Slavery in the West Indies is peculiar to negroes, or the mixed issue of negroes and Europeans within such a degree of propinquity to the sable stock, as distinguishes them, in some degree, in their features and complexions, from the European race.

In Jamaica, the condition ceases, by express law, to attach upon the issue at the fourth degree of distance from a negro ancestor. In other islands, the written law is silent on this head; but by established custom, the quadroons, or mestizes, so they call the second and third degrees, are rarely seen in a state of slavery; and never employed in any but domestic offices.—Even mulattoes are very seldom destined to the labours of the field.—Of the agricultural slaves therefore, who will, in a practical view, be the chief subjects of this enquiry, it might be said with tolerable correctness that they are exclusively negroes.

The masters, on the other hand, are chiefly of the European race and complexion; and though there are free persons, and even owners of Slaves, of African lineage, they labour under legal disabilities which constitute them an inferior order in society, and are regarded by their white fellow-subjects with great contempt: an extreme corporeal difference, therefore, marks in general the distinction between freedom and slavery; and the exterior appearance of the slave is, from its ordinary association with his degraded state, a badge of infamy or vileness.