I wish also to say, in case any thing like an undue warmth of feeling on my part should be discovered in the course of the work, that I had no intention of being warm against the West Indians as a body. I know that there are many estimable men among them living in England, who deserve every desirable praise for having sent over instructions to their Agents in the West Indies from time to time in behalf of their wretched Slaves. And yet, alas! even these, _the Masters themselves, have not had influence enough to secure the fulfilment of their own instructions upon their own estates_; nor will they, _so long as the present system continues_. They will never be able to carry their meritorious designs into effect against _Prejudice, Law, and Custom_. If this be not so, how happens it that you cannot see the Slaves, belonging to such estimable men, _without marks of the whip upon their backs_? The truth is, that _so long as overseers, drivers, and others, are entrusted with the use of arbitrary power_, and _so long as Negro-evidence is invalid against the white oppressor_, and _so long as human nature continues to be what it is_, _no order_ from the Master for the better personal treatment of the Slave _will or can be obeyed_. It is against the _system_ then, and not against the West Indians as a body, that I am warm, should I be found so unintentionally, in the present work. One word or two now on another part of the subject. A great noise will be made, no doubt, when the question of Emancipation comes to be agitated, about _the immense property at stake_, I mean the property of the Planters;--and others connected with them. This is all well. Their interests ought undoubtedly to be attended to. But I hope and trust, that, if property is to be attended to _on one side_ of the question, it will be equally attended to _on the other_. This is but common justice. If you put into one scale _the gold_ and _jewels_ of the Planters, you are bound to put into the other _the liberty_ of 800,000 of the African race; for every man's liberty is _his own property_ by the laws of _Nature_, _Reason_, _Justice_, and _Religion_? and, if it be not so with our West Indian Slaves, it _is only because_ they have been, and continue to be, _deprived_ of it _by force_. And here let us consider for a moment which of these two different sorts of property is of the greatest value. Let us suppose an English gentleman to be seized by ruffians on the banks of the Thames (and why not a _gentleman_ when African _princes_ have been so served?) and hurried away to a land (and Algiers is such a land, for instance), where white persons are held as Slaves. Now this gentleman has not been used to severe labour (neither has the African in his own country); and being therefore unable, though he does his best, to please his master, he is roused to further exertion _by the whip_. Perhaps he takes this treatment indignantly. This only secures him _a severer punishment_.