, partly because
of the great change in society which succeeded to that contest. During
those wars both parties exerted themselves to bring into the field all
the force they could muster. Villeins in great numbers were then
emancipated, when they were embodied in arms; and great numbers
emancipated themselves, flying to London and other cities for protection
from the immediate evils of war, or taking advantage of the frequent
changes of property, and the precarious tenure by which it was held, to
exchange their own servile condition for a station of freedom with all
its hopes and chances. This took place to a great extent, and the
probabilities of success were greatly in their favour; for whatever may
have been practised in earlier and ruder times, in that age they
certainly were not branded like cattle, according to the usage of your
sugar islands.

_Montesinos_.--A planter, who notwithstanding this curious specimen of
his taste and sensibility, was a man of humane studies and humane
feelings, describes the refined and elegant manner in which the operation
is performed, by way of mitigating the indignation which such a usage
ought to excite. He assures us that the stamp is not a branding iron,
but a silver instrument; and that it is heated not in the fire, but over
the flame of spirits of wine.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Excellent planter! worthy to have been flogged at a
gilt whipping-post with a scourge of gold thread! The practice of
marking slaves had fallen into disuse; probably it was only used at first
with captives, or with those who were newly-purchased from a distant
country, never with those born upon the soil. And there was no means of
raising a hue and cry after a runaway slave so effectually as is done by
your colonial gazettes, the only productions of the British colonial
press.

_Montesinos_.--Include, I pray you, in the former part of your censure
the journals of the United States, the land of democracy and equal
rights.

_Sir Thomas More_.--How much more honourable was the tendency of our
laws, and of national feeling in those days, which you perhaps as well as
your trans-Atlantic brethren have been accustomed to think barbarous,
when compared with this your own age of reason and liberality! The
master who killed his slave was as liable to punishment as if he had
killed a freeman. Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as well
as the public feeling, encouraged it. If a villein who had