Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/84

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72

��* he pave to the public aftci-wards. He communicated

  • them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the
  • Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the seas,^
  • and to the Duke of Portland, as principal minister
  • of state. No notice, howevei', was taken by any of

' these of the information winch had been thus sent

  • them.' — Clarksvn'K Hutoiy uf the Abolition, &c., page

N(>te ' . Ppjre SO. line 1 8. — Theearth-drvouring anguish of (hsjun. — The negroes sometimes, in deep and irreco- veiahle melancholy, waste themselves awaj-, by secretly swallowing large quantities of earth. It is remarkable that

  • earth-eating,' as it is called, is an infectious, and even

a social mahidy : plarttiitions have been occasionally al- most depopulated, by the slaves, with one consent, be- taking themselves to this strange practice, which speedi- ly brings them to a miseral)le and premature end.

Note ■*. Page 43, line 4. — Conuls his sure gains, and hurries buck for moie. — See Note ^ of this Part.

Note \ Ibid., line 5. — Lives thtre u repti/t baser than the slave 'r &c. — The character of the Creole Planter here drawn is justified both by reason and fact: it is nomon- Bter of imagination, though, for the credit of human na- ture, wi nay li< f.e that it is a monster as rare as it is Ehocl ing. It is the doubk •urse of slavery to degrade all w lio are concerned with it, doing or suffering. 7 he elave himself is the hiwcst in the scale o/ human beings, —except the falavc-dealer. Dr Pinkard's iVo/cs on the

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