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';.- :/ n toft«rtp*-4w< ■*-i.i Printtd hy EUerton and Umdtrson, Oough Square, London. ^ jiat:'::j^^JS^a^ aei jf»-' AN APPEAL TO THB ^^?^7v>.^' 7 *;>••'» RELIGION, JUSTICE, AND HUMANITY J THE INHABITANTS '.V . / OP THE BRITISH EMPIRE, '•-.'s-i " IN BBHALF OF TUB NEGRO SLAVES IN THE WEST INDIES. BY W»« WILBERFORCE, ESQ., M.P. 'B? Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for hib work. Do justice, and love mercy. micah. JEREMIAH. LONDON: '?■•., FOR J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY. 1823. ^^4> V A '«./ >.*. {.\.%,A._ 'vft * t O'V 'iriViiMpn a^L ^lau-^v:,^;: i!v>i » ' ti''y.::[L*iUVAi ,ill. ,:'iHi4|£ai.li^iTi.ni :'V HI :?#u *^ .'■»> . '- y '..'--♦ s iW' if:) # ti'sij *t A ;r>' ii;v APPEAL, ; 4v. 4v. To all the inhabitants of the British Empire, who value the favour of God, or are alive to the interests or honour of their country — to all who have any respect for justice, or any feelings of humanity, I would solemnly address myself. I call upon them, as they shall hereafler answer, in the great day of account, for the use they shall have made of any power or influence with which Providence may have entrusted them, to employ their best endeavours, by all lawful and constitutional means, to mitigate, and, as 3oon as it may be safely done, to termina. ; the Negro Slavery of the British Colonies ; a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality, of the most unprece- dented degradation, and unrelenting cruelty. ,,. . At any time, and under any circumstances, from such a heavy load of guilt as this oppression amounts , it would be our interest noless than our duty to absolve ourselves. But I will not attempt to conceal, that the present embarrassments and dis* .W n :l%^h'\ IM tress of our country — a distress, indeed, in which the West Indians themselves have largely parti- cipated— powerfully enforce on metiie urgency of the obligation under which we lie, to com- mence, without delay, the preparatory measures for putting an etd to a national crime of the deepest moral malignity. The long continuance df this system, like that of its parent the Slave Trade, can only be accounted for by the generally prevailing ig- norance of its real nature, and of its great and numerous evils. Some of the abuses which it involved have, indeed, been drawn into notice. But when the public attention has been at- tracted to this subject, it has been unadvisedly turned to particular instances of cruelty, rather th&n to the s)'dtem in general, and to those essential and incurable viceis which will inva- fi^iy exist whetever the power of man over hian is unlimited. Even at this day, fbw of our cdtintrymen, comparatively speaking, are !A.i all apprised of the real condition ot' the bulk df the Negro I^Opulktion : and, perhaps, many of our non-resident West Indian pro- prietof^ are full ^s ignorant of it as otlier men. Oflen, indeed, the most humane df the number, (many of them ^re men whose humanity ii tinqtte^onable,) are least of all aware of it, fi-dm e^imating, not unnaturally, the actual st^te df the c^e, by the benevolence of their tf^^n ^^eli meant, but unavailing directions to theit- tfranagersi in the western hemi^here. ' »•»■ \ U ,--■.■ .-.^-jUtru't^ m. - • '^^i' 'f-'* -'-^i^^i^ ■^^ati Afv-iii.k&i., "T^J^aeSB ti. -y ti- es le e e > i t ' The persuasion, that it is to the public ig.' noratice of the actual evils o*' West Indian Slavery that we can alone ascribe its having been suffered so long to remain unreformed and almost unnoticed, is strongly Confirmed by re- feiring to what pass our comenencing ' our endeavours for the mitigation, and ultimate extinction lof slavery, we should have sujOfered twenty -two long years to elapse, beyond that ifiteryal for notice and preparation, which even the advocjate of the West Indians himself had vQluntarily proposed, as what appeared to him to be at once safe and reasonable. It is due also to the character o^' the late Mr. Burke to stale, that long before the subject of the Slave Trade had engaged the public attention, his large and sagacious mind, though far from being fully informed of the particulars of the West Indian system, had become sensible of its deeply criminal nature. He had even devised a plan for ameliorating, and by decrees putting an end both to the Slave Trade and to the state of slavery itself ill the West Indies. He proposed, by education, and above all* by religious instruction, to pre- pare the poor degraded slaves for the enjoyment ot' civil rights ; taking them, in the niean time, into the guAfdianship and superintcibdence of ^^-..^mt-i- ijtijats. offices to be appointed by the British govei^n- ment. It scarcely needs be remarked, in how great a degree Mr. Burke waean enemy to all spe- ^ulaitive theories ; and his authority will at leasjt absolve those who now uadevtake the cause of the Negro ^avee, f^ora the imputation of harslily and unwafiunta/bly disturbing a wholesome and legitimate system of civil subordination. ^ i f ;, But if such were the just convictions pro- dciced in tlie mi«d of Mr. Burke, though very imperfectly acquainted with the vices of the West India system — still ir.ove, if it was con- ceded by many of those who opposed the im- mediate abolition of the Slave Trade, moreespe- tjially by that politic statesman, Mr. Dundas, that a state of slavery, considered mereiy as a violation of the natural rights of human beings, ■being unjust in its origin, nnut be unwarranta- Me in its continuanee — what would have been 'the sentiments and feelings produced in all g&> nerous and humane minds by o«ir West -Indian slavery, had they known the detail of its great and manifold evils? * v , ? The importance of proving, that the alleged 'decrease of the slaves atrose from causes which it was in the master's power easily to remove, led the abolitionists of the Slave Trade, in stating the actual vices of the West Indian system, to dwell much, and too exclusively, per- haps, on the slaves being under-fed and over- worked, and on the want of due medical care and medicai comforts. These evils, which are indeed very great, must, of course, be aggra- vated where the planters were in embarrassed circumstances, notoriously the situation of the greater part of the owners of West Indian estates. But, speaking generally, there exists es- sentially, in the system itself, from various causes, a natural tendency towards the maximum of labour, and the minimum of food and other comforts. That such was the case in general, whatever exceptions tliere might be in particular instances, was decisively established by the tes- timony even of West Indian authorities ; and it was fatally confirmed by the decrease of the slaves in almost all our settlements. No other satisfactory explanation cou)d be given of this melancholy fact } for it is contrary to universal experience as to the Negro race, not in their own country only, where they are remarkably pro- lific, but in the case of the domestic slaves, even in our sugar Colonies. The free Negroes and Mu- lattoes, and also the Maroons*, in the island of Ja- maica, the Charaibst of St. Vincent, and the Ne- groes of Bencoolen were all known to increase their numbers, though under circumstances far from favourable to population ; and, above all, a striking contrast was found in the rapid native in- * The dec^endants of the Negro slaves who fled into the woods, when Jamaica was taken by Venables and Vernon, under Oliver Cromwell, and who, about eighty years ago, were settled iti separate villages as free Negroes. *'^« * = i^**- f The descendants of the crew of an African ship which was wrecked on the island about a century ago. J-f-^'f '-^ -'•"/'/.')'?.-'■ mnmtm» • crease of the Negro slaves in the United States of America, though situated in a climate far less suited to the Negro constitution than that of the West Indies. There alone, in a climate much the* same as that of Africa, it was declared im- possible even to keep up their numbers, without continual importations. This fact alone was a strong presumptive proof, and was raised by va- rious concurrent facts and arguments into a positive certainty, that the decrease of the slaves arose in no small degree, not only from an ex- cess of labour, but from the want of a requisite supply of food, and of other necessaries and comforts. The same phenomena, I fear, are still found to exist, and to indicate the continuance of the same causes. For unless I am much mis- informed, there is still a progressive decrease by mortality in most of our Colonies ; and if in a smaller ratio to their whole population than for- merly, it is to be remembered that the enormous loss, in the seasoning of newly imported Afri- cans, now no longer aggravates the sad accornt. But though the evils which have been al- ready enumerated are of no small amount, in estimating the physical sufferings of human beings, especially of the lower rank, yet, to a Christian eye, they shrink almost into insig- nificance when compared with the moral evils that remain behind — with that, above all, which runs through the whole of the various cruel circumstances of the Negro slave's condition. *i l; v*..**? rrt I ini iiili Li ii >f..]»t« 11 g l ^ . ^ V m mf ii'^fw^ ^ ■ #»l « ll« > l ^ »' ^%s^ ,'%>■ 10 and is at once the e^et of his wrongs and mf- feiings, their bitter aggravation, and the pre- text for their continuance, — his extreme degrad- ation in the intellectual and moral scale of being, and in the estimation of his white op- pressors. The proofs of the extreme degradation of the slaves, in the latter sense, are innumer^le; and, indeed, it must be confessed, that in the minds of Europeans in generd, more espeeir tdly in vulgar n^nds, whether vulgar fi'om the want of education, or morally vulgar, (a more inwrought and less curable vulgarity,*) the personal peculiatitie^ of the Negro race could scarcely fail, 1)y diminishing sympathy, to produce; impressions, not nierdyof contempt, but even clf disgust and aversion. But how strongly -are these impressions sure to be confiraned and •iiugmented, when to ail the effects of bodily 4is- •tincftions are superadded all those arising from the want of civiMzation and knowledge, and •^till more, cdlthe hateful vices that slavery never ^Is to engMtder or to aggravate. Such, tn ti^tith, must naturally be the efifect of these powefful cau^s, that even the most ingeniously con- structed system which humanity and policy com- -bined eould have devised, would in vain have en- deavoured to •Counteract them : how much more powerfully then must they operate, especially in low and uneducated minds, when the wiMie .system abounds with institutions and practices f ii # ¥ •3* +. ;.»■. ..•*,<.. 11 .wh\^ t^ff4 to !ppi)fii:iii And atreng^hon their ..efficiency, and to gjive to a contemptuous Aver- sion for th$ ])ifegro FAce* the aanction of ananners .and of law. It were well if the cpHsequene^ of th.ese im- pressions ^ere oi^ly to be discovered among the inferior ranks of the privileged cjiass, or only to be foi^nd in the<)pinions and conduct of individuala. But in the earlier laws of our colonies they are expressed in t,he language of insult, and in pha- iracters of blo<7d. And too many of these laws still remain uni>9pealed» to permit the belief that the siarae odious spirit of legislation no longer exists* CM' to relieve the injured objects of them from their degrading influence* The slaves were systematically depressed below the level of bM*- man beings** And though I confess, that it » of less concern to a slave under wbaA laws be lives than what is the character of bis master* yet if the laws had extended to tbem favour and protection instead of degrsdation^ this would have tended to raise them (in the socia} scale, and operating insensibly on the public * An a^t of Barbadoes, (8th Aug. 1688,) prescribing th^ mode of trial for slaves, recites, that " they being brutish slaves, deserve not, for the baseness of their condition, to be tried by the legal trial of turelve men of their pt»ers, fto." Another clause of the same act, speaks of the <* bf|rfaArg!Vi» wild, ^d4 i^yfge i!