captives. When we reflect that each individual of this number had
probably some tender attachment, which was broken by this cruel
separation; some parent or wife, who had not an opportunity of mingling
tears in a parting embrace; perhaps some infants, or aged parents, whom
his labour was to feed, and vigilance protect; themselves under the most
dreadful apprehension of an unknown perpetual slavery; confined within
the narrow limits of a vessel, where often several hundreds lie as close
as possible. Under these aggravated distresses, they are often reduced
to a state of despair, in which many have been frequently killed, and
some deliberately put to death under the greatest torture, when they
have attempted to rise, in order to free themselves from present misery,
and the slavery designed them. Many accounts of this nature might be
mentioned; indeed from the vast number of vessels employed in the trade,
and the repeated relations in the public prints of Negroes rising on
board the vessels from Guinea, it is more than probable, that many such
instances occur every year. I shall only mention one example of this
kind, by which the reader may judge of the rest; it is in Astley's
collection, vol. 2. p. 449, related by John Atkins, surgeon on board
admiral Ogle's squadron, of one "Harding, master of a vessel in which
several of the men-slaves and women-slaves had attempted to rise, in
order to recover their liberty; some of whom the master, of his own
authority, sentenced to cruel death, making them first eat the heart and
liver of one of those he had killed. The woman he hoisted by the thumbs,
whipped, and slashed with knives before the other slaves, till she
died."[A] As detestable and shocking as this may appear to such whose
hearts are not yet hardened by the practice of that cruelty, which the
love of wealth by degrees introduceth into the human mind, it will not
be strange to those who have been concerned or employed in the trade.

[Footnote A: A memorable instance of some of the dreadful effects of the
slave-trade, happened about five years past, on a ship from this port,
then at anchor about three miles from shore, near Acra Fort, on the
coast of Guinea. They had purchased between four and five hundred
Negroes, and were ready to sail for the West Indies. It is customary on
board those vessels, to keep the men shackled two by two, each by one
leg to a small iron bar; these are every day brought on the deck for the
benef