dergo while in the hands of the _first receivers_,
without mentioning an instance of wanton, barbarity, which happened some
time ago; particularly as it may be inserted with propriety in the
present place, and may give the reader a better idea of the cruelties,
to which they are continually exposed, than any that he may have yet
conceived. To avoid making a mistake, we shall take the liberty that has
been allowed us, and transcribe it from a little manuscript account,
with which we have been favoured by a person of the strictest integrity,
and who was at that time in the place where the transaction
happened[058]. "Not long after," says he, (continuing his account) "the
perpetrator of a cruel murder, committed in open day light, in the most
publick part of a town, which was the seat of government, escaped every
other notice than the curses of a few of the more humane witnesses of
his barbarity. An officer of a Guinea ship, who had the care of a number
of new slaves, and was returning from the _sale-yard_ to the
vessel with such as remained unsold; observed a stout fellow among them
rather slow in his motions, which he therefore quickened with his
rattan. The slave soon afterwards fell down, and was raised by the same
application. Moving forwards a few yards, he fell down again; and this
being taken as a proof of his sullen perverse spirit, the enraged
officer furiously repeated his blows, till he expired at his feet. The
brute coolly ordered some of the surviving slaves to carry the dead body
to the water's side, where, without any ceremony or delay, being thrown
into the sea, the tragedy was supposed to have been immediately finished
by the not more inhuman sharks, with which the harbour then abounded.
These voracious fish were supposed to have followed the vessels from
the coast of Africa, in which ten thousand slaves were imported in that
one season, being allured by the stench, and daily fed by the dead
carcasses thrown overboard on the voyage."

If the reader should observe here, that cattle are better protected in
this country, than slaves in the colonies, his observation will be just.
The beast which is driven to market, is defended by law from the goad of
the driver; whereas the wretched African, though an human being, and
whose feelings receive of course a double poignancy from the power of
reflection, is unnoticed in this respect in the colonial code, and may
be goaded and beaten till he expires.

We may now t