rcise to see the treatment which those miserable
wretches met with from their masters; with but few exceptions. They whip
them most unmercifully on small occasions: you will see their bodies all
whealed and scarred; in short, they seem to set no other value on their
lives, than as they cost them so much money; and are restrained from
killing them, when angry, by no worthier consideration, than that they
lose so much. They act as though they did not look upon them as a race
of human creatures, who have reason, and remembrance of misfortunes, but
as beasts; like oxen, who are stubborn, hardy, and senseless, fit for
burdens, and designed to bear them: they won't allow them to have any
claim to human privileges, or scarce indeed to be regarded as the work
of God. Though it was consistent with the justice of our Maker to
pronounce the sentence on our common parent, and through him on all
succeeding generations, _That he and they should eat their bread by the
sweat of their brows_: yet does it not stand recorded by the same
eternal truth, _That the labourer is worthy of his hire?_ It cannot be
allowed, in natural justice, that there should be a servitude without
condition; a cruel, endless servitude. It cannot be reconcileable to
natural justice, that whole nations, nay, whole continents of men,
should be devoted to do the drudgery of life for others, be dragged away
from their attachments of relations and societies, and be made to serve
the appetite and pleasure of a race of men, whose superiority has been
obtained by illegal force."

Sir Hans Sloane, in the introduction to his natural history of Jamaica,
in the account he gives of the treatment the Negroes met with there,
speaking of the punishments inflicted on them, says, page 56. "For
rebellion, the punishment is burning them, by nailing them down to the
ground with crooked sticks on every limb, and then applying the fire, by
degrees, from the feet and hands, burning them gradually up to the head,
whereby _their pains are extravagant_. For crimes of a less nature,
gelding or chopping off half the foot with an axe.--For negligence, they
are usually whipped by the overseers with lance-wood switches.--After
they are whipped till they are raw, some put on their skins pepper and
salt, to make them smart; at other times, their masters will drop melted
wax on their skins, and use several _very exquisite torments_." In that
island, the owners of the Negroe slaves set aside to eac