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THE 
 
 PROGRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 COLONIAL REFORM; 
 
 BEING A 
 
 &nef iJteta) 
 
 OF THE REAL ADVANCE MADE SINCE MAY \5th, 1823, 
 
 IN CARRYING INTO EFFECT THE 
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS OF HIS MAJESTY, 
 
 THE 
 UNANIMOUS RESOLUTIONS OF PARLIAMENT, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 UNIVERSAL PRAYER OF THE NATION, 
 
 WITH RESPECT TO 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 Drawn from the Papers printed for the House of Commons, prior 
 to the IQth of April, 1826. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY; 
 
 AND SOLD BY 
 HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY; AND J. AND A. ARCH, CORNHILL. 
 
 M.DCCC.XXVI. 
 
6. To remove all the existing obstructions to manumission, and to 
 grant to the Slave the power of redeeming himself, and his wife and 
 children, at a fair appraisement. 
 
 7. To prevent the separation of families by sale, or otherwise. 
 
 8. To prevent the seizure and sale of Slaves detached from the 
 estate or plantation to which they belong. 
 
 9. To restrain generally the power, and to prevent the abuse, of ar- 
 bitrary punishment at the will of the master. 
 
 10. To abolish the degrading corporal punishment of females. 
 
 11. To abolish the use of the driving-whip in the field, either as an 
 emblem of authority, or as a stimulus to labour. 
 
 12. To establish Savings' Banks for the use of the Slaves. 
 Besides these important changes, as to the propriety of which, little 
 
 difference of opinion has appeared to exist in this country, and even 
 the West-Indian body have generally concurred,'* there were two 
 other points which formed the subject of much discussion, and to 
 the expediency of which it was understood that His Majesty's Govern- 
 ment assented. 
 
 One of these respected the question of relieving Negroes and per- 
 sons of colour, from the operation of that unjust principle of Colonial 
 law, which subjects them to be dealt with as Slaves, unless they shall 
 be able to establish, by legal proof, their right to freedom. The other 
 respected the policy of not permitting future governors, or judges, 
 or attorneys-general, or fiscals, or religious instructors, in the Slave 
 Colonies, to be holders of property in Slaves.f 
 
 The views which were taken of the condition of the Slave popula- 
 tion by His Majesty's Ministers, and by the Anti-Slavery Society, may 
 possibly have differed in some respects, and the former may have been 
 led to think more favourably of it than the latter. But, thus far they 
 were agreed ; that that condition was such as to require those sweep- 
 ing reforms which the above propositions involved, and which virtually 
 conceded to the abolitionists the substance of their case. It was clearly 
 impossible to maintain that such reforms were called for in our Slave 
 Colonies, without admitting that the state of society existing there was 
 at war with every acknowledged principle of natural equity, of common 
 humanity, or of British constitutional law, and with the whole spirit 
 
 * Lord Bathurst affirms repeatedly, in his dispatches to the Colonial gover- 
 nors, that the measures he was anxious the legislatures should adopt, had 
 " in almost every instance, been recommended by the principal planters resident 
 in this counti-y." 
 
 t See substance of the debate in the House of Commons, 15th May, 1823. 
 Preface xxvi xxxiii, 
 
and genius of the Christian religion, and that therefore the most prompt 
 remedial measures were called for. 
 
 His Majesty's Government appeared to have felt so strongly the 
 force of this necessary inference from the facts of the case, that a 
 fortnight was not suffered to elapse, after the resolution of the 15th of 
 May, 1 823, had been adopted, before brief instructions were sent to 
 the governors of the different Slave Colonies, to have it forthwith 
 carried into effect ; and these were followed, in a few weeks, by further 
 instructions still more ample and peremptory, to the same purport.* 
 The abolitionists are accused of impatience, because they complain of 
 the delay of three years which has already taken place, and of the 
 much greater delay which, on the present plan of proceeding, is likely 
 to take place before the proposed work of reform shall have even effec- 
 tually commenced. But what was the language of Lord Bathurst, His 
 Majesty's Secretary of State, as early as the 9th of July, 1823, in con- 
 veying to the Colonial governors His Majesty's commands ? " I have 
 most earnestly to impress upon you," says his lordship, in his circular 
 letter of that date, " the NECESSITY of proceeding to carry these im- 
 provements into effect^ not only WITH ALL POSSIBLE DISPATCH, but 
 in the spirit of perfect and cordial co-operation with the efforts of His 
 Majesty s Government" " If you should meet with any serious opposi- 
 tion, you will lose no time in transmitting to me the necessary commu- 
 nication, in order that I may take the EARLIEST opportunity of laying 
 the matter before Parliament, and submitting for their consideration 
 such measures as it may befit to adopt in consequence." 
 
