Though I maintain, and I trust have proved, that the labours of the slaves are, for the most part, excessive in point of intensity, as well as cruelly so in point of time, it is in the latter respect alone, that I propose to compare them with those of our English peasants; because, for reasons already assigned, it is in point of time alone that the positive amount of each can be measured or defined; and consequently the difference between them clearly ascertained.

It will be recollected, I hope, that the strange comparison between the most oppressed and degraded beings that the sun ever saw, and the peasantry of England, was no idle choice of mine; but what the planters and their advocates have been bold enough to challenge. Their folly, however, in provoking it, and especially in that worst article of their practical oppression, a murderous excess of labour, is so surprising, that it may be right to shew, by some further quotations, how frequent such temerity has been, and still is among them; lest I should be suspected of using unfairly against the many, the extreme rashness of the few.

“The work of the negro slave in Jamaica,” said the agent and planters of that island before the Committee of Privy Council, “is far less than that of a labourer in Britain.”

Q. to Mr. Gilbert Francklyn. “Upon consideration of food,

“labour, &c., have you been able to make any comparison “between the condition of negroes in the West Indies, and “that of poor labourers in this country,” &c.?