Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History

Book

Open Original Text

y 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

 "--No peace is given
 To us enslav'd, but custody severe;
 And stripes and arbitrary punishment
 Inflicted--What peace can we return?
 But to our power, hostility and hate;
 Untam'd reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
 Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least
 May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
 In doing what we most in suffering feel."

But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every
cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest,
intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would
attend you.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote O: Thus was I sacrificed to the envy and resentment of this
woman for knowing that the lady whom she had succeeded in my master's
good graces designed to take me into her service; which, had I once
got on shore, she would not have been able to prevent. She felt her
pride alarmed at the superiority of her rival in being attended by a
black servant: it was not less to prevent this than to be revenged on
me, that she caused the captain to treat me thus cruelly.]

[Footnote P: "The Dying Negro," a poem originally published in 1773.
Perhaps it may not be deemed impertinent here to add, that this
elegant and pathetic little poem was occasioned, as appears by the
advertisement prefixed to it, by the following incident. "A black,
who, a few days before had ran away from his master, and got himself
christened, with intent to marry a white woman his fellow-servant,
being taken and sent on board a ship in the Thames, took an
opportunity of shooting himself through the head."]

[Footnote Q: These pisterines are of the value of a shilling.]

[Footnote R: Mr. Dubury, and many others, Montserrat.]

[Footnote S: Sir Philip Gibbes, Baronet, Barbadoes.]

[Footnote T: Benezet's Account of Guinea, p. 16.]

CHAP. VI.

 _Some account of Brimstone-Hill in Montserrat--Favourable
 change in the author's situation--He commences merchant with
 three pence--His various success in dealing in the different
 islands, and America, and the impositions he meets with in
 his transactions with Europeans--A curious imposition on
 human nature--Danger of the surfs in the West
 Indies--Remarkable instance of kidnapping a free
 mulatto--The author is nearly murdered by Doctor Perkins in
 Savannah._

In the preceding chapter I have set before the reader a few of those
many instances of oppression, extortion, and cruelty, which I have
been a witness to in the West Indies: but, were I to enumerate them
all, the catalogue would be tedious and disgusting. The punishments of
the slaves on every trifling occasion are so frequent, and so well
known, together with the different instruments with which they are
tortured, that it cannot any longer afford novelty to recite them; and
they are too shocking to yield delight either to the writer or the
reader. I shall therefore hereafter only mention such as incidentally
befel myself in the course of my adventures.

In the variety of departments in which I was employed by my master, I
had an opportunity of seeing many curious scenes in different islands;
but, above all, I was struck with a celebrated curiosit

Previous Next