Yet that is the caprice, that is the unreasonable, the foul, the gross, the monstrous, the outrageous, incredible injustice of which we are hourly guilty towards the whole unhappy race of negroes.

(Cheers.) My lords, we fill up the incasare of injustice by severely executing laws badly conceived in a still more atrocious and cruel spirit.

The whole punishments smell of blood.

(Hear, Hear.) If the treadmill stop in consequence of the languid limbs and exhausted frames of the victims, within a minute the lash resounds through the building--if the stones which they are set to break be not broken by limbs scarred, and marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of the whip to their toilsome task! I myself have heard within the last three hours, from a person, who was an eye-witness of the appalling and disgusting fact, that a leper was introduced amongst the negroes; and in passing let me remark, that in private houses or hospitals no more care has been taken to separate those who are stricken with infectious diseases from the sound portion, any more than to furnish food to those in prison who are compelled, from the unheard-of, the paltry, the miserable disposition to treat with cruelty the victims of a prison, to go out and gather their own food,--a thing which I believe even the tyrant of Siberia does not commit.

Yet in that prison, where blood flows profusely, and the limbs of those human beings are subjected to perpetual torture, the frightful, the nauseous, the disgusting--except that all other feelings are lost in pity towards the victim and indignation against the oppressor--sight was presented of a leper, scarred from the eruptions of disease on his legs and previous mistreatment, whaled again and again, and his blood again made to flow from the jailer's lash.