>PitHres of t^e sfi/aae Negroes (md fther slaves,'* being such as renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the laws, practices, and customs of other na- tions:" Other instances of a iike i^irtt might bt ck«d in the act« «f Mhdr Mtofi*. 1 « ''*.*■?* -i'^.i 12 vi # mind, might, by degrees, have softened the ex- treme rigour of their bondage. Such, how- ever, had been the contrary effects of an opposite process, on the estimation of the Ne- gro race, before the ever-to-be-honored Gran- ville Sharpe, and his followers, had begun to vindicate their claim to the character and privileges of human nature, that a writer of the highest authority on all West India subjects, Mr. Long, in his celebrated History of Jamaica, though pointing out some of the particulars of their ill treatment, scrupled not to state it as his opinion, that in the gradations of being, Negroes were little elevated above the oran outang, «* that type of man." Nor was this an unguarded or a hastily thrown out assertion. He institutes a laborious comparison of the Negro race with that species of baboon ; and declares, that "ludicrous as the opinion may seem, he does not think that an oran outang husband would be any dishonor to a Hottentot female." When we find such sentiments as these to have been unblushingiy avowed by an author of the highest estimation among the West India colonists, we are prepared for what we find to have been, and, I grieve to say, still continues to be, the practical effects of these opinions. ' The first particular of subsisting legal oppress sion that I shall notice, and which is at once a de- cisive proof of the degradation of the Negro race, in the eyes of the whites, and a powerful cause of its continuance, is of a deeply rooted cha- m IS racter, and often productive of the most cruel effects. In the c(mtemplation of law they are not persons, but mere chattels ; and as such are liable to be seized and sold by creditors and by executors, in payment of their owner's debts ; and this separately from the estates on which they are settled. By the operation of this system, the most meritorious slave who may have accu- mulated a little peculium, and may be living with his family in some tolerable comfort, who by long and faithful services may have endeared himself to his proprietor or manager, — who, in short, is in circumstances that mitigate greatly the evils of his condition — is liable at once to be torn for ever from his home, his family, and his friends, and to be sent to serve a new master, perhaps in another island, for the rest of his llfet Y Y»f"[% ■ VrvfH^, ■*-,' , Another particular of their degradation bylaw, which, in its effects, most perniciously affects their whole civil condition, and of which their inadequate legal protection is a sure and ne- cessary consequence, is their evidence being inadmissible against any free person. The effect of this cannot be stated more clearly or com- pendiously than in the memorable evidence of a gentleman eminently distinguished for the can- dour with which he gave to the Slave Trade Committee the result of his long personal ex- perience in the West Indies, — the late Mr. Otley, Chief-justice of St. Vincent's, — himself a planter : — " As the evidence of slaves is never h '■■f-r •',■»«« mir> i f ) v! •0. I ; I I fldiititted agaih^st white mm, «ll« dMfftfiilty of legaUy^ estaMiiihirig fhie ftidft is ^ great, that white! mtti ai^ in b KMrtner put b^o^d thd i%ach dPtM law.*' It lilt ditto alM> m^ the' Ittttf Sir WilKafn Youfig, kttif^ ot^ df thcf tntMt iNitlV^ bjiw I^bttents of the abditioll, to ^t«(«, that he like- wr$e, When Odvertilor of Tohago, M^ridlvtedged; as a radical dtifhttiti the adthiMiMi^tlOn of jus^ tiee, that the laW of eviderite «< eoteri^d the mo^ guilty Eurojhiatt with rrhpUnlty:'^ ' ^'^* The satne eoncei^iot^ wa^ ihikdeby bb^ houses 6f the legislature of Gt^iltidtt^ Ih the earliest iftqtiiries of the Privy Couneil. The only diffl. diilty, as they stiiited, thstt httdbeen forind irt put- tirig am eflititual stbry to gros* and wantbn cruelty towitrd^ efTaves, vas that of bringing honre the^ p^oof of the fact against the delinquenlt by satisfactory evidence ; those who were capable of thegtrilt, being in genei^I artfUl e^dugh-to pre- ^eiit any but slaves being witnesses of the ikct, ** As the matter Stands," they add, " though we hope the instances in this island are at this dAy not frequent, yet it must be admitted with rejgttt, that the persons prosecuted, and who certainly Wen*^ guilty, have escaped for wartt of lesrai proof** UJiivisiivijjuf ut%4 »'» >Jj.**> if^»aij'.>j<>i»i"i«* It is obvious thatt the same cause must pro- duce the saUie effect in all our other slave colo- nies, although there has not been found the same Candoui* in confessing it. The next evil Which I shall Specify^ i'br which the extreiHe degrtldiltion of these, poor beings. the w. % in: tlM 0/68 oif their nmtetn, can alone aecounV it the driving syitetn. Not behig sttppecie», or it« farther degrading the slaves in the eyes of all who are in authority over thenft, atid thereby extinguishing that syttipath^ which #ould be their best prbtection. The whip is itself a dreadful instrument of punislmHfht $ atid th^ rtiode of inflicting that puh>i^hmei^ sh^Kik-' ingly indecent and degrading. The drivers themsdVes, commonly; or rather always slave's^ are usually the strongest ahd stdutest of the j^egro^s; and though they are fbibiddt^n to giv^ niore thacn a feiV lashes at a time, as- tb^ iUnki ■# ■( i III i< I i i !•» « commonly made of this despotism, in extorting/ from the fears of the young females who are subject to it, compliances with the licentious desires of the drivers, which they might other- wise have refused from attachment to another, if not from moral feelings and restraints. It is idle and insulting to talk of improving the condi- tion of these poor beings, as rational and moral agents, while they are treated in a mimner which precludes self-government, and annihi- lates all human motives but such as we impose on a maniac, or on a hardened and incorrigible convict. ". Another abuse which shews, like the rest, the extreme degradation of the Negro race, and the apathy which it creates in their masters, is the cruel, and, at least in the case of the female sex. highly indecent punishments in- flicted in public, and in the face of day, often in the presence of the gang, or of the whole assembled population of an estate. From their low and ignominious condition it doubtless proceeds, that they are in some degree regarded as below the necessity of observing towards others the proper decencies of life, or of having those decencies observed oy others towards them. It is no doubt also chiefly owing to their nQt being yet raised out of that extreme depth in which they are suqk, so much below the level of the human species, that no attempts have been made to introduce among them the « »;»;•■ 17 ChrittiAii iDsUtution of marriage, that bleMed union which the Almighty himself .eetibliahed as a fundamental law, at the creation of man, to be as it were the well-spring of all the charities of life — the source of all domestic comfort sad social improvement, — the moral cement of civilized society. ^ ' In truth, so far have the masters been from attempting to establish marriage generally among their slaves, that even the idea of its introduction among them never seems to have seriously sug- gested itself to their minds. In the commence- ment of the long contest concerning the abolition of the Slave Trade, it was one of a number of questions respecting the treatment of slaves in tile West Indies put by the Privy Council, — ** What is the practice respecting the marriage of Negro Slaves, and what are the regulations concerning it?" In all' instances, and from every colony, the answers returned were such as these : " They do not marry." " They co- habit by mutual consent," &c. ** If by mar- riage is meant a regular contract and union of one man with one woman, enforced by positive institutions, no such practice exists among the slaves, and they are left entirely free in thw re- spect, &C." il^iU. Let me not be supposed ignorant of some acts of the West Indian Legislatures, the perusal of which might produce an opposite impression oa the uninformtd and «redulous n ->t&Mimk*-immfSil^- I.j^nrtitti'": 'U 18 M ^h»y gMv^ly require all owneti, managers, |«% eC 9Uf/9», under a penalty, to ejthort ^eir slaves' to receive the ceremony of mar- V9ig9> m instituted undce the forms of the Christian Religion : thege even profess **loprO' feet tho!te Who knov tMy thing* df the |it^(yHc nijnd 4 in our West Indian colofrie^, tbi^ i^ttsfi^ sp<^^-M very ititeltigibl^ ktlguag^l. It ifiiitif itiikkitM' the v^ I^OSitibii 1 hav^6 hidtt liytn^ (fo#ii^» that th^ tliii/t^ are ddifMid^k^d M tM d^grttfiid t(^ b« {^rofier Ejects fb^ ih^ niaiirta|^d IHstitdtldtf. A ^rikin^ dOr^ol^atiloh Of thi» pmUdti Miiif' afforded but K feW y^f^ a^, Wh6» a tdi>y Wor^ thy clergyrtfdt In drte'Of Otoi* L^eWto^df Isfa ttdi^. jiev;^ haviitg obtairt6d ttie rfiWrfdt^'d leii'^; p^rt>^b«6d i!d60«dan 6nriv6k^Al ' fbrfh (^9\m^f4J^\^^^^i "inPT- ■ ■ «>wiiw»i uu am i ui ijuwij i juiu tit i un '•gainst the Kegistiy Bffl, in 1B1$, by a gentleman Mine tine »3iideDt IB Sarbadpes. Heapeaka vith fffUm- SJfR^^ i^W: *»«'^, /n^te* ?#, Pflri) WVf J?oJ^li<# Si^ft^- Sa^h ultfede unconpinon enl^geme^tof his mind, th^t he even Kiggesti a [iflaD, ifarottgili thc^tnedUaw of' a tnoM union of the eekes apoag the ooleiwet f ^ojfie in <^e oetontas^ fo»>the griidual ewnsJ / KK/a m , o^ibe il«vet} jNlvlif ^m f^wwlur 4«fFW»f^ ! Wu««WP^ # WtfP^ , Wy «wh «pnnft(^ between them and the white inhabitants : aa^ he owns th^t t|ie West Indian prejt^dice is sufficiently tnipliEmtjed in his o^ tnln^ i6 ^eoider^such ii conhiection not only »epag|aab4 to Ua fedisgs, bttt f* conttary if bis idaa oimoraii, religion, and of%fg«»W|; ^ mrf^ WiQn ih»4 9Pn'^e^t»<^fi>r hjj iipt^ly ij^r forms us that the untififral connection with this degraded class of the fenvJe population is dmost universal, prevailing, with scarcely an exception, among the married no less tbaa Ae im« married men. He states, and it i* abuQi4^tly eoiNfi|nne4 hjr U^^, ¥:4wu^i J«^# pio^timtw » »w^ wily om the only pprt ^qn jpf ^^ ^oip^i^ W()iiqD«P ; m^ th;U the white mep who form cqnnectlbns yntj^ them, purdiase them of their owners, and in mimy instances of their own parents. But against the moPtU uiuoft he deelari^ that he would guard, by advising that the Ijtfis ^uld bft mtde (<)tatit*ch the hem^jims efwfpen(tltHt» gff /e^^KW «ff Vpop thp parties «> lij|te|ri»»rryinj|t Tim qpinipn of fi. single individual, however respectable, would sijarcely have sufficient weight to entitle it to so much notice in any general argument concerning the treatment of &e Negroes ; but it becomes of real importance, when, as in tfcitinftAiMe, m 44yocate for the W(m Iq4f§a c^use bears Hi« twHimnHPor H Ibfl generally prevailiAg sentioieDts an4 piAfitWAS in «p»(e Qf thp largest and rop«t ancient pf pur West Indian colonies. t ,&.miJ?>i»M .-Mt^ *^'-'§»i' . i ckrei with'gfeit ibtiiin^, ite UtthAp^il)^ in'littb low tLlfiaie of degradation to MwV (ff ttiattiMoti^i' Well may he theh rkiMtk, that their {i)rifi{«: seem to sink under th6 cohseioutoefts df th^ odnditton* * Thus a fatal looseness of jMititi^ and praotlce 4iibse8 itielf thtough^at the ^^ community. A lili>«n^M intercdu^a^ betweiitti the ifhite itteh and this coloured ^dtoiiles W{i^ confessed by Ml*. Long t6 be general hi hk day ; and Mr. B;£jdward8,^iios6 History was piD]M lishtid so recently as 1799^ while he tfticpreStt^ himself with great pil^ for the Wr^tclied Victiihifl of this dissoluteness^ ackhowiedgetr lihat the ge-; neral morals were then Mid, iff at all improVedl^ in this particu)«h -^ Ut)kv«l«if»4*l0 t***^ Nor let this be de^tti^d a Con/sitSeratidtl df subordinate importarice. A Mbsit sagacibtf^ observer of human nature^ the Ut^ Dr/FUey,^* states^ ** It is a fact, however it be at6oiinted for^'^ that « the crhttih^' cotwmereiff of th^seie* corriipts and deprav«^ the ttAM atid hio^ ch^ . ractermore than any sringles^ies Of v96«^ Wh^' soever." « These indtiigertce^,'* he add^ '^ih low life, are usually the first ^stage in mettsi' progress t«?