 It may be inferred from the language of this dispatch, as well as 
 from that which His Majesty's Ministers held in parliament, that at this 
 time they were not fully aware of the real state of things in |the West 
 Indies, or of the general temper and feeling of the Colonists; and 
 that they relied on a ready compliance with requisitions so reasonable 
 and moderate in themselves, and so consonant to the universal senti- 
 ment of the British parliament and public. They were in vain warned, 
 by persons who assumed to be better informed upon this point, that 
 they had embarked in a hopeless undertaking; that the Colonists 
 would prove inflexible by any recommendations which could be ad- 
 dressed to them, or, indeed, by any considerations short of authoritative 
 interference, on the part of the Government, and of Parliament ; and 
 that the course it was determined to adopt, must end in delay and 
 disappointment, if not in insurrection, and all its concomitant evils. 
 
 Even in those Colonies in which (having no local legislatures) the 
 King alone possessed the power of framing laws, it was deemed right 
 
 * See for these instructions, the Society's Second Report, Appendix D. 
 
not to issue the requisite orders on the subject, but to submit the pro- 
 priety of adopting the proposed changes to the Colonial authorities, 
 and to await their decision. The result was such as those who knew 
 them best had fully expected. The clamour against improvement was 
 no less loud, the resistance to the Royal recommendations no less un^ 
 qualified, in the Colonies subject to the Crown, than in those possessing 
 assemblies of their own. The universality of this opposition on the 
 part of the Colonists, the occurrence of tumult in Demerara, the fabri- 
 cated plots in Jamaica, and the bullying remonstrances which burst 
 concurrently from every part of the West Indies, appear to have had 
 no inconsiderable effect on the measures of His Majesty's Ministers. 
 Instead of coming down to Parliament to complain that the recommen- 
 dations of His Majesty had not been carried into effect " with all pos- 
 sible dispatch," and " in a spirit of perfect and cordial co-operation 
 with His Majesty's Government," and to ask for further counsel, they 
 determined on delay; in the hope that when the existing irritation had 
 subsided, the Colonists would be induced to act from a sense of what 
 was due to the dignity of the Crown and the authority of Parliament, 
 and to the recognized claims of humanity and justice. The single 
 measure, to which, in the second year, they limited themselves, was to 
 embody their plan of reform in an Order of Council, which should take 
 immediate effect in the island of Trinidad, and be presented to the other 
 Colonies as the model of their legislation. This expedient has proved 
 equally abortive with that which was first resorted to ; and, at the end 
 of three years, the work of reformation which Lord Bathurst so properly 
 and so peremptorily required should be proceeded in with all possible 
 dispatch, has, as yet, scarcely commenced in any of the Colonies, ex- 
 cepting Trinidad ; and even there it was found impossible to induce 
 the Colonists to pursue it in the required spirit of perfect and cordial 
 co-operation with His Majesty's Government. It became necessary 
 to resort to compulsion, as affording the only means of carrying their 
 plans into effect. No discretion was allowed to the local autho- 
 rities. The Order in Council was imposed and enforced by the 
 peremptory mandate of the Sovereign. Trinidad, therefore, is the only 
 Colony where the proposed reforms have been carried into any thing 
 like effect ; and even there they have had to encounter from the first, 
 and they are still encountering the decided and avowed hostility of the 
 whole White Population.* 
 
 As the Trinidad Order has been exhibited to all the Colonies, as the 
 
 * See the Parliamentary Papers, passim, under the head Trinidad ; the So- 
 ciety's Second Report, p. 1 7 ; and the Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. SO. 
 It is the second edition of this last work, which is quoted throughout. 
 
model to which they are to assimilate their Slave codes, it is important 
 exactly to ascertain the degree in which it may be considered to have 
 successfully embodied the various reforms, which were originally contem- 
 plated by Ministers, as the first step in their progress towards the final 
 emancipation of the Slaves. To this end it will be necessary to take in 
 succession the different points mentioned above, and to show how far 
 they have been effectively provided for by the Order in Council. 
 
 1. The Order speaks of some future time, when effectual provision 
 shall be made for the religious instruction of the Slaves ; but it contains 
 itself no regulation whatever either for the instruction of adults, or the 
 education of children. 
 
