The first was the disproportion of the sexes, there being,
upon an average, about five males imported to three females: but this evil,
when the Slave-trade was abolished, would cure itself. The second consisted
in the bad condition in which they were brought to the islands, and the
methods of preparing them for sale. They arrived frequently in a sickly and
disordered state, and then they were made up for the market by the
application of astringents, washes, mercurial ointments, and repelling
drugs, so that their wounds and diseases might be hid. These artifices were
not only fraudulent but fatal: but these, it was obvious, would of
themselves fall with the trade. A third was, excessive labour joined with
improper food; and a fourth was, the extreme dissoluteness of their
manners. These also would both of them be counteracted by the impossibility
of getting further supplies: for owners, now unable to replace those slaves
whom they might lose, by speedy purchases in the markets, would be more
careful how they treated them in future, and a better treatment would be
productive of better morals. And here he would just advert to an argument
used against those who complained of cruelty in our islands, which was,
that it was the interest of masters to treat their slaves with humanity:
but surely it was immediate and present, not future and distant, interest,
which was the great spring of action in the affairs of mankind.
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