are exposed to the fun in Madeira and Turk's island, the latter place is between Jamaica and Hifpaniola; there are about thirty inhabitants of the Bermudian race on this fandy barren island; their children run naked, and, as soon as they are able, rake falt at the pond, and carry it to the beach, where they pile it in heaps: it is their only article of commerce.

!

:

I observed, with attention, the tawny fry busy at their labour: their hair was coarse, short, and curly; their skin as dark and brown as any Mulatto, and they were as rude and almost as wild as favages; so that no rational being would take them to be the children of white parents; then if in one generation they change to Mulattoes, in all human probability, in fifteen or twenty generations to come the defcendants would be black.

Blacks, I contend, are human flesh and blood, and have fouls and intellects as well as whites; and if their geniuses were properly cultivated, would make as great improvements in all the polite arts and sciences as whites; yes, most certainly they would. Good God! when I think how many millions of my fellow creatures have been murdered since the beginning of this horrid commerce, and how many more are still groaning in bondage and mifery, and no prospect of a change, my blood runs cold. Great Creator of this terrestrial ball! surely thou didst not people one quarter of it to be slaves to the other three; nor didst thou cause the West Indies to emerge from

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from the waters to be theatres for rapine and murder. No-those islands teem with bounteous nature and spontaneous plenty; but barbarous man, tyrant of the world, has changed the delightful scenes to scenes of horror, chains and torture, and unparalelled cruelty!

In Great Britain and Ireland the beasts of the field are better protected by the laws than slaves in the West Indies: for if a horse or a cow is wantonly killed, or deprived of the tail or horns, or any way maliciously maimed, diligent enquiry is made, and if the offender be detected, he is brought to trial and transported; and though a white man or woman barbarously and wantonly attacks a slave, even the property of another, and lops off the ears, nofe, or testicles of the fame, the only punishment by the law, though the owner of the injured flave prosecutes most vigorously, is a fine, perhaps not one fourth the value of the slave: to authenticate this affertion, I shall submit the first and second clauses of the Slave Act in Jamaica.

"After the passing of this act, if any person whatsoever shall wittingly, wantonly, or bloody-mindedly kill any negroe or flave, such person or persons so offending shall for the first offence be guilty of felony, and have the benefit of the clergy, and shall fuffer as a further punishment, an imprisonment for fuch time as the court, before whom fuch offender shall be tried, shall adjudge;

not exceeding twelve months. That fuch perfon being convicted of felony for killing a slave, if fuch slave did belong to any other person than the person convicted of fuch felony, fuch person so convicted shall pay the sum of fixty pounds to the owner to whom such slave did belong, to be recovered by action of debt."

The fifty-fourth clause of the Slave Act in the Island of St. Vincent is as follows: to wit; "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any free person or perfons whatsoever, shall * geld or dismember any slave, such person or persons so offending,, shall and may be prosecuted by presentment, indictment or information, before the justices of the peace in their sessions, or the justices of Oyer and Terminer, and general goal delivery, and upon conviction of any fuch gelding or dismembering, the offender or offenders shall and may be fined any fum not exceeding fixty pounds current money, or less than forty; and shall be imprisoned until such fine shall be paid, and shall give security for his or her good behaviour."

* It occurs to me that fome one or more of the council or assembly must have been jealous of black wenches, and compiled this clause merely for the purpose of gratifying their revenge on black men; and it is a cruel and ridiculous clause,

Though Though there is a clause in the Slave Act, setting forth, That if any master or owner of a slave gives more than thirty-nine stripes at one time to his flave, he is liable to be indicted before the justices of the peace in their sessions, and upon conviction to forfeit a small penalty, this but very little protects poor slaves from the severity of cruel and vindictive whites: for as the evidence of a slave will not be admitted against a free person, a free person may flog in private his own or any other person's flaves; and supposing he was instigated by the devil to kill them, if a free person was not present, he could not be injured; and if a flave who is wantonly cut and mangled, battered and bruised by a white man, attempts to save his eyes, his nose, ears, &c. by lifting up his hand in his own defence, he is instantly brought to tryal before two or three calliloo justices, and immediately tucked up; this is, I appeal to all the world, a more cruel, unjust and barbarous law than any of those of old; though the Gibeonites were flaves, kings could not injure them with impunity: Saul had seven of his fons hung up in his prefence for murdering a few of them, though they were only "hewers of wood, and drawers of water," like poor Africans.

There was a law at Athens, fetting forth, That he who flogged or ill treated another's slave, was to fuffer severe corporal punishment; and in some cases was put to death.

By a law of the Greeks, when a flave was barbarouflytr ated by his master, he could insist on being fold, and could chuse another master:there was a similar law at Rome, so that flaves in thofe places had some protection; but how is it in the West Indies? There their lives and properties are in the hands of their owners, nor can a flave do any thing through a virtuous motive: therefore, flavery is bad in various respects: it is bad for the flave, because he is compelled to act contrary to his disposition, to break the commandments, and to do every diabolical business he is directed: it is bad for the master, because he has an unlimited power over his slave, and infenfibly forgets all moral virtues, and becomes cruel, fierce and voluptuous.

Good God! how cruel and depraved the heart of man! I have known clergymen, on the most frivolous occafions, to order their slaves to be flogged and tortured, contrary to all the texts in the gospel; and to fit in their piazza's looking on, finging and laughing at the shrieks of anguish forced by the lashing and cutting of their drivers.

When a ship arrives in the West Indies from the coast of Africa with a cargo of negroes (three, four or five hundred, or perhaps more), an advertisement immediately appears in the newspapers, that on a certain day will be fold a choice parcel of prime slaves; and though they may be a mixture of different countries, such as Mucco's