will ascertain the treatment of itself. For
how shamefully must these unfortunate people have been oppressed? What a
dreadful havock must famine, fatigue, and cruelty, have made among them,
when we consider, that the descendants of _six hundred and fifty
thousand_ people in the prime of life, gradually imported within a
century, are less numerous than those, which only _ten thousand_[108]
would have produced in the same period, under common advantages,
and in a country congenial to their constitutions?

But the _receivers_ have probably great merit on the occasion. Let
us therefore set it down to their humanity. Let us suppose for once,
that this incredible waste of the human species proceeds from a
benevolent design; that, sensible of the miseries of a servile state,
they resolve to wear out, as fast as they possibly can, their
unfortunate slaves, that their miseries may the sooner end, and that a
wretched posterity may be prevented from sharing their parental
condition. Now, whether this is the plan of reasoning which the
_receivers_ adopt, we cannot take upon us to decide; but true it
is, that the effect produced is exactly the same, as if they had
reasoned wholly on this _benevolent_ principle.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 097: The articles of war are frequently read at the head of
every regiment in the service, stating those particular actions which
are to be considered as crimes.]

[Footnote 098: We cannot omit here to mention one of the customs, which
has been often brought as a palliation of slavery, and which prevailed
but a little time ago, and we are doubtful whether it does not prevail
now, in the metropolis of this country, of kidnapping men for the
service of the East-India Company. Every subject, as long as he behaves
well, has a right to the protection of government; and the tacit
permission of such a scene of iniquity, when it becomes known, is as
much a breach of duty in government, as the conduct of those subjects,
who, on other occasions, would be termed, and punished as, rebellious.]

[Footnote 099: The expences of every parish are defrayed by a poll-tax
on negroes, to save which they pretend to liberate those who are past
labour; but they still keep them employed in repairing fences, or in
doing some trifling work on a scanty allowance. For to free a
_field-negroe_, so long as he can work, is a maxim, which,
notwithstanding the numerous boast