g more monstrous and
unnatural than himself, and were to place a dove amongst vultures,
or engraft a thorn on the olive tree, much as we should marvel at
the caprice, we should be still more astounded at the expectation,
which exceeds even a tyrant's proverbial unreasonableness, that he
should gather grapes from the thorn, or that the dove should be
habituated to a thirst for blood. Yet that is the caprice, that is
the unreasonable, the foul, the gross, the monstrous, the
outrageous, incredible injustice of which we are hourly guilty
towards the whole unhappy race of negroes. (Cheers.) My lords, we
fill up the incasare of injustice by severely executing laws badly
conceived in a still more atrocious and cruel spirit. The whole
punishments smell of blood. (Hear, Hear.) If the treadmill stop in
consequence of the languid limbs and exhausted frames of the
victims, within a minute the lash resounds through the building--if
the stones which they are set to break be not broken by limbs
scarred, and marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of
the whip to their toilsome task! I myself have heard within the last
three hours, from a person, who was an eye-witness of the appalling
and disgusting fact, that a leper was introduced amongst the
negroes; and in passing let me remark, that in private houses or
hospitals no more care has been taken to separate those who are
stricken with infectious diseases from the sound portion, any more
than to furnish food to those in prison who are compelled, from the
unheard-of, the paltry, the miserable disposition to treat with
cruelty the victims of a prison, to go out and gather their own
food,--a thing which I believe even the tyrant of Siberia does not
commit. Yet in that prison, where blood flows profusely, and the
limbs of those human beings are subjected to perpetual torture, the
frightful, the nauseous, the disgusting--except that all other
feelings are lost in pity towards the victim and indignation against
the oppressor--sight was presented of a leper, scarred from the
eruptions of disease on his legs and previous mistreatment, whaled
again and again, and his blood again made to flow from the jailer's
lash. I have told your lordships how bills have been thrown out for
murdering the negroes. But a man had a bill presented for this
offenc