But if passion may be supposed to be generally more than a ballance for interest, how must the scale be turned in favour of the melancholy picture exhibited, when we reflect that self-preservation additionally steps in, and demands the most rigorous severity.  For when we consider that where there is one master, there are fifty slaves; that the latter have been all forcibly torn from their country, and are retained in their present situation by violence; that they are perpetually at war in their hearts with their oppressors, and are continually cherishing the seeds of revenge; it is evident that even avarice herself, however cool and deliberate, however free from passion and caprice, must sacrifice her own sordid feelings, and adopt a system of tyranny and oppression, which it must be ruinous to pursue.

Thus then, if no picture had been drawn of the situation of slaves, and it had been left solely to every man’s sober judgment to determine, what it might probably be, he would conclude, that if the situation were justly described, the page must be frequently stained with acts of uncommon cruelty.

It remains only to make a reply to an objection, that is usually advanced against particular instances of cruelty to slaves, as recorded by various writers.  It is said that “some of these are so inconceivably, and beyond all example inhuman, that their very excess above the common measure of cruelty shews them at once exaggerated and incredible.”  But their credibility shall be estimated by a supposition.  Let us suppose that the following instance had been recorded by a writer of the highest reputation, “that the master of a ship, bound to the western colonies with slaves, on a presumption that many of them would die, selected an hundred and thirty two of the most sickly, and ordered them to be thrown into the sea, to recover their value from the insurers, and, above all, that the fatal order was put into execution.”  What would the reader have thought on the occasion?  Would he have believed the fact?  It would have surely staggered his faith; because he could never have heard that any one man ever was, and could never have supposed that any one man ever could be, guilty of the murder of such a number of his fellow creatures.  But when he is informed that such a fact as this came before a court[068] of justice in this very country; that it happened within the last five years; that hundreds can come forwards and say, that they heard the melancholy evidence with tears; what bounds is he to place to his belief?  The great God, who looks down upon all his creatures with the same impartial eye, seems to have infatuated the parties concerned, that they might bring the horrid circumstance to light, that it might be recorded in the annals of a publick court, as an authentick specimen of the treatment which the unfortunate Africans undergo, and at the same time, as an argument to shew, that there is no species of cruelty, that is recorded to have been exercised upon these wretched people, so enormous that it may not readily be believed.