Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/21

[ 19 ] of battle. "Think (says he in his journal) what a pitiable sight it was, to see the widows weeping over their loft husbands, orphans deploring the loss of their fathers, &c. &c.'"

Those, who are acquainted with the Trade, agree, that many Negroes on the sea-coast, who have been corrupted by their intercourse and converse with the European Factors, have learnt to stick at no act of cruelty for gain. These make it a practice to steal abundance of little Blacks of both sexes, when found on the roads or in the fields, where their parents keep them all day to watch the corn, &c. Some authors say, the Negroe Factors go six or seven hundred miles up the country with goods, bought from the Europeans, where markets of men are kept in the same manner as those of beasts with us; when the poor slaves, whether brought from far or near, come to the sea-shore, they are stripped naked, and strictly examined by the European Surgeons, both men and women, without the least distinction or modesty; those which are approved as good, are marked with a red-hot iron with the ship's mark, after which they are put on board the vessels, the men being shackled with irons two and two together. Reader bring the matter home, and consider whether any situation in life can be more completely miserable than that of those distressed captives. When we reflect, that each individual of this number had some tender attachment which was broken by this cruel separation; some parent or wife, who had not an opportunity of mingling tears in a parting embrace: perhaps some infant or aged parent whom his labour was to feed and vigilance protect; themselves under the dreadful apprehension of an unknown perpetual slavery; pent up Rh