Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/119

( 85 ) At Grenada in the town of St. George, a mason, named Chambers, killed a negro in the middle of the day, and Mr. Dalrymple believes in the church yard, but no notice was taken of it.

Two slaves, says Captain Cook, were murdered and thrown into the road during his residence in Barbadoes: yet no legal inquiry ever took place that he heard of.

He was repeatedly informed by the inhabitants that they did not chuse [sic] to make examples of white men there, fearing it might be attended with dangerous consequences.

Going over the evidence we come at last to an instance (and the only instance of the kind mentioned) of a white man being hanged for the murder of another's slave; and it is very remarkable, that he should be represented as having been hanged more because he was an obnoxious man, than that the murder of a slave was considered as a crime: for Mr Dalrymple states that the Chief Justice of the Island (Grenada) told him, he believed if this murderer, whose name was Bacchus Preston, had been a man of good character, or had had friends or money to have paid for the slave, he would not have been brought to trial. He was of a very bad character and had been obliged to leave Barbadoes upon that account. At Grenada he had been a Bailiff's follower, and, from his rigour in executing his office and bad character, he was particularly obnoxious to the inhabitants of the town of St. George.

Such appears to have been, in the experience of the different evidences cited, the forlorn and wretched situation of the slaves. They often complain, says Dr. Jackson, that they are an oppressed people; that they suffer in this world, but expect happiness in the next; whilst they denounce the vengeance of God on the white men their oppressors: if you speak to them of future punishments they say, "Why should a poor negro be punished; he does no wrong; fiery cauldrons, and such things, are reserved for white people, as punishments for the oppression of slaves."

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