MORAL CONDITION OF THE NEGROES.

In the meantime cargoes of slaves are almost weekly landed in the
neighbourhood of Bahia: the thousand evils of the vile system are each
day increasing, and with a rapid but unregarded footstep the fearful hour
steals on, when a terrible reckoning of unrestrained revenge will repay
all the accumulated wrongs of the past, and write in characters of blood
an awful warning for the future!

So far as we could learn, no attempts are made by the masters to
introduce the blessings of Christianity among those whom they deprive of
temporal freedom. The slave is treated as a valuable animal and nothing
more: the claims of his kindred humanity so far forgotten as they relate
to his first unalienable right of personal freedom, are not likely to be
remembered in his favour, in what concerns his coheritage in the sublime
sacrifice of atonement once freely offered for us all! He toils through
long and weary years, cheered by no other hope than the far distant and
oft delusive expectation that a dearly purchased freedom--if for
freedom's blessings any price can be too costly--will enable him to look
once more upon the land of his nativity; and then close his eyes,
surrounded by the loved few whom the ties of kindred endear even to his
rude nature.

It would swell this portion of the work to an unreasonable extent, to
give any lengthened details of the working of a system, about which among
my readers no two opinions can exist. Let it suffice to say, that the
Europeans are generally better and less exacting masters than the
Brazilians. Among the latter it is a common practice to send so many
slaves each day to earn a certain fixed sum by carrying burdens, pulling