< i> »» <#* <*^?%) ^^ I must not be supposed ignorant that bf late years various colonial laws have been passed) professedly with a view to the promoting of re-^ ligion among the slaves : but they are all, I fear, worse than nullities. In truth, the solicit' tude which they express for the personal pro> tection, and still more for the moral interests, Wji;J. ..ii3# -^J»-- I ' , ^f^^- " ...Si'*'* •^^^T/S^'^waetit V » of the thiV^ ntrtt0tied with ^4 tpparent f6r- getftilQ«w of those interests which ia generally: fbUow» in the Msde commuoity* might have apfMariKl inespHotl^e, but for the ffwk declar- ^tion of the Governor of one of the West In- dim islands, which stood among the fbreiiiost in passkig one of these boasted laws for ameli- orating the condttion of the slaves. That law contained clauses wiaeh, with all due solemnityt and with penalties for the non-observance of its iajuQctions* prescribed the religious instruction of the slaves $ and the promoting of the marriage institution among them ) and in order '' to se- cure aa fkr as possible the good treatment of the slaves^ and to ascertain the cause of their decrease^ if any^*' itreqoired certificates of the slaves' increase and decrease to be annually de- livered on oath, under a penalty of 50^. currency. His Majesty's government^ some time afler, very m»itoiiously wishing for information as to the state of the slaves, applied to the governor for some of the intelligence which this act was to pro- vide. To this application the Governor, the late Sir George Prevost, replied as follows : *' The act of the legislature, entitled * An act for the en- couragement, protection, and better government of slaves,* appears to have been considered, from the (ley it wta passed until this hour, as a politieal measure to avert the interference of the mother country in the management of slaves." The same account of the motives by which the legislatures of other West Indkii ''4 . u*. .. 8f;v«m) pf tlw wi^sa^ who W9r« t jinmliif^ Jn ♦h)9 <:oii»ii|Lt]te^ qS ^n ^o\m of Gotmnonf in J7^apdl70J^ In all that I stAt(9 cQa^riwig tl)9 .r^ligi^ui^ i^t«f^^ of tl^ Al»v)99y um\^^M(^y^ other iimtanp;^, J w^«^be miflfsatop4 to sp^k Poly of t)^# ir^ii^d/ practice. Th«re fir^ { jnuow* vesi- 4^nt in ^hia powtry* in^Uvidual owners of slaves, ^fld some, api believe, even in the colonieia, who h£^V9 ^^en JMiqerely desirous tb«t their slavos should eiyoy the Wess^gs of-, Qbwtiwiity: though oA^n, I laqaent to say, where they bave desired i^ their pious endeavours h«v« been of little or no iivail. So bard is it> espe- qia% for absent prop^etors, to stem the tide of popular feeling and practice, which seta strongly in every colony against the religious instruct tion of slaves. So hftrd also, I must add, is it to reconcile the necessary means of such in> ^truction with the harsh duties and harsher disr qiipline to which these poor beings gre sutgected* The gift; eveu of the rest of the Sabbath iso^re th{^n the estAblisbed ccconomics ^i a sugar plan^- tation permit even the most independent planter to copfer, while the law tacitly sanctions its Ipeing wholly withheld from them, mmwy^ m*j •. Qenerally speaking, throughout the whole of our West Indian islandsr the €eld slaves, or oom- mon labourers, instead^ of being encouraged or even permitted to devote the Sunday to reIi-» M- '' '■--t' . .MdkPl'.iiBidl h "' IWni WK^ I """WIHliJ^L. "f^ gioat|>ur|kMM» are employed cither in worUng tlieirpiroi^on>ground8 for their own ■nd their fkmiiiet' flobsilteoce, or are attending, often ear- lying heavy loads to^ the Sunday markets, which frequently, in Jamaica, are from ten to fifteen miles distant from their abodes. These abuses confessedly continue to prevail fan despite of the uigent remonstrances, for more than the last half century, of members of the colonial body, and these sometimes, like Mr. B. Edwards, the most accredited advocates for the interests and character of the West Indians. The insensibility of the planters, even to the temporal good e^cts of Christianity on their slavei^ is the more surprising, because, besides their having been powerfully enforced by r.elf- interest, as I have already stated, in restrain- ing a licentious intercourse between the 8exe», they were strongly recommended, especially in the great island of Jamaica; by another consl- dera Jon of a very peculiar nature. The Jamaica planters long imputed the most injurious effects on the health and even the lives of their slaves, ^0 the African practice of Obeah, or witchcraft. The agents for Jamaica declared to the privy council, in I788, tliat they ''ascribed a very considerable portion of the annual mor- tality among the Negroes in that island to that fascinating mischief." I know that of late, ashamed of being supposed to have punished witchcraft with such seventy, it has been alleged; that thf; proft^soris of Obeahf usedto prepare and ) »r ^* .'r.ija^ k MmM ' mm •-»***»»». 19 •didinitter pdiimi to the fubjccti of thflk vpeUi: but any one who will only examine tiie lawi of Jamaica against these practices^ or read the evi* dence of the agents* vriU see plainly that, tb^i was not the view that was taken of the proceed* ings of the Obeah'tnan, but Ihatthey weie con* sidered as impostors, who preyed on their igno* rant countrymen by a pretended intercourse with evil spirits, or by some other pretences to supernatural powers. Th« idea of rooting out any form of pagan superstition by severity of punish- ment, especially in wholly uninstructed minds^ like that of extirpating Christianity by the fire and the faggot, has long been exploded among the well-informed ; and it has even been est»* blished, that the devilish engine of persecution recoils back on its employers, and disseminates the very principles it would suppress. Surely tfaien it might have been expected, that, if from no other motive, yet that for the purpose of root- ing a pagan superstition out of the minds of the slaves, the aid of Christianity would have been called in, as tho safest species of knowledge ? and it was strange if the Jamaica gentlemen were ignorant of the indubitable fact, that Christianity never failed to chase away these vain terrors of darkness and paganism. No sooner did a Negro become a Christian, than the Obeah-man despaired of bringing him into subjection. And it is well worthy of remark, that when in the outset of our abolition pro- ceedings, His Majesty's Privy Council, among a i . ■: Hi lit J )'- li tt .1 niMdMflr «f ^u«riM mm out to ibr ai i fcmu t W«m- Indte iiUmdtr «oiie6nHflg th« lsriOnKfi«j^ g^t Aonii' befs of the sfaves hid become ChrfstiMM, tr^^ setlted, as att htipiftatioii (sit thcfit tmd^Mtandittgti, the vetyidett of thdr bc^ siupposed to have coftsidered the |»raeti<:6» Of the Obeah-Meto M deser^iTg of tmy serious attentioi>. Surtfly then we thight hare expeicited that te^td for' th6 tetitporal w«ll-betn^ of thef slittM, if Hdt foi^ thdr highest int^reHts, #Ould httve pi^ttipi^d th^tr ewtters to eitdeavouf to htlag thein out 6f iheit present Stat<^ of #eHgiou» darkness^ iinto th6 blefSSed Hjght of Ghri^imiity ? But ^ven S«lf^ ititerigst itself appear^ to lose its- hifluerlcifi ythtiti it is to bd promotad by tMeans of nitt6dvHAtig ChfiStiatitty attfoftg the slates. «*^ ^• * if any thhig Krere waiitiiUg to add the fes« finishing tint to* the dark eolom^ng of this gloomy picturci it would be afibrded by a a slave-ship, that of one hundred and thirty slaves which the ves- sel conveyed, about twenty-five of them, who, as he supposes, had been of free condition', could most of them write a little Arabic. The want, however, of this measure of Utera* ture is- of smdil account : but compare the moral nature of the Afi>icans, while yet livinf^ in their g»PI WI "■ 'ill lJi^ S'- •.---vOTKassw"*'---- H native land, and in all the darkneta and abomtn* ationi of paganiini, with the character univer- sally given of the fame Africans in our West Indian colonies. He will find that the Ne- groes, who while yet in Africa were represented to be industrious, generous, eminent for truth, seldom chargeable with licentiousness, distin- guished for their domestic afiections, and ca- pable at times of acts of heroic magnanimity, are described as being in the West Indies the very opposite in all particulars; selfish, indo- lent, deceitful, ungrateful, -—and above all, in whatever respects the intercourse between the sexes, incurably licentious. \ And now, without a farther or more parti- cular dePbeation of the slavery of the British colonies, what a system do we behold ! ! Is it too much to affirm, that there never was, cer- tainly never before in a Christian, country, a mass of such aggravated enormities ? >\f.f That such a system should so long have been suffered to exist in any part of the British Empire will appear, to our posterity, almost incredible. It had, indeed, been less surprising, if its seat had been in regions, like those of Hindostan, for in- stance, where a vast population had come into our hands in all the full-blown enormity of heathen institutions; where the bloody superstitions, and the unnatural cruelties and immoralities of pa- ganism, had established themselves in entire au- thority, and had produced their natural effects in the depravity and moral degradation of the spe- yo CO th. «a 96 cies) though even in audi a com m that, oar exouie would hold <^ood no longer than for th« period which might be necessary for refbrming the native abuses by those mild and reasonable means which alone are acknowledged to be ju*t in principle, or practically efibctual to their pur- pose* But that in communities formed from their very origin by a Christian people, and in colonies containing no Pagan inhabitants but thpse whom we ourselves have compulsorily brought into it,«>^ inhabitants too, who, from all the circumstances of their case, had the longest possible claims on ufl, both for the reparation of their wrongs, and the relief of their miseries, -« such a system should have been continued for two centuries, and by a people who may, nevertheless, I trust, be affirmed to be the most moral and humane of nations, is one of those anomalies which, if it does not stagger the belief, will, at least, excite the astonishment of future ages. But it may naturally and perhaps not unfairly be asked of the abolitionists — You professed to be w«ll acquainted with the state of things in the West Indies when you moved for the abolition of the Slave Trade — if -you then thought the system to be at all such as you now state it to be, how could you rest contented with restricting your efforts to the abolition of the traffic in slaves, contrary, as you confess, to the wishes and even the endeavours of many fxiends of your great cause, and of some even of its enemies ? It is true, that the evilaof the West Indiai) r, r i ; C"B5iHE;|L«l««.i| lA' J^W* •! 