AGRICULTURE IN 18209. 257 
will support it, that in hardly any known instance of 
crime is the punishment infli€ted upon the negro one-half 
or one-third so severe as what would, in a similar offence, 
be inflicted on the white delinquent. It has been the 
writer’s lot to witness, in numberless instances, both in 
the execution of the civil and military laws of the 
Mother Country, corporal punishment commonly infli&ted 
so severely, as to confine the offender for many weeks 
afterwards in a Hospital, under the stri&t charge of a 
Surgeon. On an estate punishments are never infli€ted 
to such an extent as to prevent the negro from returning 
to his work immediately after. The law allows no more 
than 25 lashes to be given by the Master at any one time 
for any offence, and the interests of the Master seconds 
the laws. It is only in cases of notorious delinquency, 
when the Magistrate is called to punish publicly and 
officially, that punishments can ever be said to be severe. 
But even then they are far below the scale of European in- 
fliétion. The law may in some instances be broken, but 
when it is considered that the Manager who breaks the law 
is at the mercy of every discharged Overseer who may 
choose to inform against him, excessive punishment is a 
measure of serious risk, and is in faét rarely known to be 
practiced. It is the case with every gang of negroes, as 
withregiments in an army or crews of ships, that the 
punishments are the monopoly of a certain number of 
notorious delinquents, whose want of conduétandchara&ter 
is perpetually leading them into crimes and concomitant 
chastisement. Four or five desperate charaéters of this 
kind will keep an estate of 300 negroes in the perpetual 
necessity of corporal punishment. It is therefore most 
unjust to say, that because these few are marked with 
