Such then is the general situation of the unfortunate Africans.  They are beaten and tortured at discretion.  They are badly clothed.  They are miserably fed.  Their drudgery is intense and incessant and their rest short.  For scarcely are their heads reclined, scarcely have their bodies a respite from the labour of the day, or the cruel hand of the overseer, but they are summoned to renew their sorrows.  In this manner they go on from year to year, in a state of the lowest degradation, without a single law to protect them, without the possibility of redress, without a hope that their situation will be changed, unless death should terminate the scene.

Having described the general situation of these unfortunate people, we shall now take notice of the common consequences that are found to attend it, and relate them separately, as they result either from long and painful labour, a want of the common necessaries of life, or continual severity.

Oppressed by a daily task of such immoderate labour as human nature is utterly unable to perform, many of them run away from their masters.  They fly to the recesses of the mountains, where they choose rather to live upon any thing that the soil affords them, nay, the very soil itself, than return to that happy situation, which is represented by the receivers, as the condition of a slave.

It sometimes happens, that the manager of a mountain plantation, falls in with one of these; he immediately seizes him, and threatens to carry him to his former master, unless he will consent to live on the mountain and cultivate his ground.  When his plantation is put in order, he carries the delinquent home, abandons him to all the suggestions of despotick rage, and accepts a reward for his honesty.  The unhappy wretch is chained, scourged, tortured; and all this, because he obeyed the dictates of nature, and wanted to be free.  And who is there, that would not have done the same thing, in the same situation?  Who is there, that has once known the charms of liberty; that would not fly from despotism?  And yet, by the impious laws of the receivers, the absence[066] of six months from the lash of tyranny is—­death.

But this law is even mild, when compared with another against the same offence, which was in force sometime ago, and which we fear is even now in force, in some of those colonies which this account of the treatment comprehends.  “Advertisements have frequently appeared there, offering a reward for the apprehending of fugitive slaves either alive or dead.  The following instance was given us by a person of unquestionable veracity, under whose own observation it fell.  As he was travelling in one of the colonies alluded to, he observed some people in pursuit of a poor wretch, who was seeking in the wilderness an asylum from his labours.  He heard the discharge of a gun, and soon afterwards stopping at an house for refreshment, the head of the fugitive, still reeking with blood, was brought in and laid upon a table with exultation.  The production of such a trophy was the proof required by law to entitle the heroes to their reward.”  Now reader determine if you can, who were the most execrable; the rulers of the state in authorizing murder, or the people in being bribed to commit it.