60] ANNUAL REGISTER, 1796. 
CHAP. IV. 
Free Negroes in the Island of Jamaica.—Hunted by Blood-Hounds.—Alo- 
tion, by Mr.-Grey, in the House of Commons, for an Inquiry into the State 
of the Nation.—Negatived.—Farther Taxes.—For paying the Interest 
of an additional Loan.—Mortality among the Troops sent against the 
french West-India Islands.— Neglect and Distresses of the Troops. —Mo- 
«tion for Documents on these Subjects by Mr. Sheridan.— Debates thereon. 
—Mr. Sheridan’s Motion agreed to.—Motion in the House of Peers, for 
the Production of Papers respecting a Vote of Parliament, in 1783, re- 
cognizing the Necessity of certain Public Reforms.—Debates thereon.— 
The Motion negatived.—Report of the Committee of Supply on the Reso- 
lution for granting a Subsidy to the King vf Sardinia.—Conversation on 
that Subject.—Charges laid against Ministry by Mr. Grey, as Ground of 
Impeachment ; and a Motion on that Subject.— Negatived.—Motions, in 
both Houses of Parliament, against the Continuation of the War.—Nega- 
tived.—Motion, by Mr. Wilberforce, for the Abolition of the Slave- 
Trade, ona certain Day.—Negatived.—The Session of Parliament closed 
by a Speech from the Throne. 
‘Eee hostilities against the free 
“negroes, in the island of Ja- 
maica, known by the denomination 
of maroons, had been carried on a 
long time without effect. The force 
employed against them amounted 
to five thousand men; but the dif- 
ficulty of coming at their recesses, 
and frequently of discovering them, 
had frustrated therepeated attempts 
of this force, though it had omitted 
nothing that valour and perseve- 
rance could suggest: and yet, those 
maroons were but a handful of men, 
hardly consisting of six hundred 
bearing arms. The improbability 
of compelling them to submit, by 
the usual methods of fighting, in- 
duced the government of Jamaica, 
as stated in our last volume, to have 
recourse to the mode adopted .by 
the Spaniards in similar cases. It 
applied to the Spanish inhabitants 
of the island of Cuba, and obtained 
from them a hundred blood-hounds, 
with twenty men, expert in the 
training and conducting of them. 
With this supply, the military pene- 
trated into the interior parts of 
the mountains and woody coun- 
try, occupied by the maroons, and 
compelled them to surrender. 
They were transported to the 
British provinces in North Ame-~ 
rica. 
Though, as afterwards fully ap- 
peared in the subsequent session of 
parliament, the government of Ja- 
maica had not incurred the guilt 
of either barbarity or breach of 
faith, yet an erroneous conviction, 
that the blood-hounds had been 
employed, not only to track out 
the maroons, but to tear and 
mangle them, excited a pretty ge- 
neral outcry. No degree of po- 
litical expediency could justify 
the adoption of such a measure. 
Spanish 
