Now here arises a necessary query to those who hold the balance of justice, and who must be accountable to God for the use they have made of it, That as the principles on which the British constitution is founded, are so favourable to the common rights of mankind, how it has happened that the laws which countenance this iniquitous traffic, have obtained the sanction of the legislature? and that the executive part of the government should so long shut their ears to continual reports of the barbarities perpetrated against this unhappy people, and leave the trading subjects at liberty to trample on the most precious rights of others, even without a rebuke?  Why are the masters of vessels thus suffered to be the sovereign arbiters of the lives of the miserable Negroes, and allowed with impunity thus to destroy (may I not properly say, to murder) their fellow-creatures; and that by means so cruel, as cannot be even related but with shame and horror?

CHAP.  XIII.

Usage of the Negroes, when they arrive in the West Indies.  An hundred thousand Negroes brought from Guinea every year to the English colonies.  The number of Negroes who die in the passage and seasoning.  These are, properly speaking, murdered by the prosecution of this infamous traffic.  Remarks on its dreadful effects and tendency.

When the vessels arrive at their destined port in the colonies, the poor Negroes are to be disposed of to the planters; and here they are again exposed naked, without any distinction of sexes, to the brutal examination of their purchasers; and this, it may well be judged, is, to many, another occasion of deep distress.  Add to this, that near connexions must now again be separated, to go with their several purchasers; this must be deeply affecting to all, but such whose hearts are seared by the love of gain.  Mothers are seen hanging over their daughters, bedewing their naked breasts with tears, and daughters clinging to their parents, not knowing what new stage of distress must follow their separation, or whether they shall ever meet again.  And here what sympathy, what commiseration, do they meet with?  Why, indeed, if they will not separate as readily as their owners think proper, the whipper is called for, and the lash exercised upon their naked bodies, till obliged to part.  Can any human heart, which is not become callous by the practice of such cruelties, be unconcerned, even at the relation of such grievous affliction, to which this oppressed part of our species are subjected.