1812.] On the Presen t State of Negro Slavery, 549 
Mted these parts, whether the abolition of 
the trade lias made any alteration in the 
conduct of the slave-holders?” 
As this is a subject of great and exten¬ 
sive importance, both as it involves the 
general interests of humanity, and the 
particular prospects, the fortunes, and 
the lives, of many thousands of our fellow 
creatures; as it is a subject respecting 
"hich, I believe, the inhabitants of the 
United Kingdoms,aiid even the non-resi¬ 
dent proprietors of plantations, are nearly 
m the dark ; and as peculiar circumstances 
bave enabled me to speak to the point, I 
immediately determined to offer you, for 
the satisfaction ol your praise-worthy 
correspondent, the result of my experi¬ 
ence. As a plantation-surgeon in the 
island of Jamaica, which I quitted only 
last year, announcing, at the same time, 
that I was then preparing for the press 
a more detailed exposition of the plan¬ 
tation-system of destruction, which, so 
lar as my observations go, continues to 
prevail, and threatens erelong to depopu¬ 
late the plantations! For this purpose I 
took up my pen, but it was soon laid 
asirle: the voice of sutfering at home, of 
suffering most severe, and inexpressibly 
painful to contemplate, (suppressed as it 
was even to the last moment of life, by 
the too consiflerate kindness, the sublime 
affection, uj the magnanimous and much- 
enduring sufferer,) impelled me unremit- 
tingly, though, alas! too iinavailingly, to 
attempt the alleviation of a cruel disease, 
which terminated in the premature death 
of an. ammble ajid ever-to-be-deplored 
brother; filling the hearts of his surviving 
family with overwhelming grief. 
The grief that knew not Consolation’s 
name.” 
assured, sir, that I would have 
spared your readers, as well as myself, 
any allusion to this sad circumstance, 
unimportant to them, though fiaught 
with affliction to me, could I have ottier- 
wise excused myself for having delayed 
the performance of what I believed to be 
an important duty. 
I now proceed to state that I resided 
and practised on various planiations in 
different parts of the island of Jamaica, 
for nearly four years, during which I 
could not avoid becoming intimately ac¬ 
quainted witli the existing system (if sys¬ 
tem it may be called) of mismanagement 
and mal-treatment, in all its detestable 
and destructive detail. Admitted, as it 
Were, behind the scenes, in the hourly 
exercise of my profession^ I had ample 
opportunities to contemplate the movco 
ments of the machine, vyhose unhallowed 
operation I was doomed to trace in every 
hot-house (negro-hospital), and in every 
hut. Nor was its operation confined to 
the slave, it extended to his superinten¬ 
dent. For so essentially vicious is the 
driving-system, that no one who is per¬ 
sonally engaged in its support can possi¬ 
bly escape coi'ruption. However shock¬ 
ing the detail of plantation-duty may at 
first appear to the novice, he is soon 
laughed out of his “European preju¬ 
dices,” and taught that the endless suf¬ 
fering he sees around him is absolutely 
necessary for the production of sugar and 
rum, nay, that it is quite consistent witK 
humanity and justice. Fie is erelong an 
agent in its infliction, and becomes re¬ 
conciled to a scene, the incessant con¬ 
templation of which cannot fail to per¬ 
vert his understanding, blunt his better 
feelings, and familiarise him with “ the 
bloody form of cruelty.” 
On my arrival in Jamaica, in the spring 
of 1806, the abolition of the slave-trade 
was expected, and negroes were rising 
fast in price: yet from one end of the 
island to the other I heard the whip re¬ 
sound! it roused the slaves from their 
slumbers before the rising of the sun, and 
ceased not even at his setting*. 
Nor, when I quitted the island last 
year, could I perceive any relaxation in 
the discipline of destruction. During 
the whole period of my plantation-prac¬ 
tice I saw unceasingly pursued the same 
senseless and pernicious system, univer¬ 
sally operating to impoverish the planter, 
and to degrade, distress, and destroy, the 
slave. I saw the latter compelled, reluc¬ 
tantly, to labour, goaded on by the lash, 
and bent dowii to the earth by the bur¬ 
den of oppression, sinking prematurely 
into the grave, and welcoming death as, a 
release from misery, or because his loss 
would vex the heart of his oppressor. 
I heard, it is true, of the con.solidated 
slave law, and of its power to protect the 
slave from ill-treatment; but I saw it 
daily defied with impunity, and proved 
to be utterly inefficacious —vox et preterea 
* During crop-time, which, on an average 
lasts more than half the year, the walls of 
the works all night long re-echo with the 
whip ; and the i.nhabitajjts of the great-house 
are serenaded with other music than that of 
“ the wakeful nightingale,” with which in 
Milton's Eden silence was pleased.” The 
midnight concerto in the cane-yard would 
harmonise with the other horrors of Chs poet’s 
4 A g 
nihih 
