f the benefit of
liberty, can live in the practice of such extreme oppression and
inhumanity, without seeing the inconsistency of such conduct, and
feeling great remorse. Nor is it less amazing to hear these men calmly
making calculations about the strength and lives of their fellow men. In
Jamaica, if six in ten of the new imported Negroes survive the
seasoning, it is looked upon as a gaining purchase. And in most of the
other plantations, if the Negroes live eight or nine years, their labour
is reckoned a sufficient compensation for their cost. If calculations of
this sort were made upon the strength and labour of beasts of burden, it
would not appear so strange; but even then, a merciful man would
certainly use his beast with more mercy than is usually shewn to the
poor Negroes. Will not the groans, the dying groans, of this deeply
afflicted and oppressed people reach heaven? and when the cup of
iniquity is full, must not the inevitable consequence be, the pouring
forth of the judgments of God upon their oppressors? But alas! is it not
too manifest that this oppression has already long been the object of
the divine displeasure? For what heavier judgment, what greater
calamity, can befal any people, than to become subject to that hardness
of heart, that forgetfulness of God, and insensibility to every
religious impression, as well as that general depravation of manners,
which so much prevails in these colonies, in proportion as they have
more or less enriched themselves at the expence of the blood and bondage
of the Negroes.

It is a dreadful consideration, as a late author remarks, that out of
the stock of eighty thousand Negroes in Barbadoes, there die every year
five thousand more than are born in that island; which failure is
probably in the same proportion in the other islands. _In effect, this
people is under a necessity of being entirely renewed every sixteen
years._ And what must we think of the management of a people, who, far
from increasing greatly, as those who have no loss by war ought to do,
must, in so short a time as sixteen years, without foreign recruits, be
entirely consumed to a man! Is it not a christian doctrine, _that the
labourer is worthy of his hire?_ And hath not the Lord, by the mouth of
his prophet, pronounced, _"Wo unto that man who buildeth his house by
unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; who uses his neighbour's
service without wages, and giveth him nought for his work?"_ And ye