Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/180

162 A master had wantonly cut the mouth of a child six months old, almost from ear to ear. It must surely have been to punish the mother, for such a babe was incapable of offending, except by its cries for want of nourishment and attention, to which it was very probably exposed. The master was convicted of the offence, but the jury doubted whether a master was indictable for the immediate correction of his slave, and left it subject to the opinion of the court. The result was, that he was sentenced to pay a fine of forty shillings currency; about twenty-five shillings sterling.

An overseer, for some trifling offence, threw a negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice; the poor creature, of course, perished: and what was the punishment of the murderer? He was discharged from his situation, and compelled to pay the value of the slave.

A girl, fourteen years of age, was dreadfully whipped for coming too late to her work; she fell down motionless, and was then dragged along the ground by the legs, to an hospital, where she died. The murderer, though tried, was acquitted, upon the idea that a man would not be so foolish as to destroy his own property.

In the island of Barbadoes, a British general met a youth, about nineteen, entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes; his body was covered with wounds, his belly and thighs almost cut to pieces, and covered with ulcers, a finger might have been laid in some of the weals; he could not sit down, because his hinder part was mortified: he could not lie down on account of the prongs of the collar. He supplicated the general for relief. On being