us, though hopeless and
romantic. I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with
famine, struggle against the horror's of their situation. How striking is
the effect of subordination; how dreadful is the fear of punishment! The
allotted task is still performed, even on the present reduced subsistence.
The blacksmith sweats at the sultry forge, the sawyer labours pent-up in
his pit and the husbandman turns up the sterile glebe. Shall I again hear
arguments multiplied to violate truth, and insult humanity! Shall I again
be told that the sufferings of the wretched Africans are indispensable
for the culture of our sugar colonies; that white men are incapable of
sustaining the heat of the climate! I have been in the West Indies. I
have lived there. I know that it is a rare instance for the mercury in the
thermometer to mount there above 90 degrees; and here I scarcely pass a
week in summer without seeing it rise to 100 degrees; sometimes to 105;
nay, beyond even that burning altitude.

But toil cannot be long supported without adequate refreshment. The first
step in every community which wishes to preserve honesty should be to set
the people above want. The throes of hunger will ever prove too
powerful for integrity to withstand. Hence arose a repetition of petty
delinquencies, which no vigilance could detect, and no justice reach.
Gardens were plundered, provisions pilfered, and the Indian corn stolen
from the fields where it grew for public use. Various were the measures
adopted to check this depredatory spirit. Criminal courts, either from the
tediousness of their process, or from the frequent escape of culprits from
their decision, were seldomer convened than formerly. The governor ordered
convict offenders either to be chained together or to wear singly a large
iron collar with two spikes projecting from it, which effectually hindered
the party from concealing it under his shirt; and thus shackled, they were
compelled to perform their quota of work.

May, 1791. Had their marauding career terminated here, humanity would
have been anxious to plead in their defence; but the natives continued to
complain of being robbed of spears and fishing tackle. A convict was at
length taken in the fact of stealing fishing-tackle from Daringa, the wife
of Colbee. The governor ordered that he should be severely flogged in the
presence of as many natives as could be assembled, to whom the cause of
punishment should be explaine