the Mosaic
law in the punishment of offenders. Morgan Godwyn's account of the
contempt and grievous rigour exercised upon the Negroes in his time.
Account from Jamaica, relating to the inhuman treatment of them there.
Bad effects attendant on slave-keeping, as well to the masters as the
slaves. Extracts from several laws relating to Negroes. Richard Baxter's
sentiments on slave-keeping.

That celebrated civilian Montesquieu, in his treatise _on the spirit of
laws_, on the article of slavery says, "_It is neither useful to the
master nor slave; to the slave, because he can do nothing through
principle (or virtue); to the master, because he contracts with his
slave all sorts of bad habits, insensibly accustoms himself to want all
moral virtues; becomes haughty, hasty, hard-hearted, passionate,
voluptuous, and cruel_." The lamentable truth of this assertion was
quickly verified in the English plantations. When the practice of
slave-keeping was introduced, it soon produced its natural effects; it
reconciled men, of otherwise good dispositions, to the most hard and
cruel measures. It quickly proved, what, under the law of Moses, was
apprehended would be the consequence of unmerciful chastisements. Deut.
xxv. 2. "_And it shall be if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that
the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face,
according to his fault, by a certain number; forty stripes he may give
him, and not exceed_." And the reason rendered, is out of respect to
human nature, viz. "_Lest if he should exceed, and beat him above these
with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee_." As
this effect soon followed the cause, the cruelest measures were adopted,
in order to make the most of the poor _wretches_ labour; and in the
minds of the masters such an idea was excited of inferiority, in the
nature of these their unhappy fellow creatures, that they soon esteemed
and treated them as beasts of burden: pretending to doubt, and some of
them even presuming to deny, that the efficacy of the death of Christ
extended to them. Which is particularly noted in a book, intitled _The
Negroes and Indians advocate_, dedicated to the then Archbishop of
Canterbury, wrote so long since as in the year 1680, by Morgan Godwyn,
thought to be a clergyman of the church of England.[A] The same spirit
of sympathy and zeal which stirred up the good Bishop of Chapia to plead
with so much energy the kindred cause of