number who are killed in the incursions and intestine wars, by which the Negroes procure the number of slaves wanted to load the vessels. How dreadful then is this Slave-Trade, whereby so many thousands of our fellow-creatures, free by nature, endued with the same rational faculties, and called to be heirs of the same salvation with us, lose their lives, and are truly, and properly speaking, murdered every year! For it is not necessary, in order to convict a man of murder, to make it appear, that he had an intention to commit murder. Whoever does, by unjust force or violence, deprive another of his Liberty; and, while he has him in his power, reduces him, by cruel treatment, to such a condition as evidently endangers his life, and the event occasions his death, is actually guilty of murder. It is no less shocking to read the accounts given by Sir _Hans Sloane_, and others, of the inhuman and unmerciful treatment those Blacks meet with, who survive the seasoning in the Islands, often for transgressions, to which the punishment they receive bears no proportion. ‘And the horrid executions, 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 then 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 racked 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 sense of the importance of Liberty; but is this a true character, whilst that barbarous, savage Slave-Trade, with all its attendant horrors, receives countenance and protection