272 
TABIOirS CONDITIONS OF SDAVDE*. 
negroes with that of the serfs of the middle ages, and with 
the state of oppression to which some classes are still sub- 
iected 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 cliimcrical, 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 eoiiimencement of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, liavehad their influence on public feeling aiid public 
reason, even in countries whore 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 difter- 
enee 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 
w'ith 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 (liewitnesses, 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 aulo'da-fe in my jiosaessioii. In that curious document 
a boast is made of the prodigality with which refreshments are distributed 
to tile coiidemncd, and of the staircase which the inquisitors have had 
erected in the interior of the pile for the accommodation of the relasadiH\ 
(the relapsed culprits.) 