34 system had not passed unnoticed ; and we would gladly have brought forward a plan for ameli- orating the condition of the Negroes, but that the effort was beyond our strength. We found the adversaries of the aboHtion far too numerous and too powerful for us, and we were perfectly sure that we should greatly add to their number and vehemence by striking also at the system of, slavery. But farther I will frankly confess, that we greatly deceived ourselves by expecting much more benefit to the plantation Negroes from the abolition of the Slave Trade than has actually resulted from that measure. We always relied . much on its efficiency in preparing the way. for a general emancipation of the slaves : for let it be remembered, that, from the very first, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Lord GrenviUe, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Grey, and all the rest of the earliest abolitionists, declared that the extinction of slavery was our great and ultimate object ; and we trusted, that by compelling the planters to depend wholly on native increase for the sup- ply of their gangs, they would be forced to im- prove the condition of their slaves, to increase their food, to lessen their labour, to introduce taskrwork, to abolish the driving system, tpge- ther with degrading and indecent punishments, to attach the slaves to the soil, and, with proper qualifications, to admit their testimony as wit- nesses — a r.ecessary step to all protection by law ; above all, to attend to their religious and moral improvement, and to one of the grand ss peculiarities of Christianity, the marriage insti- tution. By the salutary operation of these various improvements, the slaves would have become qualified for the enjoyment of liberty ; and preparation would have been made for that happy day, when the yoke should be taken off for ever, when the blessed transmutation should take place of a degraded slave popula- tion into a free and industrious peasantry.* -# * It is the more necessary to state that the views of the abolitionists were always directed towards the extinction of slavery, after preparing the black population for tlie enjoyment of it; because, from some statements which were made in the Register^bill controversy, we may expect that our opponents will renew the charge they then brought against us, that we had originally disclaimed all views of emancipating the slaves actually in the islands, confining ourselves exclusively to the prohibition of all future im- portations of Negroes. Our explanation is clear and short. Our opponents imputed to us that our real intention was, ittttnediateli/, to emancipate the slave population of the Colonies : they were aware that there were many who felt themselves hound by the most urgent principles of jus- tice and humanity at once to put an end to a system of crimes, which was so falsely called a trade in Negroes, who yet would oppose all endeavours to emancipate the slaves without those previous and preparatory measures that would be requisite for enabling them to render the acquisition of liberty either safe for their owners or beneficial to them- selves. We, in consequence, declared, that although we certainly did look forward ultimately to the emancipation of the slaves, yet that the object we were then pursuing was only the abolition of the Slave Trade, of which it was one grand recommendation, that by stopping the further influx of un« civilised Africans, and by rendering the planters sensible that they must in future depend en the native increase for D 2 1 1 86 We were too sanguine in our hopes as to the effects of the abolition in our colonies ; we judged too favourably of human nature ; we thought too well of the colonial assemblies ; we did not allow weight enough to the effects of rooted prejudice and inveterate habits— to ab- senteeship) a vice which, taken in its whole extent, is perhaps one of the most injurious of the whole system ; to the distressed finances of the planters ; and, above all, to the effects of the extreme degradation of the Negro slaves, and to the long and entire neglect of Christianity among them, with all its attendant blessings. True it is, that from the want of effectual Re- gister acts, the experiment has not been fairly tried ; as the abolition is in consequence known to be a law that may easily be evaded. For, \-f keeping up their slave population, it would tend powerfully to prepare the way for the great and happy change of slave into free labourers. Our adversaries, however, continuing artfully to confound abolition and emancipation, our efforts were often employed in distinguishing between the two, and in distinctly and fully explaining our real meaning; nor am I conscious of any occasion, on which we disclaimed the intention of emancipation, without accompanying the dis- claimer with the clear explanation that it was immediate, not ultimate emancipation, which we disclaimed. Not to men- tion declarations without number of our real meaning, vari- ous illustrations might be referred to of the chief speakers in those debates, which would prove that the emancipation of the daves was the ultimate, though not the immediate object, of all those who took the lead as advocates for the abolition oftheSUnreTfttdt* 1: ,. . 37 ^; \-f let it be ever borne in mind, that the ground of our persuasion was, that the absolute pro- hibition of all future importation of slaves into the coionies, provided means were adopted for insuring its permanent e:xecution, would exercise a sort of moral compulsion over the minds of the planters, and even of their managers and overseers, and induce them, for the neces- sary end of maintaining the black population, to adopt effectual measures for reforming the principal abuses of the system : but it is mani- fest, that such compulsion could not arise from a law which they had power to elude at plea- sure. I am willing, however, for my own part, to admit that this foundation-stone of our hopes may have rested on sandy ground ; for what has since passed has proved to me how little pru- dence and foresight can eflPect in opposition to the stubborn prejudices, and strong passions, and inveterate habits that prevail in our West Indian assemblies. With one single exception in fa- vour of the free coloured people in Jamaica, the admission of their evidence, which, how- ever, only placed them in the situation which they had dways before occupied in most of our other islands, I know not any vice of the system that has been rooted out, any material improvement that has been adopted. Not only the abuses which had been pointed out by the abolitionists are still existing in all their original force, but some of those r. forms which had been urged on the colonial legisla- •il •SMMMapi 38 tures by their warmest iriends, and mast ap-^ proved advocates, remain to this hour unadopted iu every if^land. Mr. B. Edwards, for instance, near thirty years ago, in his History of the West Indies, recommended the introduction, wherever practicable, of the system of task-work, accom- panied of course with a law for securing to the slave his little peculium. He recommended also, though with less confidence, a plan for in- stituting among the slaves a sort of juries for the trial of petty offences — a measure which, he added, he had heard had been tried successfully in two instances in Jamaica, and which a hu- mane proprietor of Barbadoes, the late Mr. Steele, introduced, and for many years maintained with great advantage on his own estate. Another measure, which, as he truly stated, was of less doubtful efficacy, was strongly enforced by him ; namely, the duty of rendering the Sabbath a day oft :ist and religious improvement, by suppressing the Sunday markets, which he justly declared to be a disgrace to a Christian country. But above all the rest, he pressed the reform of what he represented the greatest of all the Negro's grievances, and which he afterwards brought to the notice of the British Parliament. This was the liability of the slaves to be sold by creditors, under executions for the payment of debts. This grievance ^iC alleged to be upheld and confirmed, though not originally created, by a British Act of Parliament, 5 Geo. 2. cap. 7m which, he con- tended, it was necessary to repeal, in order to 7 >r«/^ > ^1^; ' 39 enable the colonial legislatures to do away with the practice altogether. He declared it to be a grievance, remorseless and tyrannical in its prin- ciple, and dreadful in its effects; a grievance too, which it could not be urged occurred but seldom. " Unhappily," he added, " it occurs every day ; and, under the present system, will continue to occur, so long as men shall continue to be unfortunate. Let this statute then," said he, " be totally repealed. Let the Negroes be attached to the land, and sold with it." He even arraigned the abolitionists as eminently criminal for not having solicited the repeal of that " exie- crable statute," as he termed it, though of its operation and even existence nineteen-twentieths of them perhaps were utterly ignorjint. With no little pomp and circumstance did this gen- tleman introduce and carry through Parliament, an act for repealing the statute complained of; and he had the cordial and unanimous support of all the abolitionists. This measure seemed to pledge the assemblies in the most effectual man- ner to follow up the principle of the repeal- ing act, by repealing also their own laws which supported, and had, in f^ct, first introduced the cruel practice : and this experirtient on their hu- manity was tried, it must be admitted, under the most favourable circumstances ; for Mr. B. Ed- wards's proposal of attaching the slAves to the land was strongly recommended to their adoption by the Duke of Portland, then secretary of state for the colonies, a nobleman well known to be i^Ei ■^■•wpwjjlJBW^fP^IWiiWWi^-.- , 40 peculiarly acceptable to them, in a circular letter to the Governor. Yet of all our colonial legis. latures, then thirteen in number, not one has in any degree reformed the grievance in ques- tign, much less, followed the suggestion of Mr. Edwards, by attaching the slaves to the planta- tions* The House of Assembly of Jamaica con- temptuously declined giving any answer at all to the Qovemor's message upon the subject ; and the slaves are still everywhere subject to tliat « remorseless and tyrannical grievance" which above three«and-twenty years ago was so feel- ingly denounced to, and condemned by, the British Parliament. Other mitigations of slavery have as long been recommended to the assemblies, even by their own most respected advocates in this coun- try ; but not one has jeen effectually adopted. The laws which the various legislatures have passed for such purposes, still precisely an- swer the description given by Mr. Burke in his letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas, in 179^, f such colonial statutes: ** I have seen," said he, after the passing of the celebrated consolidated Slave Laws of Jamaica, and of other islands, " I have seen what has been done l^v the West Indian Assemblies. It is arrant trifling; — they have done little, and what they have done is good for nothing, Jbr U it totally destitute of an executory principle" Taking into consideration all the circumstances that accompanied and followed the enactment 1* i « 41 f of those laws, it is difficult to suppose that they were not passed on the views stated in tl^e memorable letter before noticed of the Governor of Dominica, and which, indeed, seemed to have been virtually recommended to them in the year 1797 by the West Indian committee j as the objects suggested to them by that body were " the joint purposes of opposing the plan of the abolitionists *," (i. e» the abolition of the Slave Trade,) ** and establishing the character of the West Indian body." One grand class of such laws, passed, indeed, at a considerably later period, — the acts of the colonial assemblies for registering the slaves, with a view to prevent illi- cit importation,— are shown, by a report of the African Institution, to be wholly and manifestly inefiectual to their purpose. But the case, in several of the islands, is still more opprobrious ; new laws have been passed, which so far from even exhibiting any show of a wish to alleviate the pressure of the yoke of slavery, have ren- dered it more dreadfully galling, and less toler- able, because even more than before hopeless. The individual manumbsion of slaves by their masters, which has been provided for, with so much sound policy as well as true humanity, by the laws in force in the Spanish colonies, and has there been found productive of such happy ef- fects ; those individual manumissions which. 