their punishments were in some measure proportionate to their offences: but is it possible to suppose that near a hundred thousand men, year by year, can deserve such a punishment?

Wor. It is impossible to tell whether they are punished with justice or otherwise; for there is no doubt they take all that are brought, "asking no questions for conscience' sake."

Hen. Sir, there are instances in which they go still farther. They not only take the slaves, but even by treachery have seized the very people that have sold them. In short the whole of this most horrid traffic is made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty, and murder can inveat: and if any of the European nations were to act against each other, as we do against these poor creatures, for no other cause than because they are defenceless and ill-instructed, they would be set down as so many monsters instead of men. I think we may safely conclude, that, if we Europeans transpoft full eighty thousand of these men, we are the cause of murdering as many more before we can procure them. And when we come to calculate on the additions made, year by year, to these miserable beings, it has been proved that not less than half a million of our reasonable fellow creatures in the English islands only, and consequently little less than A WHOLE MILLION, including those belonging to other nations, are at this moment in a state of the most abject slavery, torn from their native lands and dearest connexions; if all, therefore, were to be hanged for cominitting the same crimes abroad for which they would be sentenced to death at home, I question, if there would be any left to carry on this most infernai trade.

Loveg. When one hears of such wanton and abominable cruelties, what reason have we to fear that

solemn denunciation of divine vengeance. "Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" but our barbarities in war are by no means all we have to answer for. Multitudes are confessedly stolen away by mere craft from their own country; and men-stealers are the very worst of thieves *. What an universal uproar it makes in this land if but one poor child be kidnapped from his parents! but in those unhappy climates we may kidnap all we can catch, with the greatest impunity.

Hen. O, Sir! they are brought over by these methods in great abundance. It is amazing how many poor children are stolen from their parents as soon as they can run alone; and these half-reared children they always look upon as their most valuable acquisitions; but what must their poor parents feel on these occasions?

Loveg. What can they know of the feelings of others, who have lost all feelings themselves? These the srcipture describes as being "past feeling;" but I am told the Africans are remarkably fond of their children.

Hen. Sir, their fondness and tenderness towards their children, is almost to an extreme; though, for want of better instruction, they frequently grow up sulky and revengeful.

Mrs. Wor. Being myself a mother, it is pleasant to hear of their attention to their offspring. I knew a gentleman in this country, that, out of mere compassion, received into his house an African girl, who had been kidnapped when she was very young: and she was remarkably affectionate and attentive to the children of her charge, and they loved her inexpressibly. Pray, Mr. Henry, what is your opinion of the general disposition of an African?

* "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, shall surely be put to death.' Ex. xxi. 16,

Hen. As far as I could discover, when they are ill used, they become dark, sulky, and resentful to a high degree; but if treated affectionately, and with friendship, they are, in return, the most affectionate and kind: a proof of this you have in a variety of instances. Where a planter uses them with lenity as a family of his fellow-creatures, though still his slaves, they would fight and die for him. I heard of an instance of a worthy gentleman, who bought a young slave for his travelling servant, designing when he came of age to give him his liberty. And when he told him he was no longer his slave, and that he was at liberty to leave him as soon as he pleased, he cried out v. ith many tears, "Me leave you, my dear massey, me no leave you, no never; me no want better wages dan to serve my dear massey; if you turn me out of one door me come in at de oder; me never leave my dear massey; no never, never.”

Wor. What extreme cruelty, to injure and enslave a race of our fellow creatures, whose minds are capable of such noble and generous sensations!

Hen. Yes, and further evidence we have of this in the love they bear towards their ministers, who, with remarkable affection and attention, preach to them the merciful love of God our Saviour towards mankind, and the tender love we ought to shew towards each other for the Saviour's sake. In their public meetings they appear to me to resemble a swarm of bees fixing around the queen bee of the hive, all hanging upon her. Her life is their life, and her death is their death. They have an uncommon attachment to their ministers, and all of them seem to be drawn by a sort of silken cord of affection, which they have neither power nor inclination to resist. They and their ministers with them give you quite the idea of artless shepherds with their harmless flocks. To be sure there is a differ

ence evidently between them, yet it is amazing the good which has been done among them by the introduction of the gospel; and many of the planters sce so much of the good effects of it, that they do all in their power to encourage and promote such preaching on their plantations, and will give a much greater price for a Christian slave, than for another.

Loveg. Well, Mr. Henry, and just so we should all cleave around the blessed person of the Chief Shepherd, and then we shall prove the truth of the proverb, They are well kept whom the Lord keeps" but some people will say, in vindication of this trade, that the negroes are better off in a state of slavery in the West Indies than in a state of freedom among themselves; though we have but little proof of it from what has hitherto been noticed.

Hen. Under some accidental circumstances, where their owners are merciful and humane, I confess their situation may be but little worse, if quite so bad, as some of the peasantry in our own country; being allowed a decent plat of ground for their own cultivation and support. But they have minds as well as ourselves; and they must still feel they are slaves, and that all their happiness rests merely on the uncertain circumstance, whether their master is a man or a brute. In many instances, to my certain knowledge, their situation is rendered far more miserable than if they were brutes themselves. Their food is so coarse and bad, that nothing but necessity could compel them to eat it; while their labour and their punishments are severe and cruel. They have an expression among themselves, that they are fed with "a fish with one eye:" that is, a herring split asunder to serve two of them, with the little they can raise among themselves. As to their punishments, I am told, some of them have been tormented with the thumb screw; one was tortured in

an iron coffin filled with holes, placed close to a fire; another I heard of, who was suspended in an iron cage, to be eaten by ravenous birds of prey, and lived some days in that, misery; and many have been entirely worked and whipped to death by cruel

masters.

Loveg. How can a God of mercy bear with a nation so completely vile! but I trust there are the righteous among us, who will still save our land. But I was told by a very worthy Moravian minister, who called upon me a few weeks ago in his way to their settlement in Fulneck, that their situation has been softened of late.

Hen. Yes, Sir; as soon as they heard that a vote in parliament had been passed for the abolition of the slave trade, they became less cruel in their punishments, and enacted laws in their favour; but these laws cannot be very well observed while no negro is allowed to give evidence against a white man. Nothing could so effectually prevent these calamities, as an abolition of the trade itself, as it relates to fresh importations; as by this step it would be rendered absolutely necessary to use them with mercy, that they may increase among themselves. And it has been proved to demonstration, that such a step would be not less advantageous to the interest of the nation, than to the cause of humanity.

Wor. Why then the very best that can be said is, that they are taken out of a bad state and put into another by us Christians, as we are called, abundantly worse. But what further proof need we of this, than that, after they have been conquered or kidnapped, they are torn from their families and tenderest connections, and shipped on board those horrid prisons provided for their transportation, and there chained, man to man; and, till of late, so