Sometimes four or five, and even eight or nine thousand of them, were under the care of one medical man; which, dispersed on different and distant estates, was a greater number than he could possibly attend to.
It was also in evidence, that they were in general under-fed.

They were supported partly by the produce of their own provision-ground, and partly by an allowance of flour and grain from their masters.

In one of the islands, where provision-ground did not answer one year in three, the allowance to a working Negro was but from five to nine pints of grain per week: in Dominica, where it never failed, from six to seven quarts: in Nevis and St.Christophers, where there was no provision-ground, it was but eleven pints.

Add to this, that it might be still less, as the circumstances of their masters might become embarrassed; and in this case both an abridgment of their food, and an increase of their labour, would follow.
But the great cause of the decrease of the slaves was in the non-residence of the planters.

Sir George Yonge, and many others, had said, they had seen the slaves treated in a manner, which their owners would have resented, if they had known it.