Notwithstanding The Incompetency Of So Diminished A Pittance, The Daily Task
Of The Soldier And Convict Continued Unaltered.
I never contemplated
the labours of these men without finding abundant cause of reflection
on the miseries which our nature can overcome.
Let me for a moment quit
the cold track of narrative. Let me not fritter away by servile adaptation
those reflections and the feelings they gave birth to. Let me transcribe them
fresh as they arose, ardent and generous, though hopeless and romantic.
I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with famine,
struggle against the horror's of their situation. How striking is the effect
of subordination; how dreadful is the fear of punishment! The allotted task
is still performed, even on the present reduced subsistence. The blacksmith
sweats at the sultry forge, the sawyer labours pent-up in his pit and
the husbandman turns up the sterile glebe. Shall I again hear arguments
multiplied to violate truth, and insult humanity! Shall I again be told
that the sufferings of the wretched Africans are indispensable for the culture
of our sugar colonies; that white men are incapable of sustaining the heat
of the climate! I have been in the West Indies. I have lived there.
I know that it is a rare instance for the mercury in the thermometer
to mount there above 90 degrees; and here I scarcely pass a week in summer
without seeing it rise to 100 degrees; sometimes to 105; nay, beyond even that
burning altitude.
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