Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/11

[ 9 ] clothe 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, tho' under such pressing want, their owners will correct them severely, for taking a little of what they have so hardly laboured for, whilst they themselves riot in the greatest luxury and excess. — It is a 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 without 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 of this deeply afflicted and oppressed people reach heaven, and when the cup of iniquity is full, must not the inevitable consequence be pouring forth of the judgments of God upon their oppressors. But, alas! is it not too manifest that this oppression has Rh