What Can Be Expected From Wretches In Such
Circumstances?
Forced from their native country, cruelly treated
when on board, and not less so on the plantations to which they are
driven; is there anything in this treatment but what must kindle all
the passions, sow the seeds of inveterate resentment, and nourish a
wish of perpetual revenge?
They are left to the irresistible effects
of those strong and natural propensities; the blows they receive,
are they conducive to extinguish them, or to win their affections?
They are neither soothed by the hopes that their slavery will ever
terminate but with their lives; or yet encouraged by the goodness of
their food, or the mildness of their treatment. The very hopes held
out to mankind by religion, that consolatory system, so useful to
the miserable, are never presented to them; neither moral nor
physical means are made use of to soften their chains; they are left
in their original and untutored state; that very state wherein the
natural propensities of revenge and warm passions are so soon
kindled. Cheered by no one single motive that can impel the will, or
excite their efforts; nothing but terrors and punishments are
presented to them; death is denounced if they run away; horrid
delaceration if they speak with their native freedom; perpetually
awed by the terrible cracks of whips, or by the fear of capital
punishments, while even those punishments often fail of their
purpose.
A clergyman settled a few years ago at George-Town, and feeling as I
do now, warmly recommended to the planters, from the pulpit, a
relaxation of severity; he introduced the benignity of Christianity,
and pathetically made use of the admirable precepts of that system
to melt the hearts of his congregation into a greater degree of
compassion toward their slaves than had been hitherto customary;
"Sir," said one of his hearers, "we pay you a genteel salary to read
to us the prayers of the liturgy, and to explain to us such parts of
the Gospel as the rule of the church directs; but we do not want you
to teach us what we are to do with our blacks." The clergyman found
it prudent to withhold any farther admonition.
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