They are naturally a people of a humane and good-natured disposition, and much indisposed to cruelty or severity of any kind.  Indeed, the manner in which many of them treat their slaves is a proof of this, as it is really gentle and considerate; but the natural tendency to cruelty and oppression in the human heart, is continually evolved by the impunity and uncontrolled licence in which they are exercised.  I never walked through the streets of Rio, that some house did not present to me the semblance of a bridewell, where the moans and the cries of the sufferers, and the sounds of whips and scourges within, announced to me that corporal punishment was being inflicted.  Whenever I remarked this to a friend, I was always answered that the refractory nature of the slave rendered it necessary, and no house could properly be conducted unless it was practised.  But this is certainly not the case; and the chastisement is constantly applied in the very wantonness of barbarity, and would not, and dared not, be inflicted on the humblest wretch in society, if he was not a slave, and so put out of the pale of pity.

“Immediately joining our house was one occupied by a mechanic, from which the most dismal cries and moans constantly proceeded.  I entered the shop one day, and found it was occupied by a saddler, who had two negro boys working at his business.  He was a tawny, cadaverous-looking man, with a dark aspect; and he had cut from his leather a scourge like a Russian knout, which he held in his hand, and was in the act of exercising on one of the naked children in an inner room:  and this was the cause of the moans and cries we heard every day, and almost all day long.

“In the rear of our house was another, occupied by some women of bad character, who kept, as usual, several negro slaves.  I was awoke early one morning by dismal cries, and looking out of the window, I saw in the back yard of the house, a black girl of about fourteen years old; before her stood her mistress, a white woman, with a large stick in her hand.  She was undressed except her petticoat and chemise, which had fallen down and left her shoulders and bosom bare.  Her hair was streaming behind, and every fierce and malevolent passion was depicted in her face.  She too, like my hostess at Governo [another striking illustration of the dehumanizing effects of Slavery,] was the very representation of a fury.  She was striking the poor girl, whom she had driven up into a corner, where she was on her knees appealing for mercy.  She shewed her none, but continued to strike her on the head and thrust the stick into her face, till she was herself exhausted, and her poor victim covered with blood.  This scene was renewed every morning, and the cries and moans of the poor suffering blacks, announced that they were enduring the penalty of slavery, in being the objects on which the irritable and malevolent passions of the whites are allowed to vent themselves