For he justified the chaining of the Negros on board the slave-vessels, on account of "their bloody, cruel, and malicious dispositions." But hear his commendation of some of the Aborigines of Jamaica, "who had miserably perished in caves, whither they had retired to escape the tyranny of the Spaniards.

These," says he, "left a glorious monument of their having disdained to survive the loss of their liberty and their country." And yet this same historian could not perceive that this natural love of liberty might operate as strongly and as laudably in the African Negro, as in the Indian of Jamaica.
He was concerned to acknowledge that these prejudices were yet further strengthened by resentment against those who had taken an active part in the abolition of the Slave-trade.

But it was never the object of these to throw a stigma on the whole body of the West Indians; but to prove the miserable effects of the trade.

This it was their duty to do; and if, in doing this, disgraceful circumstances had come out, it was not their fault; and it must never be forgotten that they were true.
That the slaves were exposed to great misery in the islands, was true as well from inference as from facts: for what might not be expected from the use of arbitrary power, where the three characters of party, judge, and executioner were united! The slaves too were more capable on account of their passions, than the beasts of the field, of exciting the passions of their tyrants.

To what a length the ill treatment of them might be carried, might be learnt from the instance which General Tottenham mentioned to have seen in the year 1780 in the streets of Bridge Town, Barbadoes: "A youth about nineteen (to use his own words in the evidence), entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes.