"--No peace is given To us enslav'd, but custody severe; And stripes and arbitrary punishment Inflicted--What peace can we return? But to our power, hostility and hate; Untam'd reluctance, and revenge, though slow, Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice In doing what we most in suffering feel." But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote O: Thus was I sacrificed to the envy and resentment of this woman for knowing that the lady whom she had succeeded in my master's good graces designed to take me into her service; which, had I once got on shore, she would not have been able to prevent. She felt her pride alarmed at the superiority of her rival in being attended by a black servant: it was not less to prevent this than to be revenged on me, that she caused the captain to treat me thus cruelly.] [Footnote P: "The Dying Negro," a poem originally published in 1773. Perhaps it may not be deemed impertinent here to add, that this elegant and pathetic little poem was occasioned, as appears by the advertisement prefixed to it, by the following incident. "A black, who, a few days before had ran away from his master, and got himself christened, with intent to marry a white woman his fellow-servant, being taken and sent on board a ship in the Thames, took an opportunity of shooting himself through the head."] [Footnote Q: These pisterines are of the value of a shilling.] [Footnote R: Mr. Dubury, and many others, Montserrat.] [Footnote S: Sir Philip Gibbes, Baronet, Barbadoes.] [Footnote T: Benezet's Account of Guinea, p. 16.] CHAP. VI. _Some account of Brimstone-Hill in Montserrat--Favourable change in the author's situation--He commences merchant with three pence--His various success in dealing in the different islands, and America, and the impositions he meets with in his transactions with Europeans--A curious imposition on human nature--Danger of the surfs in the West Indies--Remarkable instance of kidnapping a free mulatto--The author is nearly murdered by Doctor Perkins in Savannah._