3 * It is, in the original, ** the plan of Mr. Wilberfbrce.** See papers of 1 804. St. Vincent's, 1. 7^ u <:■ 4S while slavery prevailed here, the English law assi- duously encouraged and promoted, have been cruelly restrained. T^ey were long since, in one or two of our islands, subjected to discouraging regulations ; but were, in most of our colonies, wholly unrestrained till within the last thirty years. Can it be conceived possible, that even since the mitigation of slavery was recom- mended from the throne, in consequence of addresses from Parliament, several of the colo- nial legislatures have for the first time imposed, and others have greatly augmented, the fines to be paid into their treasuries on the enfran- chising of slaves, so that in some colonies they amoimt nearly to an entire prohibition ? Such acts may be truly said to be more unjust in their principle, and more cruel and dangerous in their effects, than almost any other part of the dreadful code of West Indian legislation. The laws of England, ever favourable to manumis- sions, progressively rooted out the curse of sla- very from our t^^tive land ; but it is the opposite and opprobrious tendency of these colonial laws to make the barbarous institution perpetual. -^ 'I press these topics the more earnestly, be- cause there has prevailed among many of our statesmeti, of late years, a most unwarrantable and pernicious disposition to leave all that con- cerns the well-being of the slaves to the colonial legislatures. Surely this is a course manifestly contrary to the clearest obligations of duty. The very relation in which the Negro slaves and <^. «.- ^ T» W I ' I \ ■ 43 the members of the colonial assemblies, which consist wholly of their masters, stand towards each other, is of itself a decisive reason why the imperial legislature ought to consider itself bound to exercise the office of an umpire, or rather of a judge between them, as consti- tuting two parties of conflicting interests and feelings. And this, let it be remembered, not merely because* knowing the frailty of our common nature, and its disposition to abuse ab- solute power, we ought not to deliver the weaker party altogether into the power of the stronger; but because in the present instance there are peculiar objections of great force, some of which have been already noticed. In truth. West Indians must be exempt from the ordinary frailties of human nature, if, living continu- ally with those wretched beings, and witness* ing their extreme degradation and consequent depravity, they could entertain for the Ne- groes, in an unimpaired degree, that equitable consideration and that fellow-feeling, which are due from man to man ; so as to sympathise pro- perly with them in their sufferings and wrongs, or form a just estimate of their claims to per- sonal rights and moral improvement. The fact is, that though the old prejudice, that the Negroes are creatures of an inferior nature, is no longer maintained in terms, there is yet too much reason to fear that a latent impression arising from it still continues prac>- tically to operate in the colonies, and to in- ri I- V -mmmmm n t munu 44 fluence the minds of those who have the goverit- ment of the slaves, in estimating their physical claims* and still more those of their moral nature. The colonists, indeed, and the abolitionists, would differ as to facts, in speaking of the sufficiency of the slave's supply of food, and of his treat- ment in some other particulars. But on what other principle than that of the inferiority of the ■pedes, can it be explained, that, in estimating what is due to the Negroes, all consideration of their moral nature has been altogether lefl out ? When it is undeniable that they have no more power of giving their testimony against any white ruffian by whom they may have been mal- treated, than if they were of the brute creation ; that they are worked like cattle under the whip ; that they are strangers to the institution of marriage, and to all the blessed truths of Christianity i how, but from their supposed in- feriority of nature, could we nevertheless be assured by the colonial legislatures, with the most unhesitating confidence, that whatever de- fects there might formerly have been in their treatment, they are now as well used as can reasonably be desired / If such be indeed their opinion, whether that opinion proceeds from the views here intimated or not, it would still suffice to show the criminality, of our commit- ting to them the destiny of the slaves. For let it be observed, there is not in this instance any difference as to the facts of the case ', nor do the colonists affirm what we deny, as to the moral W »> ,,* I r ^ 4*-/ ^ « -15 degradation of the slaves. Both parties, for instance, agree that promiscuous intercourse be- tween the sexes, and Pagan darkness, are nearly universal among them ; and yet the colonists con- tend that the slaves are as well treated and go- verned as they need to be. Can then the members of the British Parliament conscientiously devolve the duty of establishing such religious end moral reforms, as I trust it must be the universal wish of every member of the empire to introduce among the Negroes, upon those, who, to say no- thing of the extremity of personal degradation, consider marriage and Christianity as unworthy of their regard, in estimating the condition of their fellow creatures ? .^- - •• Indeed, the West Indians, in the warmth of argument, have gone still farther, and have etven distinctly told us, again and again, and I am shocked to say that some of their partizans in this country have re-echoed the assertion, that these poor degraded beings, the Negro slaves, are as well or even better off than our British peasan- try, — a proposition so monstrous, that nothing can possibly exhibit in a stronger light the ex- treme force of the prejudices which must exist in the minds of its assertors. A Briton to com- pare the state of a West Indian slave with that of an English freeman, and to give the former the preference ! It is to imply an utter insensi- bility of the native feelings and moral dignity of man, no less than of the rights of English- men ! ! I will not condescend to argue thisques- j; ' ■ W I 1 I I II it t ( I 46 tion, as I might, on the ground of comparative feeding and clothing, and lodging, and medical attendance. Are these the only claims? are these the chief privileges of a rational and immortal being ? Is the consciousness of personal inde- pendence nothing ? are self-possession and self- government nothing ? Is it of no account that our persons are inviolate by any private authority, and that the whip is placed only in the hands of the public executioner ) Is it of no value that we have the power of pursuing the occupation and the habits of life which we prefer ; that we have the prospect, or at least the hope,of improving our condition, and of rising, as we have seen others rise, from poverty and obscurity to comfort, and opulence, and distinction ? Again, are all the charities of the heart, which arise out of the do- mestic relations, to be considered as nothing ; and, I may add, all their security too among men who are free agents, and not vendible chattels, liable continually to be torn from their dearest connections, and sent into a perpetual exile? Are husband and wife, parent and child, terms of no meaning ? Are willing services, or grate- ful returns for voluntary kindnesses, nothing ? But, above all, is Christianity so little esteemed among us, that we are to account as of no value the hope, " full of immortality," the light of hea- venly truth, and all the consolations and sup- ports by which religion cheers the hearts and elevates the principles, and dignifies the conduct of multitudes of our labouring classes in this Y \ / i I ! ' ■< v/ i free and enlightened country ? Is it nothing to be taught that all human distinctions will soon be at an end ; that all the labours and sorrows of poverty and hardship will soon exi t no more ; and to know, on the express autlu i ity of Scrip- ture, that the lower classes, instead of being an inferior order in the creation, are even the pre- ferable objects of the love of the Almighty ? But such wretched sophisms as insult the un- derstandings of mankind, are sometimes best answered by an appeal to their feelings. Let me therefore ask, is there, in the whole of the three kingdoms, a parent or a husband so sordid and insensible that any sum, which the richest West Indian proprietor could offer him, would be deemed a compensation for his suffering his wife or his daughter to be subjected to the brutal outrage of the cart- whip — to the savage lust of the driver —to the indecent, and degrading, and merciless punishment ut a West Indian whip- ping ? If there were one so dead, I say not to every liberal, but to every natural feeling, as that money could purchase of him such con- cessions, such a wretch, and he alone, would be capable of the farther sacrifices necessary for degrading an English peasant to the condition of a West Indian slave. He might consent to sell the liberty of his own children, and to bar- ter away even the blessings conferred on him- self by that religion which declares to him that his master, no less than himself, has a Master in heaven — a common Creator, who is no re- II !;i I ^ specter of persons, and in whose presence he may weekly stand on the same spiritual level with his superiors in rank, to be reminded of their common origin, common responsibilityt and common day of final and irreversible ac- count. But I will push no farther a comparison which it is painful and humiliating to contemplate : let it however be remembered, that it is to those who have professed insensibility to this odious contrast that the destiny of the poor slaves would be committed, were we to leave them to the disposal of the colonial legislatures. There is another consideration, which, on a moment's reflection, will appear perhaps not less decisive. The advocates for the Negroes declare without reserve, as from the first they declared, that the reforms they wish to introduce are intended, by preparing the slaves for the possession of self-government, for the purpose of gradually and safely doing away slavery altogether, and transmuting the wretched Africans into the condition of free British la- bourers. Now, let it never be forgotten, the West Indian legislatures, and almost all the colonists, with one concurrent voice, declare that the emancipation of the slaves, within any period except that to which an antediluvian might have looked forward, would be their utter ruin. Shall we then devolve the duty of intro- ducing into the West Indian system the moral reforms which, once effected, would render it V ^'^^'i^A'^ni '"il— ■-^••r-'-' H^ 49 manifestly impossible to detain the slave in his^ present degrading bondage, on those who plainly tell«us that his being delivered from dt would be productive of their utter ruin ? Can: they be expected to labour fairly in producing reforms, the ultimate object of which they ' do not merely regard as superfluous, but dread as most per- nicious and destructive? Should we act thus in any parallel instance ? All comparisons on this subject are weak; but suppose that, through a cri- minal inadvertency, we had administered some poisonous substance to a fellow creature, who had a special claim to our ^protection and kindness ; that we had deeply injured bis constitution, and that the comfort of all his future life, or probably his life itself, should depend on his being im- mediately put under a course of the ablest me- dical treatment. Supposing also — surely in such a case no unnatural supposition— -that, we felt the deepest distress of mind from the conscious- ness of the wrong we had done to this poor suf- ferer, and were prompted, alike by conscience and feeling, to use our utmost possible endeavours to restore him to ease and health — should we be satisfied with committing this patient into the hands of some medical practitioner, whom other- wise we might have been disposed to employ, if he were to state to us, contrary to our plain know- ledge of the fact, "The man has taken no poison — his health has sustained no injury— he is already as sound and well as he needs to be, and requires no farther medical care." But we . * - -^C-iiie*' ;t ! I ■ 's-f * f irtay put the case still mord strongly:— Sup« posinj^ there were a declared opposition of inte« rest between the patient and this same medical practitioner, and that the latter conceived that the recovery of the patient Would prove fatal to his own future foituiies^-^ could we then, at honest and rational men, commit the case to his uncoiftrottled management alone ? If we did^ ^fko Would not pronounce our alleged sorrow for the injury We had done, and our earnest wish to repair it, to be no better than hypocritical affectation. ..