It might perhaps be enacted, as Mr.
Vaughan had suggested, that their punishments should be moderate; and that the number of lashes should be limited.

But the colonial legislatures had already done as much, as the magic of words alone could do, upon this subject: yet the evidence upon the table clearly proved, that the only protection of slaves was in the clemency of their masters.

Any barbarity might be exercised with impunity, provided no White person were to see it, though it happened in the sight of a thousand slaves.

Besides, by splitting the offence, and inflicting the punishment at intervals, the law could be evaded, although the fact was within the reach of the evidence of a White man.

Of this evasion, Captain Cook, of the eighty-ninth regiment, had given a shocking instance: and Chief Justice Ottley had candidly confessed, that "he could devise no method of bringing a master, so offending, to justice, while the evidence of the slave continued inadmissible." But perhaps councils of protection, and guardians of the slaves, might be appointed.
This again was an expedient, which sounded well; but which would be nugatory and absurd.