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often for transgressions, to which the punishment they receive bears no proportion.
'And the horrid execucutions, which are frequently made there upon discovery of the plots laid by the blacks, for the recovery of their liberty; of some they break the bones, whilst alive, on a wheel; others they burn or rather roast to death; others they starve to death, with a loaf hanging before their mouths.'
Thus they are brought to expire, with frightful agonies, in the most horrid tortures. For negligence only they are unmercifully whipped, till their backs are raw, and than pepper and salt is scattered on the wounds to heighten the pain and prevent mortification. Is it not a cause of much sorrow and lamentation, that so many poor creatures should be thus rack'd with excruciating tortures, for crimes which often their tormentors have occasioned: Must not even the common feelings of human nature have suffered some grievous change in those men, to be capable of such horrid cruelty, towards their fellow men? If they deserve death, ought not their judges, in the death decreed them, always to remember that these their hapless fellow-creatures are men, and themselves professing Christians. The Mosaic law teaches us our duty in these cases, in the merciful provision it made in the punishment of transgressors, Deuter xxv. 2.
'And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him and not exceed.'
And the reason rendered is out of respect to human nature, viz.
'Lest if he should exceed, and beat him above these, with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee,'
Britons boast themselves to be a generous, humane people, who have a true
