But they, who had used this fact, had suppressed several
circumstances relating to it. It appeared, on questioning Captain Frazer
afterward, that this boy had previously run away from his master three
several times; that the master had to pay his value, according to the
custom of the country, every time he was brought back; and that partly from
anger at the boy for running away so frequently, and partly to prevent a
repetition of the same expense, he determined to destroy him. Such was the
explanation of the signal instance, which was to fix barbarity on all
Africa, as it came out in the cross-examination of Captain Frazer. That
this African master was unenlightened and barbarous, he freely admitted:
but what would an enlightened and civilized West Indian have done in a
similar case? He would quote the law, passed in the West Indies in 1722,
which he had just cast his eye upon in the book of evidence, by which law
this very same crime of running away was by the legislature of an island,
by the grave and deliberate sentence of an enlightened legislature,
punished with death; and this, not in the case only of the third offence,
but even in the very first instance.
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