The third advantage which they are said to experience, is that of holy-days, or days of respite from their usual discipline and fatigue.  This is certainly a great indulgence, and ought to be recorded to the immortal honour of the receivers.  We wish we could express their liberality in those handsome terms, in which it deserves to be represented, or applaud them sufficiently for deviating for once from the rigours of servile discipline.  But we confess, that we are unequal to the task, and must therefore content ourselves with observing, that while the horse has one day in seven to refresh his limbs, the happy African[101] has but one in fifty-two, as a relaxation from his labours.

With respect to their dances, on which such a particular stress has been generally laid, we fear that people may have been as shamefully deceived, as in the former instances.  For from the manner in which these are generally mentioned, we should almost be led to imagine, that they had certain hours allowed them for the purpose of joining in the dance, and that they had every comfort and convenience, that people are generally supposed to enjoy on such convivial occasions.  But this is far from the case.  Reason informs us, that it can never be.  If they wish for such innocent recreations, they must enjoy them in the time that is allotted them for sleep; and so far are these dances from proceeding from any uncommon degree of happiness, which excites them to convivial society, that they proceed rather from an uncommon depression of spirits, which makes them even sacrifice their rest[102], for the sake of experiencing for a moment a more joyful oblivion of their cares.  For suppose any one of the receivers, in the middle of a dance, were to address his slaves in the following manner:  “Africans! I begin at last to feel for your situation; and my conscience is severely hurt, whenever I reflect that I have been reducing those to a state of misery and pain, who have never given me offence.  You seem to be fond of these exercises, but yet you are obliged to take them at such unseasonable hours, that they impair your health, which is sufficiently broken by the intolerable share of labour which I have hitherto imposed upon you.  I will therefore make you a proposal.  Will you be content to live in the colonies, and you shall have the half of every week entirely to yourselves? or will you choose to return to your miserable, wretched country?”—­But what is that which strikes their ears?  Which makes them motionless in an instant?  Which interrupts the festive scene?—­their country?—­transporting sound!—­Behold! they are now flying from the dance:  you may see them running to the shore, and, frantick as it were with joy, demanding with open arms an instantaneous passage to their beloved native plains.