HORRORS   OF  WEST  INDIA SLAVERY.         339
the general treatment of Negro Slaves would be humane
and lenient. This it might have been alledged was mere-
ly presumption, presumption, however, Sufficiently strong
to remove all doubt from unprejudiced minds :—but we
are now relieved from that objection. We are no long-
er reduced to the necessity of making use of disputable
analogies, in order, from the state of the laws respecting
Slavery, to infer the probable practice ; but we have that
practice so graphically described, as to supersede the ne-
cessity of argumentation, and to silence the most deter-
mined stickler for West Indian humanity.
On the 25th of February last, a number of papers re-
specting the Slave Trade, were presented to the House
¦of Commons by his Majesty, and they have since been
printed. In perusing them, the attention is forcibly at-
tracted by the continuation of the correspondence be-
tween Lord Seaforth and the Secretary of State. On
the 13th of November, 1804, his Lordship thus writes to
Earl Camden.
" I inclose four papers containing, from different
¦quarters, reports on the horrid murders I mentioned in
some former letters. They are selected from a great num-
ber, among which there is not one in contradiction of
the horrible facts, though several of the letters are very
concise and defective. The truth is, that nothing has
given me more trouble than to get at the bottom of these
businesses, so horribly absur4 are the prejudices of the
people," (not of one or two, or a few individuals, but of
the p eople.) <( However, a great part of my object is
answered by the alarm my interference has excited, and
the attention it has called to the business. Bills are al-
ready prepared to make murder felony *; but I fear they
* What a strange state of society must that be in which murder
fs not yet considered as a felonious act, nay, in which the attempt to