the sovereign arbiters of the lives of the miserable
Negroes, and allowed with impunity thus to destroy (may I not properly
say, _to murder_) their fellow-creatures; and that by means so cruel, as
cannot be even related but with shame and horror?

CHAP. XIII.

Usage of the Negroes, when they arrive in the West Indies. An hundred
thousand Negroes brought from Guinea every year to the English colonies.
The number of Negroes who die in the passage and seasoning. These are,
properly speaking, murdered by the prosecution of this infamous traffic.
Remarks on its dreadful _effects and tendency_.

When the vessels arrive at their destined port in the colonies, the poor
Negroes are to be disposed of to the planters; and here they are again
exposed naked, without any distinction of sexes, to the brutal
examination of their purchasers; and this, it may well be judged, is, to
many, another occasion of deep distress. Add to this, that near
connexions must now again be separated, to go with their several
purchasers; this must be deeply affecting to all, but such whose hearts
are seared by the love of gain. Mothers are seen hanging over their
daughters, bedewing their naked breasts with tears, and daughters
clinging to their parents, not knowing what new stage of distress must
follow their separation, or whether they shall ever meet again. And here
what sympathy, what commiseration, do they meet with? Why, indeed, if
they will not separate as readily as their owners think proper, the
whipper is called for, and the lash exercised upon their naked bodies,
till obliged to part. Can any human heart, which is not become callous
by the practice of such cruelties, be unconcerned, even at the relation
of such grievous affliction, to which this oppressed part of our species
are subjected.

In a book, printed in Liverpool, called _The Liverpool Memorandum_,
which contains, amongst other things, an account of the trade of that
port, there is an exact list of the vessels employed in the Guinea
trade, and of the number of slaves imported in each vessel; by which it
appears that in the year 1753, the number imported to America by one
hundred and one vessels belonging to that port, amounted to upwards of
thirty thousand; and from the number of vessels employed by the African
company in London and Bristol, we may, with some degree of certainty,
conclude, there are one hundred thousand Negroes purchased and brought
on board our ships ye