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Show Z32 ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE your unfortunate Daves, that they had no connexions in the country from which they have forcibly been torn away: or, if you will take upon you to a!fert, that they never fi,gh, when they are alone; or that they never relate to each other their tales of mifery and woe. But you judge of them, perhaps, in an happy moment, when you are dealing out to them their provifions for the week; and are but little aware, that, though the countenance may be cheered with a momentary fmile, the heart may be exquifitely tortured. Were you to t'hew us, indeed, that there are laws, fubjeCl: to no evafion, by which you are obliged to clothe and feed them in a comfortable manner; were you to ihew us that they are l!:- protected at all ; or that even on~ in a thouflmd of thofe mafiers have t fuf- • There is a law~ (but let the reader remark, that it prevails but in one of the colonies), againft mutilation. It took its rife from the frequency of the inhuman praflice. But though a ma!ler cannot tllere chop off the limb of a flave with an axe, he may yet work, ftarve, and beat him to death with impunity. t Cf'rwo inftances are recorded by the rectivtrJ, out of about Jfty-tlmtfand, where a white man has fuffered death for the murder of a negroe; but the receivers do not tell us, that tbefe fuffered more becaufe they were the pefi.s of fociety, than becaufe the murder of j/avu IW4J a crimt, fered OF THE HuMAN SPECIES. 2 33 fered death, who have been guilty of premeditated murder to their llaves, you would have a better claim to our belief: but you can neither produce the infhnces nor the laws. The people, of whom you fpcak, are jlaveJ, are yqur own property, are wholly at your own dijpofal; and this idea is fufficient to overturn your allimions of their happinefs. But we ihall now mention a circumlbnce, which, in the prefent cafe, will have more weight than all the arguments which have hitherto been advanced. It is an opinion, which the African! univerfally entertain, that, as foon as death 1l1all releafe them from the hands of their oppreifors, they ihall immediately be wafted back to their native plains, there to exifi again, to enjoy the light of their beloved countrymen, and to fpend the whole of their new exifience in fcenes of tranquillity and delight: and fo powerfully does this notion operate upon them, as to drive them frequently to the horrid extremity of putting a period to their lives. Now if thefe fuicides are frequent, (which no perfon can deny) what are they but a proof, that the lituation of thofe who de-firoy |