On the other hand, Mr Edwards told a story to the Assembly of Jamaica, of how some risen slaves surrounded the house of their mistress, who was in bed with her newborn child beside her. Imagine the poor woman shrinking down amidst the pillows, and round the bed these black savages with wild bloodshot eyes and cruel, grasping hands. The very smell of their naked bodies, their rags stained with blood and rum, would strike terror to her heart. They deliberated in their jargon how they could best put her to death in torment. But in the end one of them decided to keep her for his mistress. The vile broken patois they spoke made so much intelligible to her, and then snatching the child from her protecting arms they killed it with an axe before the poor mother's eyes. We can sympathise with the man who felt that no torments were too great for savages such as these, and with others who were certain that a repetition of such atrocities must be guarded against at any cost. And so by a law passed in the West Indies in 1722, “any Negro or other slave withdrawing himself from his master for the term of six months, or any slave who was absent and did not return within that time every such person should suffer death.” And coming back, of course, he might suffer a good deal. So that the unfortunate slave was ever between the devil and the deep sea. But slowly as we read the records, we can see the status of first the coloured man, and then the black man improving. In the beginning these Africans who up till the Abolition of the Slave Trade could speak but little English, and always spoke to each other in their own tongues, were simply dumb beasts of burden, necessary for the improvement of the colony, even as a certain number of horses and cattle and other stock were necessary. Always they were treated as inferior beings, even when they were desperately feared. Gossipy Lady Nugent talks of them as one would an intelligent, rather lovable dog or horse, and spares a little pity for their hard lot.