the richest spoils, for nothing can exceed their wealth, their
power, and their influence. They have reached the ne plus ultra of
worldly felicity; no plantation is secured, no title is good, no
will is valid, but what they dictate, regulate, and approve. The
whole mass of provincial property is become tributary to this
society; which, far above priests and bishops, disdain to be
satisfied with the poor Mosaical portion of the tenth. I appeal to
the many inhabitants, who, while contending perhaps for their right
to a few hundred acres, have lost by the mazes of the law their
whole patrimony. These men are more properly law givers than
interpreters of the law; and have united here, as well as in most
other provinces, the skill and dexterity of the scribe with the
power and ambition of the prince: who can tell where this may lead
in a future day? The nature of our laws, and the spirit of freedom,
which often tends to make us litigious, must necessarily throw the
greatest part of the property of the colonies into the hands of
these gentlemen. In another century, the law will possess in the
north, what now the church possesses in Peru and Mexico.

While all is joy, festivity, and happiness in Charles-Town, would
you imagine that scenes of misery overspread in the country? Their
ears by habit are become deaf, their hearts are hardened; they
neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from
whose painful labours all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of
slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no one
thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which
from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they
till. The cracks of the whip urging these miserable beings to
excessive labour, are far too distant from the gay Capital to be
heard. The chosen race eat, drink, and live happy, while the