442 JAMAICA. 



Within a few years pad, we have heard of them at Hifpaniola^ 



at Cuba, at the Brafils, at Surinam, and Rerbice, and at the Britifh 



iflands of Tobago, Dominica, Montferrat, and St. Vincent. If they 



fhould happen oftener at Jamaica than in the fmaller iflands, it 



would not be at all furprizing, fmce it has generally contained more 



Negroes than all the Windward Britifh ifles put together; and its 



importations in fome years have been very great. 



For inftance, in the year 1764, the importation was, 10,223. 



And from January 1765 to Julyi766, one year and an half, 16,760. 



So large a multitude as 27,000 introduced in the fpace of two years 



and an half, furnifiies a very fufficient reafon, if there was no other,. 



to account for mutinies and plots, efpecially as no fmall number of 



them had been warriors in Afric, or criminals ', and all of them as 



favage and uncivilized as the beafts of prey that roam through the 



African forefts. 



A general accufation can only deferve a general reply. If the 

 author of it had particularized any certain fpecies of barbarity 

 tolerated by law or cuftom, or in conftant ufe at Jamaica, it would 

 be incumbent on its advocates, either to difprove, or admit, the 

 exiftence of fuch particular fads. But a charge, which involves 

 a vii-hole country, ought to be well founded, and fupported by evi- 

 dence taken from notorious practice, or the fyftem of laws by 

 which that country is regulated. If a foreigner, being told of a 

 mother in England, fo void of natural feeling, as to fliut up her 

 own children in a dungeon, flarve and cruelly beat them ; of others,, 

 who flrangle their infants, cut their throats, or confume them in 

 ovens; of maflers and miflrefles fo brutal as to whip their appren- 

 tices to death j of daughters poifoning their fathers; nieces their 

 uncles; wives butchering their hufbands, and hufbands their wives; 

 with many other examples of barbarity, which the public chroni- 

 cles have recorded from time to time ; Ihould we not think 

 the foreigner extremely void of impartiality and good fenfe, if for 

 this reafon he was to charge all the people of England with being a 

 moil bloody, inhuman and unfeeling race? Yet there is full as 

 much caufe for it in this cafe, as in the former. The truth is, 

 that ever fmce the introdudtion of Africans into the Weft-Indies, 



infurredlions 



7 



