pervades their bowels; and while they exhibit a fair exterior to the other
parts of the world, they are nothing more than "painted sepulchres,"
containing within them nought but rottenness and corruption.

Ye voluptuous, ye opulent and great, who hold in subjection such numbers of
your fellow-creatures, and suffer these things to happen--beware! Reflect
on this lamentable change, that may, at a future period, take place against
you. Arraigned before the almighty Sovereign of the universe, how will you
answer the charge of such complicated enormity? The presence of these
slaves, who have been lost, for want of your instruction, and by means of
your oppression, shall make you dart deeper into the flames, to avoid their
just reproaches, and seek out for an asylum, in the hidden corners of
perdition.

Many persons of opulence in Virginia, and the Carolinas, treat their
unhappy slaves with every circumstance of coolest neglect, and the most
deliberate indifference. Surrounded with a numerous train of servants,
to contribute to their personal ease, and wallowing in all the luxurious
plenitude of riches, they neglect the wretched source, whence they draw
this profusion. Many of their negroes, on distant estates, are left to
the entire management of inhuman overseers, where they suffer for the
want of that sustenance, which, at the proprietors seat of residence,
is wastefully given to the dogs. It frequently happens, on these large
estates, that they are not clothed, 'till winter is nearly expired;
and then, the most valuable only are attended to; the young, and the
labour-worn, having no other allowance, in this respect, than the
tattered garments, thrown off by the more fortunate. A single peck of
corn a week, or the like measure of rice, is the ordinary quantity of
provision for a hard working slave; to which a small quantity of meat is
occasionally, tho' rarely, added. While those miserable degraded persons