sufficient number to furnish materials for the _"irrepressible
conflict,"_ which had long before begun. The catechist, whom the
Society employed, was "Mr. Elias Neau, by nation a Frenchman, who,
having made a confession of the Protestant religion in France, for
which he had been confined several years in prison, and seven years
in the gallies." Mr. Neau entered upon his office "with great
diligence, and his labors were very successful; but the negroes were
much discouraged from embracing the Christian religion upon account
of the very little regard showed them in any religious respect. Their
marriages were performed by mutual consent only, without the blessing
of the Church; they were buried by those of their own country and
complexion, in the common field, without any Christian office;
perhaps some ridiculous heathen rites were performed at the grave by
some of their own people. No notice was given of their being sick,
that they might be visited; on the contrary, frequent discourses were
made in conversation, that they had no souls, and perished as the
beasts," and "that they grew worse by being taught, and made
Christians."

In 1711, May 15, Gov. Gibbes, of South Carolina, in his address to
the Legislature of that Province, thus speaks:--

"And, gentlemen, I desire you will consider the great _quantities_
of negroes that are daily brought into the government, and the small
_number_ of whites that comes amongst us: how insolent and
mischievous the negroes are become, and to consider the Negro Act
already made, doth not reach up to some of the crimes they have
lately been guilty of, therefore it might be convenient by some
additional clause of said Negro Act to appoint either by gibbets or
some such like way, that after executed, they may remain more