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FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 097:  The articles of war are frequently read at the head of every regiment in the service, stating those particular actions which are to be considered as crimes.]

[Footnote 098:  We cannot omit here to mention one of the customs, which has been often brought as a palliation of slavery, and which prevailed but a little time ago, and we are doubtful whether it does not prevail now, in the metropolis of this country, of kidnapping men for the service of the East-India Company.  Every subject, as long as he behaves well, has a right to the protection of government; and the tacit permission of such a scene of iniquity, when it becomes known, is as much a breach of duty in government, as the conduct of those subjects, who, on other occasions, would be termed, and punished as, rebellious.]

[Footnote 099:  The expences of every parish are defrayed by a poll-tax on negroes, to save which they pretend to liberate those who are past labour; but they still keep them employed in repairing fences, or in doing some trifling work on a scanty allowance.  For to free a field-negroe, so long as he can work, is a maxim, which, notwithstanding the numerous boasted manumissions, no master ever thinks of adopting in the colonies.]

[Footnote 100:  They must be cultivated always on a Sunday, and frequently in those hours which should be appropriated to sleep, or the wretched possessors must be inevitably starved.]

[Footnote 101:  They are allowed in general three holy-days at Christmas, but in Jamaica they have two also at Easter, and two at Whitsuntide:  so that on the largest scale, they have only seven days in a year, or one day in fifty-two.  But this is on a supposition, that the receivers do not break in upon the afternoons, which they are frequently too apt to do.  If it should be said that Sunday is an holy-day, it is not true; it is so far an holy-day, that they do not work for their masters; but such an holy-day, that if they do not employ it in the cultivation of their little spots, they must starved.]

[Footnote 102:  These dances are usually in the middle of the night; and so desirous are these unfortunate people of obtaining but a joyful hour, that they not only often give up their sleep, but add to the labours of the day, by going several miles to obtain it.]

[Footnote 103:  Bishop of Glocester’s sermon, preached before the society for the propagation of the gospel, at the anniversary meeting, on the 21st of February, 1766.]

[Footnote 104:  There is a law, (but let the reader remark, that it prevails but in one of the colonies), against mutilation.  It took its rise from the frequency of the inhuman practice.  But though a master cannot there chop off the limb of a slave with an axe, he may yet work, starve, and beat him to death with impunity.]