Griffith Hughes's account of the number of Negroes in Barbadoes. Cannot keep up their usual number without a yearly recruit. Excessive hardships wear the Negroes down in a surprising manner. A servitude without a condition, inconsistent with reason and natural justice. The general usage the Negroes meet with in the West Indies. Inhuman calculations of the strength and lives of the Negroes. Dreadful consequences which may be expected from the cruelty exercised upon this oppressed part of mankind.

We are told by Griffith Hughes, rector of St. Lucy in Barbadoes, in his natural history of that island, printed in the year 1750, "That there were between sixty-five and seventy thousand Negroes, at that time, in the island, tho' formerly they had a greater number. That in order to keep up a necessary number, they were obliged to have a yearly supply from Africa. That the hard labour, and often want of necessaries, which these unhappy creatures are obliged to undergo, destroy a greater number than are bred there." He adds, "That the capacities of their minds in common affairs of life are but little inferior, if at all, to those of the Europeans. If they fail in some arts, he says, it may be owing more to their want of education, and the depression of their spirits by slavery, than to any want of natural abilities." This destruction of the human species, thro' unnatural hardships, and want of necessary supplies, in the case of the Negroes, is farther confirmed in an account of the European settlements in America, printed London, 1757, where it is said, par. 6. chap. 11th, "The Negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more compleat, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time: Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth. The island of Barbadoes, (the Negroes upon which do not amount to eighty thousand) notwithstanding all the means which they use to increase them by propagation, and that the climate is in every respect (except that of being more wholesome) exactly resembling the climate from whence they come; notwithstanding all this, Barbadoes lies under a necessity of an annual recruit of five thousand slaves, to keep up the stock at the number I have mentioned. This prodigious failure, which is at least in the same proportion in all our islands, shews demonstratively that some uncommon and unsupportable hardship lies upon the Negroes, which wears them down in such a surprising manner."

In an account of part of North America, published by Thomas Jeffery, 1761, the author, speaking of the usage the Negroes receive in the West India islands, says, "It is impossible for a human heart to reflect upon the servitude of these dregs of mankind, without in some measure feeling for their misery, which ends but with their lives.—Nothing can be more wretched than the condition of this people. One would imagine, they were framed to be the disgrace of the human species; banished from their country, and deprived of that blessing, liberty, on which all other nations set the greatest value, they are in a measure reduced to the condition of beasts of burden. In general, a few roots, potatoes especially, are their food, and two rags, which neither screen them from the heat of the day, nor the extraordinary coolness of the night, all their covering; their sleep very short; their labour almost continual; they receive no wages, but have twenty lashes for the smallest fault." A thoughtful person, who had an opportunity of observing the miserable condition of the Negroes in one of our West India islands, writes thus, "I met with daily exercise to see the treatment which those miserable wretches met with from their masters; with but few exceptions. They whip them most unmercifully on small occasions: you will see their bodies all whealed and scarred; in short, they seem to set no other value on their lives, than as they cost them so much money; and are restrained from killing them, when angry, by no worthier consideration, than that they lose so much. They act as though they did not look upon them as a race of human creatures, who have reason, and remembrance of misfortunes, but as beasts; like oxen, who are stubborn, hardy, and senseless, fit for burdens, and designed to bear them: they won't allow them to have any claim to human privileges, or scarce indeed to be regarded as the work of God. Though it was consistent with the justice of our Maker to pronounce the sentence on our common parent, and through him on all succeeding generations, That he and they should eat their bread by the sweat of their brows: yet does it not stand recorded by the same eternal truth, That the labourer is worthy of his hire? It cannot be allowed, in natural justice, that there should be a servitude without condition; a cruel, endless servitude. It cannot be reconcileable to natural justice, that whole nations, nay, whole continents of men, should be devoted to do the drudgery of life for others, be dragged away from their attachments of relations and societies, and be made to serve the appetite and pleasure of a race of men, whose superiority has been obtained by illegal force."

