Page:Remarks upon the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica.pdf/84

 and loſs: but if he be rapacious, where his ſecurity ſhould make him liberal; and inhuman, where he has occaſioned diſtreſs; if he promiſe with a view to deceive, and inſinuates that he may ſecurely betray: I know not any diſappointent, any loſs, any ruin that ſhould not be the attendant of his crimes.

That the maſter profits by the labour, the ſkill, the independency of his ſlave, cannot I think, be well denied; for him he plants, for him he cleans, for him improves; and the more he is encouraged to induſtry, the better cloathed, the better fed, the more able will he be to labour; and if his work be apportioned to his ſtrength, he may continue his exertions beyond the common period: but if negroes be over-wrought, and no indulgence given to their weakneſs, they ſoon wear away in body and mind, and abſoluely bear the ſymptoms of age, when in point of years they are only in their prime. A proper allowance is ſeldom made for a diminution of ſtrength; for if an eſtate were uſed with two hundred ſlaves to make the ſame number of hogſheads; if ten or twenty of the moſt able were to die, the maſter would expect,