^^ ; . ' . Let me not be conceived to dwell on this topic with unreasonable pertinacity. In truth, prac* ttcally speaking, the fate of the Negro slaves^ so far at least as a safe and peaceable reform of the system is in question, hinges entirely oii this point. Of this the colonists themselves are well Aware ; and, wise in their generation, they there* fore take their principal stand on the ground of objecting to the interference of the impend legis* lature for the protection of the slaves, though this is an objection which did not even so much as present itself to the inquiring mind of Mr. Burke, when in the year I78O he dreW up his plan for the reformation of the Negro system | or in 1792, when he communicated it to his ma- jesty's ministers. For we cannot suppose that bad it suggested itself to his mind, as an ob*> stacle to the introduction of his plan, he would have left it quite unnoticed. Few, if any, are bold enough to claim for the assemblies an ex- ^ >' t M 61 ^ ^J elusive jurisdiction on these subjects as their right. They only tell us of the delicacy of Par- liamentary interference in such matters of inter- nal legislation. This delicacy, however, was not telt, I repeat it, by Mr. Burke. As little was it felt by Mr. Dundas, the avowed advocate of the Colonies, when, in 179St he brought forward his plan of emancipation. We may therefore certainly conclude, that no such objection oc- curred to that experienced statesman, who, as a niinister of the crown, was called on for great circumspection, especially in regard to measures proposed by hjmself ; but who, like Mr. Burk^ never co » lended to notice any such objection to the ri. which he laid before the House of 'Commons, i^.:^^" .,.:■.-*:•■::, _->-,ui -.'';. ;■,: .1 ';• ' ■- / ^. To persons not conversant with the state of things in the West Indies, it may appear plau- sible to say, that the assemblies and their con- stituents are the most competent, in point of information, tp the important work of reform; and many are apt, perhaps, to be misled by a supposed analogy between the relations of mas- ter and slave in the West Indies, and those of the owner or occupier of land and his labourers in this country. But there is in fact no just analogy between them ; nor are the colonial le- gislatures composed of such men as the West Indian proprietors whom we are accustomed to see in this country ; many of whom are per- sonally strangers to their estates, and to the crimes and miseries of the system by which they E 2 59 ■ M ii are governed. Nor is the moral state of the whites resident in the AVest Indies, less differ- ent from tt< of the corresponding classes of our countrymen in their native land. It has been most truly remarked by Mr. Brougham, in his able work on colonial policy, that the agriculture of the West Indies has always been of a nature nearly allied to commercial adven- ture J and the spirit of advent' re, as he justly ob- serves, is, in such circumstances, unfavourable to morals and to manners. Mr. B. means of course, as the context shews, not such i:ommer- cial enterprise as belongs to the mercantile cha- racter in its proper element, but that of which man is the subject, in the gaming agricultural speculations of a sugar colony. He means, that it gives none of the proper virtues of the indus- trious European merchant, and still less of those steady local attachments which belong to the landed proprietor here, and make him the natu- ral patron of the labouring class, settled on his he- reditary property. " The object of a West India resident speculator," he observes, " is not to live, but to gain ; not to enjoy, but to save ; not to sub- sist in the colonies, but to prepare for shining In the mother country." This I am well aware will be an offensive, as I am sure it is to me a painful topic ; but it ought not on that account to be left out of view j and any one who wishes to form a just notion of the effec^.s of these causes will find them stated in the work above-men- tioned, with the accustomed force of that very /.> powerful writer. • Even in the French islands, where there have been always far more resident proprietors than in our own, the same cause:s are stated by Mr. Malonet, himself a colonist, to operate powerfully, and to produce in a con- siderable degree similar bad effects. < . And is it to societies consisting of such ele- nionts as these, that a humane and enlightened legislature can conscientiously delegate its duties >' * Mt. Brougham must be understood to intend to state only ..the tendency aqd general effects of the causes he has been Anumeratmg. When individuals manifest that they are ex- ceptions to the rule, it is so much the more to their honour. ** A colony," he remarks, " composed of such adventurers, is .peopled by a race of men all hastening to grow rich, and eager to acquire wealth for the gratification of avarice or yoluptuousness." "The continuance of the members in this society is as short as possible." ** What," they may be supposed to say to themselves, " what, though our corduct is incorrect, and our manners dissolute ? We shall accom- modate them lo those of our European countrymen when we return." " Such I fear is the natural language of men in those circumstances. But their manners are affectt^d also by other peculiarities in their situation. The want of < mo- dest female society, the general case on the plantations re- mote from the towns, while it brutalizes the mind :id man* ners of men, necessarily deprives them of all the virtuous pleasures of domestic life, and frees them from those re- straints which the presence of a family always imposes on (he conduct of the most profligate men. The witnesses of the planters' actions are the companions of hi» debaucheries, or the wretched beings who tremble at his nod, while they minister to the indulgence of his brutal appetite; and impose no more check upon his excesses than if they winted that faculty of speech which almost alone distinguishes them from the beasts that surround then." ; ' i .1 •"■■!■ I')..- 1 .1-1. ♦ T f coloured race are naturally tt^e most hostije to them, and the most. t?nacio|ip of those com- plexional privileges which constitute their own social elevation. The voice, therefcnre, of the populace in the West Indies, or what may be called the cry of the mob, is always adverse to the humane and liberal principles by which the slavery of the blacks should be mitigated, and by which they should be gradually prepared for the enjoyment of freedom. "^- These considerations are of no trifling mo- ment; and they may be, in some measure, ilhis* trated by some transactions which took place not long ago in the largest, except Jamaica, _ *^ .—. -^ -»" 66 [4^ and the longieet settled of all our colonies, the island of Barbadoes ; though there are in that co- lony more resident proprietors than in lany other, in proportion to the whole population. The Acts I here rllude to may have the more weight, because they are not Kable to the objection, which iias been sometimer. wgied against the abolitionists when they have quoted law« and transactions of an old date, that they formed an unfair test of the opinions and feelings of the present generation ; for they took place so recently as the latter part of 1804. It had long been a repi^aeh to Barbadoes, that the murder of a slave b" ^'s owner, instead of being a capital crime, as in most of our other West Indian colonies, was. in that colony, pu- nishable only by a fine of 15/.* Lord Seaforth, the governor, therefol^, himself n West Indian proprietor, wishing to wipe off the blot, sent a message, in the common form, to the house at' assembly, recommending that an act should be passed to make the murder of a slave a capital * The ,murder of another man's slave was punished more sererely, the penalty being then 25/. to be paid to the public treasury, and double the slaves value to the ovner. But to subject the criminid to any punishment, |he murder was to have been cooi^ted " of wantonness, or only of bloody mindedness pr cruel intention:" and lest there should be any disposition to visit the crime too severdy, it was specially enacted, that " if any Negro or other slave under punishment by his master or his order, for ranning away, or any athfr crimes or tHwhrneanorg towardt his said ,mastert unfortunately shall su^r. i^, lyb or membpr, which seldom happens t no persons whatsoever shall be liable to any fine ther^ore*' i I. v\. •• > ii.t'lI'M ^fmgf i«W | I H pil I w^ ' K -<] 36 felony, Tbece seems every reason to believe that .the council, or colonial house of lords, would gladly have assented to the -proposition. But strange as it may appear to those who are .unacquainted with West Indian prejudices, not- .witbstanding the time and manner in which the proposition was brought forward, the house of assembly absolutely refused tu make the .alteration. If the bare statement of this fact must shock every liberal mind, how much will the shock be increased, when it is known under what circumstances it was that this refusal took .place. For it had happened very recently, that several most wanton and atrocious murders had been committed on slaves ; and some of them accompanied with circumstances -of the most horrid and disgusting bai'barity. Ix>rd Seaforth felt all the horror likely to be produced by such incidents in a generous and feeling mind* He writes thus to ]Liord Camden, then the Secretary of State for the Colonies, " I inclose the At- torney igeneral's letter to me on the subject of the Negroes so most wantonly murdered. I am sorry to. say, several other instances qf the same barbarity have occurred, with which I have not troubled your Lordship, as I only wished to make you acquainted with the subject in ge- neral.