Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/9

[ 7 ] bear them. They won't allow them to have any claim to human privileges, or scarce, indeed, to be regarded as the work of God. Tho' it was consistent with the justice of our Maker to pronounce the sentence on our common parent, and thro' him on all succeeding generations, That he and they should eat their bread by the sweat of their brow; yet, does it not stand recorded by the same eternal truth, That the Labourer is worthy of his hire? It cannot be allowed in natural justice that there should be a servitude without condition: A cruel endless servitude. It cannot be reconcileable to natural justice, that whole nations; nay whole continents of men, should be devoted to do the drudgery of life for others, be dragged away from their attachments of relations and societies; and made to serve the appetites and pleasures of a race of men whose superiority has been obtained by an force.'

A particular account of the treatment these unhappy Africans receive in the West-Indies, was lately published, which even by those who, blinded by interest, seek excuses for the Trade, and endeavour to palliate the cruelty exercised upon them, is allowed to be a true, tho' rather too favourable representation of the usage they receive, which is as follows, viz.

The iniquity of the Slave-trade greatly aggravated by the inhumanity with which the Negroes are treated in the Plantations, as well with respect to food and cloathing, as from the unreasonable labour which is commonly exacted from them. To which may be added the cruel chastisements they frequently suffer, without any other bounds than the will and wrath of their hard task-masters. In Barbados, and some other of the Islands, six pints of Indian corn ' and