Page:A Dissuasion from the Slave Trade.djvu/40

 go so far as Jamaica to prove this? No. In Virginia they do the same. 2d. As to their cloathing. In the Islands, the allowance for a Slave's cloathing is seldom more than six yards of oznabrigs a year, and in the Southern Colonies, where the piercing westerly winds are long and sensibly felt, these poor Africans suffer much for the want of sufficient cloathing; indeed, shocking to relate! some of them are obliged to work most of the night in boiling-houses, notwithstanding the hard days work they have performed. Their Owners make great gain by their Slave's labour. They lay heavy burdens on them, and yet feed and cloath them very sparingly, and some scarcely at all; so that it cannot be wondered that these poor creatures are obliged to shift for their living as they do, which occasions many of them being killed in stealing potatoes or other food to satisfy hunger. If they are detected in taking any thing from the plantation they belong to, which they have so hardly laboured for, they are cruely whiped." Lastly. With respect to the beating which these poor people meet with in the West-Indies. For the least fault they whip them most unmercifully, viz. for not being at work in half an hour after the usual notice; speaking a word which the