He
never knows whether there will be a French naval descent or whether
the blacks in his own island will do as the blacks in St. Domingo
did--massacre the white people in thousands. Or whether the free
blacks, the Maroons, who got their freedom by treaty with Governor
Trelawney, when the British commander changed hats with Cudjoe, the
Maroon chief, as the sealing of the bargain--whether they will rise
again, as they before have risen, and bring terror into the white
settlement; and whether, in that case, all negro-slaves will join
them, and Jamaica become a land of revolution.
Of what good, then, will be the laws lately passed regulating the
control of slaves, securing them rights never given before, even
forbidding lashes beyond forty-nine! Of what use, then, the
punishment of owners who have ill-used the slaves? The local
councils who have power to punish never proceed against white men
with rigour; and to preserve a fair balance between the white man up
above and the black down below is the responsibility of the fair-
minded governor.
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