Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/165

( 131 ) a general opinion, that, if negroes were not constantly kept at work, they would become unruly.

2.We have seen, in chap. 4, the very trifling faults, for which slaves are frequently punished, at the discretion of the overseer, and the unlimited severity of those punishments by the chain, dungeon, stocks, projecting iron collar, iron boot, cowskin, cart-whip, picket, and the like; all of which have a manifest tendency to harrass human nature, and, in conjunction with other causes, to subdue it.

3.It appears that no attention is paid to the marriage of the slaves, so that one man should be restricted to one wife, but that there is a promiscuous intercourse amongst one another as they please, (General Tottenham, Capt. Smith, Sir G. Young, Forster, Coor); and that this is not only the case of the negroes one with another, but with the negro women and the whites, the latter of whom violate the chastity of the former at discretion, (Dean of Middleham, Captain Smith, Davison, Cook, Harrison, Coor, and Dalrymple). If the women are sent for by the overseers, says Cook, for these purposes, they must come or be flogged, and to such a pitch has Dalrymple known this intercourse to proceed, that female slaves are offered by their masters, even to those who visit them, and he has known compulsion used to oblige such to submit to prostitution.

4.It appears again, from chap. 4, that pregnant women, to get the most out of them, are frequently worked within a very little time of their delivery, and so hard and so near to this period, that they often miscarry, as well as that, even in this situation, they are not exempt from the whip.

5.The sides of the huts, says Coor, in which the pregnant women are delivered, and children born, are no more defence against the cold night damps, than one of our pasture hedges. Bedding they have none, but a R 2