He would now proceed to establish his second proposition, That from henceforth a very considerable increase might be expected.  This he might support by a close reasoning upon the preceding facts.  But the testimony of his opponents furnished him with sufficient evidence.  He could show, that wherever the slaves were treated better than ordinary, there was uniformly an increase in their number.  Look at the estates of Mr. Willock, Mr. Ottley, Sir Ralph Payne, and others.  In short, he should weary the committee, if he were to enumerate the instances of plantations, which were stated in the evidence to have kept up their numbers only from a little variation in their treatment.  A remedy also had been lately found for a disorder, by which vast numbers of infants had been formerly swept away.  Mr. Long also had laid it down, that whenever the slaves should bear a certain proportion to the produce, they might be expected to keep up their numbers; but this proportion they now exceeded.  The Assembly of Jamaica had given it also as their opinion, “that when once the sexes should become nearly equal in point of number, there was no reason to suppose, that the increase of the Negros by generation would fall short of the natural increase of the labouring poor in Great Britain.”  But the inequality, here spoken of, could only exist in the case of the African Negros, of whom more males were imported than females; and this inequality would be done away soon after the trade should cease.

But the increase of the Negros, where their treatment was better than ordinary, was confirmed in the evidence by instances in various parts of the world.  From one end of the continent of America to the other their increase had been undeniably established; and this to a prodigious extent, though they had to contend with the severe cold of the winter, and in some parts with noxious exhalations in the summer.  This was the case also in the settlement of Bencoolen in the East Indies.  It appeared from the evidence of Mr. Botham, that a number of Negros, who had been imported there in the same disproportion of the sexes as in West India cargoes, and who lived under the same disadvantages, as in the Islands, of promiscuous intercourse and general prostitution, began, after they had been settled a short time, annually to increase.

But to return to the West Indies.—­A slave-ship had been many years ago wrecked near St. Vincent’s.  The slaves on board, who escaped to the island, were without necessaries; and, besides, were obliged to maintain a war with the native Caribbs:  yet they soon multiplied to an astonishing number; and, according to Mr. Ottley, they were now on the increase.  From Sir John Dalrymple’s evidence it appeared, that the domestic slaves in Jamaica, who were less worked than those in the field, increased; and from Mr. Long, that the free Blacks and Mulattoes there increased also.