He found the situation of the slaves much better than he had imagined.  Setting aside liberty, they were as well off as the poor in Europe.  They had little want of clothes or fuel; they had a house and garden found them, were never imprisoned for debts, nor deterred from marrying through fear of being unable to support a family; their orphans and widows were taken care of, as they themselves were when old and disabled; they had medical attendance without expense; they had private property, which no master ever took from them; and they were resigned to their situation, and looked for nothing beyond it.  Perhaps persons might have been prejudiced by living in the towns, to which slaves were often sent for punishment; and where there were many small proprietors; or by seeing no negro otherwise than as belonging to the labouring poor; but they appeared to him to want nothing but liberty; and it was only occasionally that they were abused.

There were two prejudices with respect to the colonies, which he would notice.  The first was, that cruel usage occasioned the inequality of births and deaths among the slaves.  But did cruelty cause the excess of deaths above births in the city of London?  No—­this excess had other causes.  So it had among the slaves.  Of these more males were imported than females:  they were dissolute too in their morals; they had also diseases peculiar to themselves.  But in those islands where they nearly kept up their numbers, there was this difficulty, that the equality was preserved by the increase on one estate compensating for the decrease on another.  These estates, however, would not interchange their numbers; whereas, where freedom prevailed, the free labourers circulated from one employer to another, and appeared wherever they were wanted.

The second was, that all chastisement of the slaves was cruelty.  But this was not true.  Their owners generally withdrew them from public justice; so that they, who would have been publicly executed elsewhere, were often kept alive by their masters, and were found punished again and again for repeating their faults.  Distributive justice occasioned many punishments; as one slave was to be protected against every other slave:  and, when one pilfered from another, then the master interfered.  These punishments were to be distinguished from such as arose from enforcing labour, or from the cruelty of their owners.  Indeed he had gone over the islands, and he had seen but little ill usage.  He had seen none on the estate where he resided.  The whip, the stocks, and confinement, were all the modes of punishment he had observed in other places.  Some slaves belonging to his father were peculiarly well off.  They saved money, and spent it in their own way.