Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/13

[ 11 ] dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege; they are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master's table. — Not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel task-masters, who, by their unrelenting scourges, have ploughed their backs, and made long furrows, and at length brought them even to death. When passing along, I have viewed your plantations cleared and cultivated, many spacious houses built, and the owners of them faring sumptuously every day, my blood has frequently almost run cold within me, to consider how many of your slaves had neither convenient food to eat, or proper raiment to put on, notwithstanding most of the comforts you enjoy were solely owing to their indefatigable labours. — The Scripture says., Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. Does God take care for oxen; and will he not take care of the Negroes also? undoubtedly he will. — Go to now ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you: Behold the provision of the poor Negroes, who have reaped down your fields, which is by you denied them, crieth; and the cries of them, which reaped, are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. We have a remarkable instance of God's taking cognizance of, and avenging the quarrel of poor slaves, 2 Sam. xxi. 1. There was a famine in the days of David, three years, year after year; and David enquired of the Lord: And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. Two things are here very remarkable: Firft, These Gibeonites were only hewers of wood and drawers of water, or in other words, slaves like yours. Secondly, That Rh