Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/170

 you shock me," and left him. The next morning his men told him they had helped to bury her.

But it appears that the aged are not the only persons whose fate is to be commiserated, when they became of no value; for people in youth, if disabled, were abandoned to equal misery. General Tottenham, about three weeks before the hurricane, saw a youth, about nineteen, walking in the streets, in a most deplorable situation, entirely naked, and with an iron collar about his neck, with five long projecting spikes. His body, before and behind, was almost cut to pieces, and with running sores all over it, and you might put your finger in some of the wheals. He could not sit down, owing to his being in a state of mortification, and it was impossible for him to lie down, from the projection of the prongs. The boy came to the general and asked relief. He was shocked at his appearance, and asked him what he had done to suffer such a punishment, and who inflicted it. He said it was his master, who lived about two miles from town, and that as he could not work, he would give him nothing to eat.

If it be possible to view human depravity in a worse light than it has already appeared in on the subject of the treatment of the slaves when disabled from labor, it may be done by referring to the evidence of Captain Lloyd, who was told by a person of veracity, when in the West Indies, but whom he did not wish to name in his evidence, that it was the practice of a certain planter to frame pretenses for the execution of his old worn out slaves, in order to get the island allowance. And it was supposed that he dealt largely in that way.

Having now cited both the ordinary and extraordinary punishments inflicted upon the slaves, it may be presumed that some one will ask here, whether, under these various acts of cruelty, they were wholly without redress? To this the following answer may be given: That, with respect to the ordinary punishments by the whip and cowskin, (where they did not terminate in death,) the power of the master or overseer was under little or no control.

As to such of the extraordinary punishments before mentioned as did not terminate in death, such as picketing, dropping hot sealing-wax on the flesh, cutting off ears, and the like, it appears that slaves had no redress whatever, for that these actions also on the part of the masters were not deemed within the reach of the law. In the instance cited of the doctor clipping off the ears of a female slave, no more notice was taken of it, says Coor, than if a dog's ears had been cut off, though it must have been known to the magistrates. In the dreadful instance also cited of a planter's breaking his slave's leg by an iron bar, to induce the surgeon to cut it off, as a punishment, Mr. Dalrymple observes that it was not the public opinion that any punishment was due to him on that account, for though it was generally known, he was equally well received in society afterwards as before; and in the case also mentioned of the owner torturing his female slave by the application of a lighted torch to her body, Mr. H. Ross states, only that this owner was not a man of character; with respect to his suffering by the law, he observes that he was never brought to any trial for it; and he did not know that the law then extended to the punishment of whites for such acts as these.