** It is due to. Mr. Beccles, the Attorney- general, and to Mr. Coulthurst, the Advocate- general, to state, that they also felt and expressed themselves on the occasion just as persons in } rf n ^IRPi k > %7 the same rank of life wouH have done in this country. Lord Seaforth also thus described the official papers he transmitted, as to the murders he had mentioned in some former letters, ** they are selected from a great number, among which there is not one in contradiction of the horrible facts. The truth is, that nothing has given me more trouble to get to the bottom of, than this business, so horribly absurd are the pryudkes qf the people, Ho*vever, a great part of my ob- ject is answered by the alarm my interference has excited, and the attention , it has called to the business. Bills are already proposed to make murder felony in both the council and the assembly, but I fear they will be thrown out for the present in the assembly : the coun- cil are unanimous on the side of humr^nity. * Lord Seaforth's prediction was but too fully \ -I * The letter from the Attorney-general of Barbadoes to Lord Seaforth throws so much light on the popular feel- ing of the lower class of white men in Barbadoes, that it ought not to be suppressed, although it is a humi- liating and disgusting recital : — " Extract of a letter from the Attorney-general of Barbadoes to the Governor of the Island : — "A Mr. — — — — , the manager of a plant- ation in the neighbourhood, had some months befwe pur- chased an African lad, who was much attached to his per- son, and slept in a passage contiguous to his chamber. On Sunday night there was an alarm of fire in the plantation, which induced Mr. to go out hastily, and th ^ -next morning he missed the lad, who he supposed intended to follow him in the night, and had mistaken his way. He sent tc his neighbours, and to Mr. C. among the rest, to inform ...ii^mthat his African lad had accidentally strayed from him ; J)V <^i>m 8 P i I » Hi ' 'X' I! verified ; •— the assembly thic w out the bill, and the law against wilful murder remained in its pristine state. ■ ■ ■ , ^. — . ■ ■ I -I .■■■Mil- ^1 !»»» ■ ■ , , that he could not speak a word of EngKih, and that potiibly he might be found breaking canei , or taking lomething eUe for hi* support ; in which caae, he requested that they would not injure him, but return him, and he, Mr. ' ' himaelf, • would ; ~y any damage he might have committed. A day or two after the owner of the boy was informed (hat Mr. C. and H. had killed a Negro in a neighbouring gully, and buried him there. He went to Mr. C. to inquire into the truth of the report, and intended to have the grave opened, to see whether it was his African lad. Mr. C, told him, a Negro had been killed and buried ihere ; but assured him it toat not his, for h» knew him very voell, and he need not be at the trouble of opening the grave. Upon this the owner went away Motived* But receiving further information, which lefl no doubt upon his mind that it was his Negro, he returned, and opened the grave, and found it to be so. I was his leading counsel, and the facts stated in my brief were as follows: ' That C. and H. being informed that there was a Negro lurk- ing in the gully, went armed with muskets, and took several Negro men with them. The poor African, seeing a parcel of men coming to attack him, was frightened ; he took up a ■tone to defend himself, and retreated into a cleil rock, where they could not easily come at him : they then went for some traib, put it into the crevices of the rook behind him, and set it on fire : after it had burnt so as to scorch the poor fellow, he ran into a pool of water close by ; they sent a Negro to bring him out, and he threw the stone at the Negro ; upon which the two white men fired several times at him with the guns loaded with shot, and the Negroes pelted tiim with stones. He was at length dragged out of the pool in a dying condition, for he had not only received several bruises from the stones, but his breast was so pierced with the shot, that it was like a cullender. The white savages ordered the Negroes to dig a grave, and whilst they were dig- 59 . I should be glad to be able to refer the con- duct of the assembly, in this instance, altogether to the influence of the lower orders over their minds. This, doubtleas, we may hope, had some gi/ig Hf tht poor creature made aigm ^ begging for teater, tMeh wu not given to him, but at toon at the grave woe dug, he mat thrown into it, and covered over ; and there leemt to he tome doubt whether he wat then quite dead. C and H. deny, this ; but the owner auured me that he could prove it by more than one witness ; and I have reason to believe it to be true, because on the day of trial C. and H. did not suffer the cause to come to a hearing, but paid the penaltiea and the costs of suit, which it is not supposed they would have do ne had they been innocent. " I have the honour to be, Ac." The same transaction, with another far more dreadful rour- der, in whieh there was a deliberate ingenuity of cruelty which almost exceeds belief, but of which I will spare my readers the recital, is related, with scarcely any variation as to cir- cumstances, by the Advbcate-general, who, as well as the gentleman of whose estate the criminal was the manager, and who was at the time absent, expressed their most lively indignation against such horrid cruelty. It may be proper to remark, that the story of the poor boy strikingly shews that such protection as the Negro slave occasionally re- ceives from the laws, is too often to be ascribed rather to the master's care of his property, than to any more gene- rous motive. The master, in this case, when he had only reason to believe that a Negro had been killed and buried out 6f the way, and not that it was his own slave, goes away satisfied. Is there a human being who in this country would have so done ? Again, it is a suggestion which the circum* stances of the story enforce on us, that the crowd which was how collected, instead of beingshockedat such batrbarity^were rather abettors of it ; and then we hear the white savages, (as the Attorney-general justly styles them,) order the Negroes who were present to dig a grave for their wretched country- i m ^ share in producing the effect ; though consider- ing that in their circumstances it was peculiarly their duty to set the tone of public judgment and feeling to the bulk of the community, this would not be a very creditable plea. But it is due to truth to remark, that there is no hint to this effect in the papers laid before the House c^ Commons : on the contrary, in the As- sembly's answer, there is an expression of re- sentment against the Governor, and an inti- mation of the danger of interfering between master and slavie. This incident will exhibit to every considerate reader a striking specimen of the state of the public mind In the West Indies, at least so re- cently as 1805, in regard to the African race : and it may serve in some degree to shew the error into which we should fall, by conceiving that the bulk of the white population in our colonies, in estimating the proper conduct to be observed towards the slaves, would think and feel like ourselves. Even in this land of liberty and hu- manity, acts of atrocious cruelty have been per- petrated. We have heard of an apprentice being starved to death by her mistress; and, more re* cently, the British Governor of an African set- tlement caused the death of a soldier by exces- raan. They knew their state too well to refuse ; and accord- ingly, with a promptitude of obedience which, with all our ideas of their sunk and prostrate spirits, must surprise us, they imnedialely executed the order. :,V>^-:'T "■t. ■-■■*« -■••.(,ai^.,*4fc*»#-- ' f-»^*-%4 "■> ^ ' ■•'^'V4.* •*•"• sive punishment. But what was the ei&ct on the public mind ? In both cases it was difBcult to prevent the populace ^om anticipating the execution of the sentence of the law. In Bar- badoes, on the contrary, the proposal to punish such enormities by more than a small fine, was just as unpopular as it would be in this country, to inflict a punishment which should^ be utte\]y disproportionate to the crime— such as hanging a man for petty larceny. Except among the highest and best educated classes, the natur.l sympathy, was reversed j and the most horrible murders, some of them attended with circum- stances too shocking for recital, instead of ex- citing any just commiseration for the Negro race, had actually worked in the opposite di- rection. And is it to assemblies subject to the influence of such popular prejudices as these, and sitting in the bosom of such communities, that we can commit the temporal and eternal in- terests of many hundred thousands of these despised fellow creatures ? '' If this case itself suggests to us a useful dis- trust of the colonial assemblies, in what r^ a' 3S to the Negroes, the sequel of it will not perhaps be less useful in enabling us to judge of their pro- bable conduct, even when they may profess a dis- position to conform to our wishes. W hether it was that the influence of the higher members of the Barbadoes community worked at last upon the minds of the assembly, or that the efl!ect likely to be produced in the English Parliament led f( .4:,^ ■ >.? ..*^,--.--, .-,^-::Jl to a pfa^ge of conduct, so it wf^th^t the as-r sembl/ ultiipately gave way, and it wi^ supposeds . that by the new^ law of Barbadoes, no less than by that of the other islands, the wilful murder of a slave was made a capital offence. Such» indeed, was the statement made ^erwards by ' more than one advocate for the Wcatt Indiansn , in the controversy in 1816, concerning the Registry Bill; and the abolitionists were re ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 5th April, 1816. i 6i I. years been abundantly refuted, not only by authority, but experience. It maybe confi" dently affirmed, that there never was any un- civilised people of whose dispositions we have received a more amiable character than that which is . given of the native Africans by Parke and Golberry, both of whom visited those districts of Africa from which victims for the Slave Trade were furnished; and whose testi- mony in their favour will naturally be admitted with less reserve, because neither of them could be biassed by any wish to discountenance the Slave Trade, they having evidently felt, no de- sire for its abolition. > But it is at Sierra Leone, that long despised and calumniated colony, that the African • cha- racter has been most effectually and experi- mentally vindicated. The first seeds of civiliz- ation which were sown there by the Christian philanthropy of Mr. Granville Sharpe nearly perished from the unkindly soil to which they had been committed, but they were saved from early destruction, and cultured at length suc- cessfully, under the fostering care and indefa- tigable attention of the late excellent Mr. H. Thornton, and by othe. good and able men, who, both at home and in the colony, co-operated with him ; by one living benefactor especially, who will be hereafter venerated as the steady, enlightened, and unwearied, though unosten- tatious friend of Africa. It is at Sierra Leone that the great experiment on human nature has been tried ; and there it has appeared* tliat the poor African barbarians, just rescued from tJie holds of slave-ships, are capable, not merely of being civilized, but of soon enjoying, with ad- vantage, the rights and institutions of British freemen. In truth, to have formed any con- clusions against the Negroes from the expe- rience we had of them in their state of bon- dage, was not less unphilosophical than unjust. It was remarked by M. Dupuis, the British consul at Mogadore, that even the generality of European Christians, afler a long captivity and severe treatment among the Arabs, ap- peared at first exceedingly stupid and insensible. " If," he adds, ** they have been any consi- derable time in slavery, they appear lost to •reason and feeling; their spirits broken, and ^ their faculties sunk in a species of stupor, which I am unable adequately to describe. . They ap- pear degraded even below the Negro slave. .The succession of hardships, without any pro- tecting law to which they can appeal for any alleviation or redress, seems to destroy every spring of exertion or hope in their minds. They appear indifferent to every thing around them ; abject, servile, and brutish." • If the native intelligence and buoyant in- dependence of Britons cannot survive in the dank and baleful climate of personal slavecy, •could it be reasonably expected that tUe poor * See Quarterly Review for January 7. 1816.