It is the badge of authority, and the noise of it is requisite to summon them to their labour.

With me it is seldom used, for it is not required; and if you were captain of a man-of-war, I should answer you as I did Captain C----; to wit--I question much whether my noisy whip is half so mischievous as your silent _cat_." The sugar-mills, stables of mules, boilers, coolers, &c., were all examined, and the party returned to the plantation-house.
"Well, captain, now you have witnessed what is termed slavery, what is your opinion?
Are your philanthropists justified in their invectives against us ?" "First assure me that all other plantations are as well regulated as your own," replied Mr Berecroft.
"If not, they soon will be: it is to the interest of all the planters that they should; and by that, like all the rest of the world, they will be guided." "But still there have been great acts of cruelty committed; quite enough to prepossess us against you as a body." "I grant that such has been the case, and may occasionally be so now; but do not the newspapers of England teem with acts of barbarity?
Men are the same everywhere.

But, sir, it is the misfortune of this world, that we never know _when to stop_.

The abolition of the slave-trade was an act of humanity, worthy of a country acting upon an extended scale like England; but your philanthropists, not content with relieving the blacks, look forward to the extermination of their own countrymen, the whites--who, upon the faith and promise of the nation, were induced to embark their capital in these islands." "Doubtless they wish to abolish slavery altogether," replied Berecroft.
"They must be content with having abolished the horrors of it, sir," continued the planter.

"At a time when the mart was open, and you could purchase another slave to replace the one that had died from ill-treatment, or disease, the life of a slave was not of such importance to his proprietor as it is now.