Yet this wretched and degraded state, the lowest, one would have conceived, and least desirable, of all human conditions, is eagerly coveted, is bought with the earnings of a whole life, by the Negro Slave. And shall we then be told that the situation of the latter is a situation of comfort, a situation superior to that of our British peasantry! Nor is it merely that the Slaves themselves desire their freedom, over-rating perhaps the evils of their actual state, and ignorant of what may be really conducive to their happiness. I would not so calumniate the West Indians, as to impute to them that they mock these poor people with a real evil, under the name of an imaginary good; yet we find masters remunerating long and faithful services by the gift of freedom, as their best reward; nay, more, we have seen the laws of the islands hold out the same boon as the most valuable recompence of the most distinguished public merits. I cannot therefore but consider the earnestness of the Slaves to purchase, at so dear a rate, their admission into a class of beings, which, whether we judge from what we know of the circumstances of their situation, or from the accounts given of it by all intelligent writers (by none more than by Mr. Edwards himself), we should conceive the most unprotected, ineligible and miserable condition of human existence in any civilized society, as a most decisive proof of the wretchedness of the state of slavery. From the very nature of the case, it is probable, in some of the instances, we know, that they who have thus purchased their freedom have been the Slaves of Masters of affluence, under whom the treatment must have been as mild and liberal, and the situation as comfortable, as the condition of a West Indian Slave is capable of being rendered. It therefore seems fairly to indicate that there are particulars in the situation and circumstances of a West Indian Slave in general, as such, which prove a source of great practical suffering; and perhaps it is a proof of the degree in which the Slaves are conscious of their own degradation. But it also well deserves to be noted, that we never find any, either of those Slaves who have bought their freedom, or of the free Negroes or coloured men, of whom there are above a thousand in many of the smaller islands, and in Jamaica several thousands, desiring to be again admitted into the condition of slavery.