To me it is a strange thing that I cannot explain to myself, that our pity is more easily aroused by the story of one individual case than by the tale of suffering in the mass. It was an awful thing to leave those helpless people confined and shackled, and at the mercy of the winds and waves; it was still worse to shoot them down when by their own pluck and intrepidity they had succeeded in saving themselves. There were little children amongst them, and they too must have been shot down; they too must have raised despairing little hands to brutes who knew not the meaning of the word pity. But somehow even that, terrible as it is, pales before the conduct of a brutal slaver, the last I shall tell of the many brutalities of the Middle Passage. It was told in Parliament at the end of the eighteenth century, told probably reluctantly, for much of the evidence was dragged out of unwilling witnesses who feared for themselves. They were surgeons, or ships' officers, or seamen, and their livelihood depended upon their keeping in with captains and shipowners. There was a baby of ten months old, a chubby little round-faced helpless thing. It “took sulk and would not eat,” Clarkson puts it. How should it eat when what it wanted was milk, and what it got was rice or pulse, poor baby. And that tiny child that brutal monster flogged with a “cat,” swearing he would make it eat or kill it. “From this and other ill-treatment,” says Clarkson, not specifying the ill-treatment, “the child's legs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel, for the cook, putting his hand in the water, said it was too hot. Upon this the captain swore at him, and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put round them.” And then, as if that were not enough, the child was tied to a heavy log, and apparently the brute who had charge of his destinies forgot all about it for a little while. It must have eaten something, perhaps its mother had a little, for the captain did not notice it for two or three days; then its pitiful crying, I suppose, called his attention to it, and he “caught it up again and repeated that he would make it eat or kill it. He immediately flogged it again, and in a quarter of an hour it died.” Now I am aware that cases of individual cruelty may happen at any time in any place. But against that is the fact that this brutality was committed openly upon the deck of the slaver, the officers and crew saw it, and not one of them raised a hand to help a helpless baby who was being cruelly done to death. More--when the story came out nothing was done to the man who has left such a memorial behind him, and no one seemed surprised at this.