He hastened, however, to another part of the argument.  Some had said, “We wish to put an end to the Slave Trade, but we do not approve of your mode.  Allow more time.  Do not displease the legislatures of the West India islands.  It is by them that those laws must be passed, and enforced, which will secure your object.”  Now he was directly at issue with these gentlemen.  He could show, that the abolition was the only certain mode of amending the treatment of the slaves, so as to secure their increase:  and that the mode which had been offered to him, was at once inefficacious and unsafe.  In the first place, how could any laws, made by these legislatures, be effectual, whilst the evidence of Negroes was in no case admitted against White men?  What was the answer from Grenada?  Did it not state, “that they who were capable of cruelty, would in general be artful enough to prevent any but slaves from being witnesses of the fact?” Hence it had arisen, that when positive laws had been made, in some of the islands, for the protection of the slaves, they had been found almost a dead letter.  Besides, by what law would you enter into every man’s domestic concerns, and regulate the interior economy of his house and plantation?  This would be something more than a general excise.  Who would endure such a law?  And yet on all these and innumerable other minutiae must depend the protection of the slaves, their comforts, and the probability of their increase.  It was universally allowed, that the Code Noir had been utterly neglected in the French islands, though there was an officer appointed by the crown to see it enforced.  The provisions of the Directorio had been but of little more avail in the Portuguese settlements, or the institution of a Protector of the Indians, in those of the Spaniards.  But what degree or protection the slaves would enjoy might be inferred from the admission of a gentleman, by whom this very plan of regulation had been recommended, and who was himself no ordinary person, but a man of discernment and legal resources.  He had proposed a limitation of the number of lashes to be given by the master or overseer for one offence.  But, after all, he candidly confessed, that his proposal was not likely to be useful, while the evidence of slaves continued inadmissible against their masters.  But he could even bring testimony to the inefficacy of such regulations.  A wretch in Barbados had chained a Negro girl to the floor, and flogged her till she was nearly expiring.  Captain Cook and Major Fitch, hearing her cries, broke open the door and found her.  The wretch retreated from their resentment, but cried out exultingly, “that he had only given her thirty-nine lashes (the number limited by law) at any one time; and that he had only inflicted this number three times since the beginning of the night,” adding, “that he would prosecute them for breaking open his door; and that he would flog her to death for all any one, if he pleased; and that he would give her the fourth thirty-nine before morning.”