1823.] 
was passed in 1807, after a struggle of 
twenty years, would have tended rapidly 
to the mitigation and gradual extinction of 
negro bondage in the British colonies ; 
but that in thishope they have been pain- 
fully disappointed ; and, after a lapse of 
sixteen years, they have stil! to deplore the 
almost undiminished prevalence of the 
very evils which it was one great object of 
the abolition to remedy. 
That under these circumstances they 
feel themselves called upon, by the most 
binding considerations of their duty as 
Christiaus, by their best synmpathies as 
men, and by their solicitude to maintain 
unimpaired the high reputation and the 
solid prosperity of their country, to exert 
themselves, in their separate and collective 
capacities, in furthering this most impor- 
tant object, and in endeavouring by all 
prudent and lawful means to mitigate, and 
eventually to abolish, the slavery existing 
in oar colonial possessions. 
In the colonies of Great Britain 
there are at this moment upwards of 
800,000 human beings in a state of de- 
grading personal slavery. 
These unliappy persons, whether 
young or old, male or female, are the 
absolute property of their master, who 
may sell or transfer them at his pleasure, 
and who may also regulate according to 
his discretion (within certain limits) the 
measure of their labour, their food, and 
their punishment. 
Many of the slaves are (and all may 
be) branded like cattle, by means of a 
hot iron, on the shouldés or other con- 
Spicuous part of the body, with the igi- 
tials of their master’s name; and thus 
bear about them, in indelible characters, 
the procf of their debased and servile 
state. 
The slaves, whether male or female, 
are driven to labour by the impulse of 
the cart-whip, for the sole benefit of their 
owners, from whum they reccive no wa- 
ges; and this labour is continued (with 
certain intermissions for breakfast and 
dinner), from morning to night, through- 
out the year. : 
In the season of crop, which lasts for 
four or five months of the year, their la- 
hour is protracted not only throughout 
the day, us at other times, but during 
either half the pight, or the whole of 
every alternate night. 
Besides being yenerally made to work 
under the lash, without wages, the slaves 
are farther obliged to labour for their 
own maintenance on that day which 
ought to be devoted to repose and reli- 
fious iustruction, And as that day is 
also their only market-day, it follows, 
Montity Mac. No. 388. 
Association for abolishing Stavery. 
_condition. 
337 
that “Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to 
them,” but is of necessity a day of 
worldly occupation, and much bodily 
exertion. 
The colonial laws arm the master, or 
any one to whom he may delegate his 
authority, with a power to punish his 
slaves to a certain extent, without the 
intervention of the magistrate, and with- 
out any responsibility for the use of this 
tremendous discretion; and to that ex- 
tent he may punish them for any offence, 
or for no offence. These discretionary 
punishments are usually inflicted on the 
naked body with the cart-whip, an in- 
strument of dreadful severity, which cra- 
elly Jacerates the flesh of the sufferer. 
Even the unhappy females are equally 
liable with the men to have their persons 
thus shamelessly exposed and barba- 
rously tortured at the caprice of their 
master or overscer. . 
The slaves being regarded in the eye. 
of the law as mere chattels, they are lia- 
ble to be seized in execution for their 
master’s debts, and, without any regard 
to the family-ties which may be broken 
by this oppressive and merciless process, 
to be sold by anction to the highest bid- 
der, who may remove them to a distaut 
part of the same colony, or even exile 
them to another colony. 
Marriage, that blessing of civilize 
and even of savage life, is protected in 
the case of the slaves by no Iegal sanc- 
tion. [Et cannot be said to exist among 
them. Those, therefore, who live to- 
gether as man and wife are liable to be 
separated by the caprice of their master, 
or by sale for the satisfaction of his cre- 
dilors. 
The slaves in general have little or no 
access to the means of Christian in- 
struction, : 
The effect of the want of such instrue- 
tion, as well as of the absence of any 
marriage tie, is that the most unrestrain- 
ed licentiousness, (exhibited in a degra- 
ding, disgusting, and depopulating, pro- 
miscuous intercourse,) prevails almost 
universally among the slaves; and is 
encouraged, no Jess universally, by the 
example of their superiors the whites. 
The evidence of slaves is not admitted” 
by the colonial courts, in any civil or 
criminal case affecting a person of free: 
If a white man, therefore, 
perpetrates the most atrocious acts of 
barbarity, in the presence of slaves only, 
the injured party is Iclt without any 
ineans of legal redress. 
‘In none of the calonics of Great Bri- 
tain have those legal facilities been afford- 
2X ed 