— Article, Tombtu:t«o. F I i'i I ;i y. t I i Africans, ^mufypttfid by any eonsqiousiiesQ of personal digoity pr mvi\ rigKto, tboiild not yMl4 to tbe malignaot io^uenc^ tQ which they had so long been subjected, aid be ileprewed evm hi^^ low the level of the .^umao species? Put at Sierra Leone, they have resumed the statufe and port of men, and h^^ve acquired, if« an eminent degree, the virtues of the citizen and the sub- ject. Witness the peace, and order, and loyalty which have generally prevailed in this colony, in a remarkable degree ; especially under the present ei^cellent Governor, Sir Charles Ma- carthy. Still more, these recent savages, having become tb^ subjects of reli^ous anil moral cul- ture, have manifested the greatest willingness to receive instruction, and made a practical profi- ciency in Christianity, such as might put Ku- ropeans to the blush. Not only have they learned with fiuality the principles of the Chris- tian faith I but they have shewn, by their mutual kindnesses, and by the attachment and gratitude to their worthy pastors and superintendents, that they have derived from their knowledge of Christianity its moral and practical fruits. The same testimony as to the progress oi' the Negro children, in common school learning, has been given by aU the meters who have instructed them in the Island of Hayti ; and the mission- suies, in our different West Indian islands, tml^fyt ^i^ oim cooyeBti the gv»litude and at- tachment which the West ^difm, no less than H l-V- '.% f A the Sierra Leone Negroes Ibel to tiioee mha oen- deseend to become th^ teachers, ■^^bi^■m^'^i•n ^ Again, the impression so assiduouslj attempted heretofore to be made> that the hidolenee of the Negro race was utterly incurable, and that without the driving whip they never would willingly engage in agricultural labour, has been shewn to be utterly without foundation. Mr. Parke relates, that the Africans, when prompted by any adequate motives, would work diligently and perseveringly both in ag^cultural and manufacturing labours. And there is on the African coast a whole nation of the most muscular men and the hardiest labourers, who, from their known industry, are hired both for government service, and by the European traders, as workmen, both on ship-board and on shore. .'i^5i^m.;^«fTi*J«^i^>*jiU0\ -w "tior have instances c« a similar kind been wanting even In the West Indies, whenever circumst!&aces have been at all favourable to voluntary industiy. I^nce the dissolution o€ the black corps, (a measure which the abo- litionists are scarcely, I £ear, excusable for not having opposed) though prompted to acquiesce in it by unwillingness to thwart, when not in- dispensably necessary, the prejudices of the colonists) many of the disbanded soldiers have maintained themselves b;^ their own agricultural labours, and have manifested a- degree of in- dustry" that ought to have silenced fbr ever all imputations on the diligence of their race. p « (' 1^ ■iiT-ii}.'.J«-..-.i-|.;.-f.f^- ■I .But another still more.stnking instance has been lately afforded in Trinidad. There many hun- dreds of Americaij Negroes, at the close of the late unhappy war with the United States, were, by the humane policy of Sir Ralph Woodford* received into Trinidad, to the no sraali alarm of the planters. These W4:!re slaves enfranchised by desertion, yet instead of beroming a, imiaanco to the community by idleness and dissolute manners, ir prejudice loudly foretold, they have maintained thewL'clves well, in various ways, by their own industry and prudence. Many of them have worked as hired labourers for the planters with »o much diligence and good con- duct, that they are now universally regarded is a valuable acquisition to the colony ; and it is supposed, that a large addition to their number would be very gladly received. Are all these important lessons to be read to us without producing any influence on our minds ? Ought they not to enforce on us, as by a voice from heaven, that we have been most cruelly and inexcusably degraiing, to the level of brutes, those whom the Almighty had made capable of enjoying our own civil blessings in this world, not less clearly than he has fitted them to be heirs of our common immortality ? But while we are loudly called on by justice and humanity to take measures without delay for improving the condition of our West Indian slaves, self-interest also inculcates the same duty, and with full as clear a voice. It is a grefit .-{ thbugh common error, that notwithstanding we muBt» on religious and moral grounds, condemn the West Indian system, yet, that in a worldly view, it has been eminently gainful both to indi« viduals and to the community at large. On the contrary, I believe it might be proved to any inquiring and unprejudiced mind, that taking in all considerations of political economy, and looking to the lamentable waste of human life among our soldiers and seamen, raised and recruited at a great expence, as well as to the more direct pecuniary charge of protecting the sugar colonies, no system of civil polity was ever maintained at a greater price, or was less truly profitable either to individuals or to the community, than that of our West Indian settlements. Indeed, it would have been a strange exception to all those established prin- ciples which Divine Providence has ordained for the moral benefit of the world, if national and personal prosperity were generally and per- manently to be found to arise from injustice and oppression. There may be individual instances of great fortunes amassed by every species of wrong doing. A course, ruinous in the long run, may, to an individual, or for a time, appear eminently profitable ; nevertheless, it is unques

- that the basis and selfish, thovrgh plausible views, which formerly prevailed so widely among statesmen, and taught them' to believe that the prosperity and elevation of their country would be best promoted by the impoverishment and depression of its neigh- hours, were quite fallacious ; and when we have now learned the opposite and beneficent lesson, -— that every nation is, in fact, benefited by the growing affluence of others, and that all are thus interested in the well-being and improvement of aik At such an enlightened period as this, when commerce herself adopts the principles of true morality, and becomes liberal and benevolent, will* it be believed that the Almighty has ren- dered the depression and misery of the culti- vators of the soil in our West Indian colonies necessary) or even conducive, to their prosperity and safety? No, surely I The oppression of these injured fellow-creatures, however it may be profitable in a few instances, can never be generally politic ; and in the main, and ulti- mately, the comfort of the labourer, and the well-being of those who have to enjoy the fruits of his labour, will be found to be coincident. As for the apprehensions of ruin, expressed by the West Indians, from the instruction and moral improvement of their slaves, or from the interference of the Imperial Legislature, we htrb been tmight by experience in the Slave TMt cotftrovetsy, thit thAif appMh^SAoni ate Aot lilWays rM&6nabl£, either in degree, or in the dbj^te to which tht/ are dir^t^d; How confidently did all thfif Slave Traders prei diet th«ir own ruii^, to^thef wkh that of tb4 West Indies, and alilo of the town of Liverpool, from the regulations of the bill for limiting th^ number of slaves to be taken in ship§ df givert dimensions, while the' trade should be tolerated, and for requiring certikin particulars of food, and medical attetfidance ! y^t^ afkr a feW years, the regulations were allowed^ not merely to be harmless, but to ha\'e be^n positively dud greatly beneficial. The total ruin of the sugar colo^ nies was still mor6 confidently foretold by the planters, the assembliesj and their agents, by their parliamentaify advocates, and the West Indian committee, asl a sUre consequence of abolishing the Slave Trade ; and yet there is not, I believe, an inteUigent West Indiah who will not now confess, that it would have been greatly for the benefit of all our old colonies, if the Slave Trade had been abolished many years sooner ; and that if it had continued some year# longer, it must have completed their destruc*. tion. . Mr. Dundas, in 179^* did not hesitate to ridi-' cule the vain terrors of the parties whose battle he was fighting, and, by their own selection, as their commander-in-chief, though emancipation itself was the object. In illustration of the apprehensions which many entertained of the^ «; I i I consequeioes of chtnging their slaves into i'ree labourers, he stated that some years before, in oertain d'stricts of Scotland, the persons who la* boured in the salt-works and coal-mines were actually slaves ; and that a proposal being made to emancipate them, instantly the owners of the works came forward, declaring that if their vassals were to be raised to the condition of free labourers, they themselves would be utterly ruined ; for that such was the peculiarity, such the unpleasant nature of those species of labours, that, they could not depend on hired service, as in other instances. " But at length," added Mr. Dundas, " the good sense of the age obtained the victory; — The sal ters and colliers were changed into free labourers, and all the terrors of the owners ended in smoke.''' ^ While thus alive to imaginary dangers, or ra- ther while thus assiduous in endeavouring to in- spire alarm in the mother country, to prevent her listening to the claims of justice and mercy, our planters appear blind to the new and real dangers that are accumulating around them. Providence graciously seems to allow them a golden interval, which, duly improved, might prevent the dreadful explosion that may other- wise be expected. But they neglect it with a supineness and insensibility resembling infatu- ation. With a community ol near 800,000 free blacks, many of them accustomed to the use of arms, within sight of the greatest of our West Indian islands ; with a slave population in Cuba. I # T_*W1Mf •».«(j^' V npfh MI'Ato'iW' ■• X.4*, » I ' 7» and Porto Rico, which has been of Istc so ttat'' AiUy augmented with imported Africans^ an* according to all received principles, to, produce^ even in pacific times, and much more in the present aera of transatlantic convulsionst the utmost extremity of danger ; with the example afforded in many of the United States, and in almost all the new republics of South America, where Negro slavery has been recently abolished, — is this a time, are these the circumstances, in which it can be wise rnd safe, if it were even ho- nest and humane, . to keep down in their present state of heathenish and almost brutish degrad- ation, the 800,000 Negroes in our West Indian colonies ? Here, indeed, is danger, if we observe the signs of the times, whether we take our lesson from the history of men, or. form our conclusions from natural reason . or . from the. revealed will of God. But. raise these poor creatures from, their depressed condition, and if they are not yet fit for the enjoyment of British freedom, . ele- vate them at least from the level of the brute creation into that of rational nature — dismiss the. driving whip, and thereby afford place for the developement of the first rudiments of civ'I character — implant . in them . the principle of hope — let free scope be given fpr their in- dustry, and for their rising in life by their per-^ sonal good conduct — give them an interest in defending the community to which they be- longs — teach : them that lesson which Christ :l Si. ■mfftSBo^ — -. I tUMhy CM atone trtly liMutoitfr iHat tlie j^ib •tut life it but « ilMrt in their present state of unexampled darkness and degradation ! i While eAbrtt are making to rescrae our coun- try from this gailt and this reproach, let every 4-J... ■ ►*:: . .-:. -', ^_-, '■ ' 'U) ^ i' ..v,"^ ^»f .,.. 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