To enumerate their various employments, and to describe the miseries which they endured in consequence, either from the severity, or the long and constant application of their labour, would exceed the bounds we have proposed to the present work.

We shall confine ourselves to their _personal treatment_, as depending on the power of their masters, and the protection of the law.

Their treatment, if considered in this light, will equally excite our pity and abhorrence.

They were beaten, starved, tortured, murdered at discretion: they were dead in a civil sense; they had neither name nor tribe; were incapable of a judicial process; were in short without appeal.

Poor unfortunate men! to be deprived of all possible protection! to suffer the bitterest of injuries without the possibility of redress! to be condemned unheard! to be murdered with impunity! to be considered as dead in that state, the very members of which they were supporting by their labours! Yet such was their general situation: there were two places however, where their condition, if considered in this point of view, was more tolerable.