Against those born on our lands I have little to urge.

Many of them, it is true, begin the day with weeping and end it with death; but for the most part, thanks to their diurnal allowance of stripes, they are tolerably submissive.

It is with the wretches that I have been obliged to purchase from prisoners of war and the people of revolted towns that I am so dissatisfied.

Punishments have no effect on them, they are incessantly indolent, sulky, desperate.

It was but the other day that ten of them poisoned themselves while at work in the fields, and fifty more, after setting fire to a farm-house while my back was turned, escaped to join a gang of their companions, who are now robbers in the woods.