I can say something on this point from my own knowledge.  Mary’s petition contained simply a brief statement of her case, and, among other things, mentioned the treatment she had received from Mr. and Mrs. Wood.  Now the principal facts are corroborated by other evidence, and Mr. Wood must bring forward very different testimony from that of Dr. Coull before well-informed persons will give credit to his contradiction.  The value of that person’s evidence in such cases will be noticed presently.  Of the Hon. Mr. Byam I know nothing, and shall only at present remark that it is not likely to redound greatly to his credit to appear in such company.  Furthermore, Mary’s petition was presented, as Mr. Wood ought to know; though it was not discussed, nor his conduct exposed as it ought to have been.

9.  He speaks of the liability he should incur, under the Consolidated Slave Law, of dealing with a free person as a slave.

Is not this pretext hypocritical in the extreme?  What liability could he possibly incur by voluntarily resigning the power, conferred on him by an iniquitous colonial law, of re-imposing the shackles of slavery on the bondwoman from whose limbs they had fallen when she touched the free soil of England?—­There exists no liability from which he might not have been easily secured, or for which he would not have been fully compensated.

He adds in a postscript that Mary had a considerable sum of money with her,—­from L36 to L40 at least, which she had saved in his service.  The fact is, that she had at one time 113 dollars in cash; but only a very small portion of that sum appears to have been brought by her to England, the rest having been partly advanced, as she states, to assist her husband, and partly lost by being lodged in unfaithful custody.

Finally, Mr. Wood repeats twice that it will afford him great pleasure to state for the governor’s satisfaction, if required, such particulars of “the woman Molly,” upon incontestable evidence, as he is sure will acquit him in his Excellency’s opinion “of acting unkind or ungenerous towards her.”

This is well:  and I now call upon Mr. Wood to redeem his pledge;—­to bring forward facts and proofs fully to elucidate the subject;—­to reconcile, if he can, the extraordinary discrepancies which I have pointed out between his assertions and the actual facts, and especially between his account of Mary Prince’s character and his own conduct in regard to her.  He has now to produce such a statement as will acquit him not only in the opinion of Sir Patrick Ross, but of the British public.  And in this position he has spontaneously placed himself, in attempting to destroy, by his deliberate criminatory letter, the poor woman’s fair fame and reputation,—­an attempt but for which the present publication would probably never have appeared.

* * * * *

Here perhaps we might safely leave the case to the judgment of the public; but as this negro woman’s character, not the less valuable to her because her condition is so humble, has been so unscrupulously blackened by her late master, a party so much interested and inclined to place her in the worst point of view,—­it is incumbent on me, as her advocate with the public, to state such additional testimony in her behalf as I can fairly and conscientiously adduce.