flogging
was so strong among the overseers and book-keepers, that even now they
frequently indulge it in the face of penalties and at the risk of
forfeiting their place.

The descriptions which the special magistrates give of the lower class
of overseers and the managers of the petty estates, furnish data enough
for judging of the manner in which they would be likely to act when
clothed with arbitrary power. They are "a low order of men," "without
education," "trained up to use the whip," "knowing nothing else save the
art of flogging," "ready at any time to perjure themselves in any matter
where a negro is concerned," &c. Now, may we not ask what but cruelty,
the most monstrous, could be expected under a system where _such men_
were constituted law makers, judges, and executioners?

From the foregoing facts, and the still stronger circumstantial
evidence, we leave the reader to judge for himself as to the amount of
cruelty attendant upon "the reign of terror," in Barbadoes. We must,
however, mention one qualification, without which a wrong impression may
be made. It has already been remarked that Barbadoes has, more than any
other island, reduced slave labor and sugar cultivation to a regular
system. This the planters have been compelled to do from the denseness
of their population, the smallness of their territory, the fact that the
land was all occupied, and still more, because the island, from long
continued cultivation, was partly worn out. A prominent feature in their
system was, theoretically at least, good bodily treatment of the slaves,
good feeding, attention to mothers, to pregnant women, and to children,
in order that the estates might always be kept _well stocked with
good-conditioned negroes_. They were considered the best managers, who
increased the population of the estates most rapidly, and often premiums
were given by the attorneys to such managers. Another feature in the
Barbadoes system was to raise sufficient provisions in the island to
maintain the slaves, or, in planter's phrase, to _feed the stock_,
without being dependent upon foreign countries. This made the supplies
of the slaves more certain and more abundant. From several circumstances
in the condition of Barbadoes, it is manifest, that there were fewer
motives to cruelty there than existed in other islands. First, the slave
population was abundant, then the whole of the island was under
cultivation, and again the lands were old and becomin