272 TAEIOTJS CONDITIONS OP SLAVEBf. 



negroes with that of the serfs of the middle ages, and with 

 the state oi oppression to which some classes are still sub- 

 jected in the north and east of Europe ? These compa- 

 risons, these artifices of language, this disdainful impatience 

 with which even a hope of the gradual abolition of slavery 

 is repulsed as chimerical, are useless arms in the times in 

 which we live. The great revolutions which the continent 

 ol America and the Archipelago of the West Indies have 

 undergone since the commencement of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, have had their influence on public feeling and public 

 reason, even in countries where slavery exists and is begin- 

 ing to be modified. Many sensible men, deeply interested 

 in the tranquillity of the sugar and slave islands, feel that by 

 a liberal understanding among the proprietors, and by judi- 

 cious measures adopted by those who know the localities, 

 they might emerge from a state of danger and uneasiness, 

 which indolence and obstinacy serve only to increase. 



Slavery is no doubt the greatest evil that afflicts human 

 nature, whether we consider the slave torn from his family 

 in his native country, and thrown into the hold of a slave- 

 ship,* or as making part of a flock of black men, parked on 

 the soil of the West Indies ; but for individuals there are 

 degrees of suffering and privation. How great is the differ- 

 ence in the condition of the slave who serves in the house of 

 a rich family at the Havannah or at Kingston, or one who 

 works for himself, giving his master but a daily retribution, 

 and that of the slave attached to a sugar estate ! The threats 

 employed to correct an obstinate negro, mark this scale of 

 human privations. The coachman is menaced with the coffee 

 plantation ; and the slave working on the latter is menaced 

 with the sugar house. The negro, who with his wife inha- 

 bits a separate hut, whose heart is warmed by those feelings 



" If the slaves are whipped," said one of the witnesses, before the Parlia- 

 mentary Committee of 1789, " to make them dance on the deck of a slave- 

 ship if they are forced to sing in chorus ; ' Messe, messe, mackerida,' 

 [how gaily we live among the whites], this only proves the care we take of 

 the health of those men." This delicate attention reminds me of the 

 description of an auto-da-fe in my possession. In that curious document 

 a boast is made of the prodigality with which refreshments are distributed 

 to the condemned, and of the staircase which the inquisitors have had 

 erected in the interior of the pile for the accommodation of the relatado*, 

 (the relapsed culprits.) 