Sir Hans Sloane, in the introduction to his natural history of Jamaica, in the account he gives of the treatment the Negroes met with there, speaking of the punishments inflicted on them, says, page 56. "For rebellion, the punishment is burning them, by nailing them down to the ground with crooked sticks on every limb, and then applying the fire, by degrees, from the feet and hands, burning them gradually up to the head, whereby their pains are extravagant. For crimes of a less nature, gelding or chopping off half the foot with an axe.—For negligence, they are usually whipped by the overseers with lance-wood switches.—After they are whipped till they are raw, some put on their skins pepper and salt, to make them smart; at other times, their masters will drop melted wax on their skins, and use several very exquisite torments." In that island, the owners of the Negroe slaves set aside to each a parcel of ground, and allow them half a day at the latter end of the week, which, with the day appointed by the divine injunction to be a day of rest and service to God, and which ought to be kept as such, is the only time allowed them to manure their ground. This, with a few herrings, or other salt fish, is what is given for their support. Their allowance for cloathing in the island, is seldom more than six yards of oznabrigs each year. And in the more northern colonies, where the piercing westerly winds are long and sensibly felt, these poor Africans suffer much for want of sufficient cloathing; indeed some have none till they are able to pay for it by their labour. The time that the Negroes work in the West Indies, is from day-break till noon; then again from two o'clock till dark (during which time, they are attended by overseers, who severely scourge those who appear to them dilatory); and before they are suffered to go to their quarters, they have still something to do, as collecting herbage for the horses, gathering fuel for the boilers, &c. so that it is often past twelve before they can get home, when they have scarce time to grind and boil their Indian corn; whereby, if their food was not prepared the evening before, it sometimes happens that they are called again to labour before they can satisfy their hunger. And here no delay or excuse will avail; for if they are not in the field immediately upon the usual notice, they must expect to feel the overseer's lash. In crop time (which lasts many months) they are obliged, by turns, to work most of the night in the boiling house. Thus their owners, from a desire of making the greatest gain by the labour of their slaves, lay heavy burdens on them, and yet feed and cloath them very sparingly, and some scarce feed or cloath them at all; so that the poor creatures are obliged to shift for their living in the best manner they can, which occasions their being often killed in the neighbouring lands, stealing potatoes, or other food, to satisfy their hunger. And if they take any thing from the plantation they belong to, though under such pressing want, their owners will correct them severely for taking a little of what they have so hardly laboured for; whilst many of themselves riot in the greatest luxury and excess. It is matter of astonishment how a people, who, as a nation, are looked upon as generous and humane, and so much value themselves for their uncommon sense of the benefit of liberty, can live in the practice of such extreme oppression and inhumanity, without seeing the inconsistency of such conduct, and feeling great remorse. Nor is it less amazing to hear these men calmly making calculations about the strength and lives of their fellow men. In Jamaica, if six in ten of the new imported Negroes survive the seasoning, it is looked upon as a gaining purchase. And in most of the other plantations, if the Negroes live eight or nine years, their labour is reckoned a sufficient compensation for their cost. If calculations of this sort were made upon the strength and labour of beasts of burden, it would not appear so strange; but even then, a merciful man would certainly use his beast with more mercy than is usually shewn to the poor Negroes. Will not the groans, the dying groans, of this deeply afflicted and oppressed people reach heaven? and when the cup of iniquity is full, must not the inevitable consequence be, the pouring forth of the judgments of God upon their oppressors? But alas! is it not too manifest that this oppression has already long been the object of the divine displeasure? For what heavier judgment, what greater calamity, can befal any people, than to become subject to that hardness of heart, that forgetfulness of God, and insensibility to every religious impression, as well as that general depravation of manners, which so much prevails in these colonies, in proportion as they have more or less enriched themselves at the expence of the blood and bondage of the Negroes.

It is a dreadful consideration, as a late author remarks, that out of the stock of eighty thousand Negroes in Barbadoes, there die every year five thousand more than are born in that island; which failure is probably in the same proportion in the other islands. In effect, this people is under a necessity of being entirely renewed every sixteen years. And what must we think of the management of a people, who, far from increasing greatly, as those who have no loss by war ought to do, must, in so short a time as sixteen years, without foreign recruits, be entirely consumed to a man! Is it not a christian doctrine, that the labourer is worthy of his hire? And hath not the Lord, by the mouth of his prophet, pronounced, "Wo unto that man who buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; who uses his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him nought for his work?" And yet the poor Negro slaves are constrained, like the beasts, by beating, to work hard without hire or recompence, and receive nothing from the hand of their unmerciful masters, but such a wretched provision as will scarce support them under their fatigues. The intolerable hardships many of the slaves undergo, are sufficiently proved by the shortness of their lives.—And who are these miserable creatures, that receive such barbarous treatment from the planter? Can we restrain our just indignation, when we consider that they are undoubtedly his brethren! his neighbours! the children of the same Father, and some of those for whom Christ died, as truly as for the planter himself. Let the opulent planter, or merchant, prove that his Negro slave is not his brother, or that he is not his neighbour, in the scripture sense of these appellations; and if he is not able so to do, how will he justify the buying and selling of his brethren, as if they were of no more consideration than his cattle? The wearing them out with continual labour, before they have lived out half their days? The severe whipping and torturing them, even to death, if they resist his unsupportable tyranny? Let the hardiest slave-holder look forward to that tremendous day, when he must give an account to God of his stewardship; and let him seriously consider, whether, at such a time, he thinks he shall be able to satisfy himself, that any act of buying and selling, or the fate of war, or the birth of children in his house, plantation, or territories, or any other circumstance whatever, can give him such an absolute property in the persons of men, as will justify his retaining them as slaves, and treating them as beasts? Let him diligently consider whether there will not always remain to the slave a superior property or right to the fruit of his own labour; and more especially to his own person; that being which was given him by God, and which none but the Giver can justly claim?