In the first place, he asserted that the number of the slaves in our
West India islands might be kept up without the introduction of recruits
from Africa; and to prove this, he would enumerate the different sources
of their mortality. The first was the disproportion of the sexes, there
being, upon an average, about five males imported to three females: but
this evil, when the Slave Trade was abolished, would cure itself. The
second consisted in the bad condition in which they were brought to the
islands, and the methods of preparing them for sale. They arrived
frequently in a sickly and disordered state, and then they were made up
for the market by the application of astringents, washes, mercurial
ointments, and repelling drugs, so that their wounds and diseases might
be hid. These artifices were not only fraudulent but fatal; but these,
it was obvious, would of themselves fall with the trade. A third was,
excessive labour joined with improper food; and a fourth was, the
extreme dissoluteness of their manners. These, also, would both of them
be counteracted by the impossibility of getting further supplies: for
owners, now unable to replace those slaves whom they might lose, by
speedy purchases in the markets, would be more careful how they treated
them in future, and a better treatment would be productive of better
morals.
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