Defoe, writing in 1738 in his ‘History of Colonel Jack,’ makes his hero to be kidnapped by the master of a vessel at Leith, and carried to Virginia, where he was consigned to a merchant, and disposed of as he saw fit--in fact, treated with the same _nonchalance_ us an ordinary bale of goods would be. He was sold to a planter for five years, and had three hard things to endure, viz., hard work, hard fare, and hard lodging. He describes the arrival of a ship from London with several ‘servants,’ and amongst the rest were seventeen transported felons, some burnt in the hand, and some not, eight of whom his master purchased for the time specified in the warrant for their transportation, so that the unfortunate men were in no better position than, and were under the same severe laws as, the convict. Their ranks were recruited by many gentlemen concerned in the Rebellion, and taken prisoners at Preston, who were spared from execution and sold into slavery at the plantations, a condition which must often have made them dissatisfied with the clemency extended to them. In many cases, with kind masters, their lot was not so hard, and when their time of bondage was expired they had encouragement given them to plant for themselves, a certain number of acres being allotted to them by the State; and, if they could get the necessary credit for clothes, tools, &c., they were in time enabled to put by money, and, in some rare instances, became men of renown in the colony. The usage these poor people endured on their passage to the plantations was frequently abominable, and a writer in 1796 describes the arrival, at Baltimore, of a vessel containing three hundred Irish ‘passengers’ who had been nearly starved by the captain, the ship’s water being sold by him at so much a pint, and this treatment, combined with other cruelties too shocking to relate, caused a contagious disorder to break out on board, which carried off great numbers, whilst most of these unhappy folk who were spared at that time, subsequently died whilst performing quarantine in the Delaware.