Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/8

6 expresses himself: "It's impossible for a human heart to reflect upon the servitude of these dregs of mankind, without in some measure feeling for their misery, which ends but with their lives. — Nothing can be more wretched than the condition of this people. One would imagine, they were framed to be the disgrace of the human species, banished from their country, and deprived of that blessing Liberty, on which all other nations set the greatest value, they are in a manner reduced to the condition of beasts of burden: In general a few roots, potatoes especially, are their food, and two rags, which neither screen them from the heat of the day, nor the extraordinary coolness of the night, all their covering; their sleep very short; their labour almost continual, they receive no wages, but have twenty lashes for the smallest fault.'"

A considerate young person who was late in one of our West-India Islands, where he observed the miserable situation of the Negroes, makes the following remarks, I meet with daily exercise, to see the treatment which these miserable wretches meet with from their masters, with but few exceptions. They whip them most unmercifully, on small occasions. They beat them with thick clubs, and you will see their bodies all whaled and scarred; in short, they seem to set no other value on their lives than as they cost them so much money; and are not restrained from killing them, when angry, by a worthier consideration than that they lose so much. They act as tho' they did not look upon them as a race of human creatures, who have reason, and remembrance of misfortunes, but as beasts, like oxen, who are stubborn, hardy and senseless; fit for burdens, and designed to beat