to produce something more monstrous and unnatural than himself, and were to place a dove amongst vultures, or engraft a thorn on the olive tree, much as we should marvel at the caprice, we should be still more astounded at the expectation, which exceeds even a tyrant’s proverbial unreasonableness, that he should gather grapes from the thorn, or that the dove should be habituated to a thirst for blood.  Yet that is the caprice, that is the unreasonable, the foul, the gross, the monstrous, the outrageous, incredible injustice of which we are hourly guilty towards the whole unhappy race of negroes. (Cheers.) My lords, we fill up the incasare of injustice by severely executing laws badly conceived in a still more atrocious and cruel spirit.  The whole punishments smell of blood. (Hear, Hear.) If the treadmill stop in consequence of the languid limbs and exhausted frames of the victims, within a minute the lash resounds through the building—­if the stones which they are set to break be not broken by limbs scarred, and marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of the whip to their toilsome task!  I myself have heard within the last three hours, from a person, who was an eye-witness of the appalling and disgusting fact, that a leper was introduced amongst the negroes; and in passing let me remark, that in private houses or hospitals no more care has been taken to separate those who are stricken with infectious diseases from the sound portion, any more than to furnish food to those in prison who are compelled, from the unheard-of, the paltry, the miserable disposition to treat with cruelty the victims of a prison, to go out and gather their own food,—­a thing which I believe even the tyrant of Siberia does not commit.  Yet in that prison, where blood flows profusely, and the limbs of those human beings are subjected to perpetual torture, the frightful, the nauseous, the disgusting—­except that all other feelings are lost in pity towards the victim and indignation against the oppressor—­sight was presented of a leper, scarred from the eruptions of disease on his legs and previous mistreatment, whaled again and again, and his blood again made to flow from the jailer’s lash.  I have told your lordships how bills have been thrown out for murdering the negroes.  But a man had a bill presented for this offence:  a petition was preferred, and by a white man.  Yes, a white man who had dared, under feelings of excited indignation, to complain to the regularly constituted authorities, instead of receiving for his gallant conduct the thanks of the community, had a bill found which was presented against him as a nuisance.  I have, within the last two hours, amid the new mass of papers laid before your lordships within the last forty-eight hours, culled a sample which, I believe, represents the whole odious mass.

Eleven females have been flogged, starved, lashed, attached to the treadmill, and compelled to work until nature could no longer endure their