably awaits them as soon as they can be found!

Numerous and fatal are the effects of this antichristian and irrational, inhuman and impolitic, treatment of the wretched slaves in the West-Indies; not to say any thing, at present, of the usage of slaves in South and North America, and other parts of the world. How obvious and easy is the remedy of that evil, which, to every man of feeling, is an object of detestation, the commerce between Africa and America; the buying of human beings in the former, and the selling them in the latter, as if men and brutes were on a level? Were the slaves in the West-Indies treated as humanity requires and Christianity directs; would the planters treat them with one half the attention, tenderness, and care, they bestow on their horses; future importations from Africa, as unnecessary, would be happily prevented. Abortions and un timely deaths among the infants of the enslaved Africans, would become, in a great measure, unknown. Their progeny would be sufficiently numerous to cultivate their masters' estates; the expence of purchasing imported slaves saved; the masters would be better served; the slaves more happy; the friends of religion, liberty, and humanity would rejoice; and a long train of other glorious consequences would follow. The European colonies, and even our own southern states, would assume a new appearance. Auspicious