Bishop of Glocester's sermon, preached before the society for the propagation of the gospel, at the anniversary meeting, on the 21st of February, 1766.
There is a law, (but let the reader remark, that it prevails but in one of the colonies), against mutilation. It took its rise from the frequency of the inhuman practice. But though a master cannot there chop off the limb of a slave with an axe, he may yet work, starve, and beat him to death with impunity.
Two instances are recorded by the receivers, out of about fifty-thousand, where a white man has suffered death for the murder of a negroe; but the receivers do not tell us, that these suffered more because they were the pests of society, than because the murder of slaves was a crime.
A negroe-funeral is considered as a curious sight, and is attended with singing, dancing, musick, and every circumstance that can shew the attendants to be happy on the occasion.
In 96 years, ending in 1774, 800,000 slaves had been imported into the French part of St. Domingo, of which there remained only 290,000 in 1774. Of this last number only 140,000 were creoles, or natives of the island, i. e. of 650,000 slaves, the whole posterity were 140,000. Considerations sur la Colonie de St. Dominique,(See errata-should be read as "St. Domingue") published by authority in 1777.
Ten thousand people under fair advantages, and in a soil congenial to their constitutions, and where the means of subsistence are easy, should produce in a century 160,000. This is the proportion in which the Americans increased; and the Africans in their own country increase in the same, if not in a greater proportion. Now as the climate of the colonies is as favourable to their health as that of their own country, the causes of the prodigious decrease in the one, and increase in the other, will be more conspicuous.
See Part II Chapter I second paragraph.
See Part II Chapter IX last paragraph.
Epist. to Philemon.
The African slave is of this description; and we could wish, in all our arguments on the present subject, to be understood as having spoken only of proper slaves. The slave who is condemned to the oar, to the fortifications, and other publick works, is in a different predicament. His liberty is not appropriated, and therefore none of those consequences can be justly drawn, which have been deduced in the present case.