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greatly aggravated by the extreme cruel usage the Negroes meet with in the Plantations, as well with regard to food and cloathing as the hard and unreasonable labour that is exacted from them, and what cannot be forgot, the severe chastisements they frequently suffer, which is bounded by the wrath and pleasure of their hard task-masters. 1st. As to their food. In Barbadoes, &c.[1] "three quarts of corn and three herrings are a weeks allowance for a working Slave; and it is mentioned in the System of Geography, that in Jamaica the Owners of the Negro Slaves set aside for each, a piece of ground, and allow them Sundays to cultivate it, the produce of which with a few salt herrings or other salt fish is all that is allowed for their support. But need Igo
- ↑ It is supposed eighty thousand Negroes, are upon the Island of Barbadoes, and yet through the hard labour they exact of these poor creatures, and what of them are killed through their barbarous chastisements, a decrease is made of five thousand slaves yearly, which they are resupplied with from Africa; and it may be reasonably expected, that the eighty thousand Negroes would have, were the worked in the same manner with the white people, and did not so many of them die through hard labour, and from the treatment the suffer: I say, it may be expected, there would be an increase of ten thousand at a moderate computation yearly, instead of five thousand decreasing. One may form an idea from this, of what an additional supply most of the West India Islands and Southern Provinces need, for there is not one of them but what do import a considerable number of slaves annually, to keep up their common flock.
