These, with all before in the country,
were employed when the war came on, in raising tobacco and rice for
remittance in payment of British debts. An order arrives from
England, advised by one of their most celebrated _moralists_, Dr.
Johnson, in his _Taxation no Tyranny_, to excite these slaves to
rise, cut the throats of their purchasers, and resort to the British
army, where they should be rewarded with freedom. This was done, and
the planters were thus deprived of near thirty thousand of their
working people. Yet the demand for those sold and unpaid still
exists; and the cry continues against the Virginians and Carolinians,
that _they do not pay their debts!_
Virginia suffered great loss in this kind of property by
another ingenious and humane British invention. Having the small-pox
in their army while in that country, they inoculated some of the
negroes they took as prisoners belonging to a number of plantations,
and then let them escape, or sent them, covered with the pock, to mix
with and spread the distemper among the others of their colour, as
well as among the white country people; which occasioned a great
mortality of both, and certainly did not contribute to the enabling
debtors in making payment.
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