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Page 34
The small account in which the life of a negro is held in the West
Indies is so universally known, that it might seem impertinent to
quote the following extract, if some people had not been hardy enough
of late to assert that negroes are on the same footing in that respect
as Europeans. By the 329th Act, page 125, of the Assembly of
Barbadoes, it is enacted 'That if any negro, or other slave, under
punishment by his master, or his order, for running away, or any other
crime or misdemeanor towards his said master, unfortunately shall
suffer in life or member, no person whatsoever shall be liable to a
fine; but if any man shall out of _wantonness, or only of
bloody-mindedness, or cruel intention, wilfully kill a negro, or other
slave, of his own, he shall pay into the public treasury fifteen
pounds sterling_.' And it is the same in most, if not all, of the West
India islands. Is not this one of the many acts of the islands which
call loudly for redress? And do not the assembly which enacted it
deserve the appellation of savages and brutes rather than of
Christians and men? It is an act at once unmerciful, unjust, and
unwise; which for cruelty would disgrace an assembly of those who are
called barbarians; and for its injustice and _insanity_ would shock
the morality and common sense of a Samaide or a Hottentot.
Shocking as this and many more acts of the bloody West India code at
first view appear, how is the iniquity of it heightened when we
consider to whom it may be extended! Mr. James Tobin, a zealous
labourer in the vineyard of slavery, gives an account of a French
planter of his acquaintance, in the island of Martinico, who shewed
him many mulattoes working in the fields like beasts of burden; and he
told Mr. Tobin these were all the produce of his own loins! And I
myself have known similar instances. Pray, reader, are these sons and
daughters of the French planter less his children by being begotten on
a black woman? And what must be the virtue of those legislators, and
the feelings of those fathers, who estimate the lives of their sons,
however begotten, at no more than fifteen pounds; though they should
be murdered, as the act says, _out of wantonness and bloody-mindedness_!
But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man? And
surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue
involves in its continuance destruction to every principle, and buries
all sentiments in ruin!
I have often seen slaves, particularly those who were meagre, in
different islands, put into scales and weighed; and then sold from
three pence to six pence or nine pence a pound. My master, however,
whose humanity was shocked at this mode, used to sell such by the
lump. And at or after a sale it was not uncommon to see negroes taken
from their wives, wives taken from their husbands, and children from
their parents, and sent off to other islands, and wherever else their
merciless lords chose; and probably never more during life to see each
other! Oftentimes my heart has bled at these partings; when the
friends of the departed have been at the water side, and, with sighs
and tears, have kept their eyes fixed on the vessel till it went out
of sight.
A poor Creole negro I knew well, who, after having been often thus
transported from island to island, at last resided in Montserrat. This
man used to tell me many melancholy tales of himself. Generally, after
he had done working for his master, he used to employ his few leisure
moments to go a fishing. When he had caught any fish, his master would
frequently take them from him without paying him; and at other times
some other white people would serve him in the same manner. One day he
said to me, very movingly, 'Sometimes when a white man take away my
fish I go to my maser, and he get me my right; and when my maser by
strength take away my fishes, what me must do? I can't go to any body
to be righted; then' said the poor man, looking up above 'I must look
up to God Mighty in the top for right.' This artless tale moved me
much, and I could not help feeling the just cause Moses had in
redressing his brother against the Egyptian. I exhorted the man to
look up still to the God on the top, since there was no redress below.
Though I little thought then that I myself should more than once
experience such imposition, and read the same exhortation hereafter,
in my own transactions in the islands; and that even this poor man and
I should some time after suffer together in the same manner, as shall
be related hereafter.
Nor was such usage as this confined to particular places or
individuals; for, in all the different islands in which I have been
(and I have visited no less than fifteen) the treatment of the slaves
was nearly the same; so nearly indeed, that the history of an island,
or even a plantation, with a few such exceptions as I have mentioned,
might serve for a history of the whole. Such a tendency has the
slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling
of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are
born worse than other men--No; it is the fatality of this mistaken
avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into
gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might
have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are
unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good,
which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which
violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and
independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God
could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above
man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption
of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in
extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even
of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the
condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the
privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity
throughout Britain answers you--No. When you make men slaves you
deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an
example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with
you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest
or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to
keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are
incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or
moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a
climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree
unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and
incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!--An
assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments
of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to
another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see
the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there
no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in
dread of an insurrection? Nor would it be surprising: for when
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