they
had certain hours allowed them for the purpose of joining in the dance,
and that they had every comfort and convenience, that people are
generally supposed to enjoy on such convivial occasions. But this is far
from the case. Reason informs us, that it can never be. If they wish for
such innocent recreations, they must enjoy them in the time that is
allotted them for sleep; and so far are these dances from proceeding
from any uncommon degree of happiness, which excites them to convivial
society, that they proceed rather from an uncommon depression of
spirits, which makes them even sacrifice their rest[102], for the sake
of experiencing for a moment a more joyful oblivion of their cares. For
suppose any one of the _receivers_, in the middle of a dance, were
to address his slaves in the following manner: "_Africans!_ I begin
at last to feel for your situation; and my conscience is severely hurt,
whenever I reflect that I have been reducing those to a state of misery
and pain, who have never given me offence. You seem to be fond of these
exercises, but yet you are obliged to take them at such unseasonable
hours, that they impair your health, which is sufficiently broken by the
intolerable share of labour which I have hitherto imposed upon you. I
will therefore make you a proposal. Will you be content to live in the
colonies, and you shall have the half of every week entirely to
yourselves? or will you choose to return to your miserable, wretched
country?"--But what is that which strikes their ears? Which makes them
motionless in an instant? Which interrupts the festive scene?--their
country?--transporting sound!--Behold! they are now flying from the
dance: you may see them running to the shore, and, frantick as it were
with joy, demanding with open arms an instantaneous passage to their
beloved native plains.

Such are the _colonial delights_, by the representation of which
the _receivers_ would persuade us, that the _Africans_ are
taken from their country to a region of conviviality and mirth; and that
like those, who leave their usual places of residence for a summer's
amusement, they are conveyed to the colonies--_to bathe_,--_to
dance_,--_to keep holy-day_,--_to be jovial_.--But there
is something so truly ridiculous in the attempt to impose these scenes
of felicity on the publick, as scenes which fall to the lot of slaves,
that the _receivers_ must have been driven to great extremities, to
hazard them to the eye