404 



mined by the public law, with a penalty attached 

 to the breach of it, the negro has been left entirely 

 at the mercy of the overseer, who if he was a 

 humane man punished him slightly, and if a tyrant, 

 heavily ; nay, very often the quantity of punish- 

 ment depended upon the time of day when the 

 offence was made known. If accused in the morn- 

 ing, when the overseer was in cold blood and in 

 good humour, a night's confinement in the stocks 

 might be deemed sufficient ; whereas if the charge 

 was brought when the superior had taken his full 

 proportion of grog or sangaree, the very same of- 

 fence would be visited with thirty-nine lashes. I 

 have, moreover, taken care to settle all disputes re- 

 specting property, having caused all negroes having 

 claims upon others to bring them before my tri- 

 bunal previous to my departure, and determined 

 that from that time forth no such claims should be 

 enquired into, but considered as definitively set- 

 tled by my authority. It would have done the 

 Lord Chancellor's heart good to see how many 

 suits I determined in the course of a week, and 

 with what expedition I made a clear court of 

 chancery. But perhaps the most astonishing part 

 of the whole business was, that after judgment was 

 pronounced, the losers as well as the gainers de- 

 clared themselves perfectly satisfied with the justice 

 of the sentence. I must acknowledge, however, 

 that the negro principle that " massa can do no 

 wrong," was of some little assistance to me on this 