 2. It is not until the effectual provision, thus indefinitely spoken of, 
 shall have been made, that Sunday markets are to cease; and, mean- 
 while, they are to be held only before ten in the morning of Sunday. 
 The master is at the same time forbidden, except in the case of domes- 
 tics, cattle-keepers, &c. to compel his Slaves to labour for his benefit on 
 the Sunday ; and whatever necessary labour the Slaves may be induced 
 voluntarily to perform for him, on that day, is to be paid for at fixed 
 rates of wages. The Order therefore does not prohibit Sunday 
 markets, except prospectively, and when religious instruction shall have 
 been provided for the Slaves ; and yet it institutes no means whatever 
 of such instruction. It further leaves the very important question of 
 the Sunday labour of the Slave, in his provision grounds, for his own 
 sustenance, wholly untouched. It has been most justly assumed by 
 His Majesty's Ministers, as an undeniable position, that Sunday must 
 be considered as a day belonging to the Slave : and this position has 
 been clearly laid down by Lord Bathurst, in one of his dispatches to 
 the governor of Trinidad. A question had been put to him by the 
 planters of that island, as to their right of compelling lazy and turbu- 
 lent negroes to work their grounds on Sunday, " as had," they say, 
 " been the practice hitherto." His Lordship tells them that they are 
 prohibited from using compulsion in this case, because they are entitled 
 only to six days labour of the Slave in the week ; and out of the profits 
 of these six days, the Slave must be supported. The master, there- 
 fore, can have no possible claim for the services of his Slave on the 
 Sunday, either on his account, or with a view to the sustenance of the 
 Slave. And for the time during the week which he may appropriate 
 to his Slaves for their provision grounds, he can have no claim to com- 
 pensation ; as the arrangement of allowing them land, and sufficient 
 time for cultivating it, is adopted, adds his Lordship, in order to super- 
 sede the necessity of purchasing provisions for them.* 
 
 * See Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 81, 
 
6 
 
 This view of the subject is clear and intelligible ; and the fair infer- 
 ence to be drawn from it is that the Sunday should be given 
 wholly up to the Slave, while, to use Mr. Canning's language, equiva- 
 lent time should be secured to him on other days, for cultivating his 
 provision grounds. But this equivalent time has not been assigned to 
 him in the Trinidad Order in Council. 
 
 It had hitherto been the practice in Trinidad, and indeed in all Colo- 
 nies that pursued the plan, which is there pursued, of making the 
 Slaves support themselves by the cultivation of their provision grounds, 
 to allot the Sunday and a certain portion of time besides, varying from 
 16 to 26 days, for that purpose; the master assuming a right of com- 
 pelling the slave so to employ not only those week-days, but *he Sun- 
 days also; and it being often a part of the ordinary duty of the inferior 
 overseers on plantations to visit the negro grounds on Sunday, in order 
 to ascertain and report which of the Slaves were engaged there, and 
 which were not. What precise number of days, besides Sundays, 
 were allowed to the Slaves in Trinidad, for the purpose of raising their 
 own provisions, is no where specified. Had the Spanish law been 
 adhered to, as it ought to have been, the Slaves would then have had 
 52 week days and 30 holidays, besides the Sunday ; which they might 
 have called their own, andwhich they might have employed in raising 
 food, and in acquiring the means of effecting their own or their children's 
 manumission.* This merciful law, however, has not been enforced under 
 the English government ; and it is believed that the number of week days 
 in the year, allowed to the Slave, has at no time exceeded 26, if it has 
 even amounted to so many. If this apprehension be erroneous, it will 
 be easy to correct it by producing the law of Trinidad on the subject. 
 
 What then is the situation in which the Trinidad Slave is placed by 
 the Order in Council ? The Sunday ceases to be a day of compulsory 
 labour : Lord Bathurst justly affirms the right of the Slave to its ab- 
 solute and undisturbed enjoyment ; and yet no provision whatever is 
 made by this Order for giving him equivalent time in lieu of it. The 
 Slave, it will, perhaps, be said, may still work his ground as formerly 
 on the Sunday. Without doubt he may. But was this the intention 
 of His Majesty's Government, or of Parliament ? Was it not intended, 
 bonaf.de, that the Sabbath should be what its name designates a day 
 of rest, as well as of religious worship, to the Slave? And let the fact 
 be supposed that the clergymen, or missionaries, who visit Trinidad, 
 should succeed in conveying to any considerable number of Slaves 
 proper impressions of the sanctity of the Sunday, and of the duty of 
 devoting it to purposes of religious worship and instruction, would not the 
 
 See for proof the Society's Second Report, Appendix A, p. 72 and 77. 
 
effect necessarily be that such Christian Slaves would at once have the 
 pittance of time applicable to their own purposes, (at least, which they 
 could conscientiously thus apply,) reduced from 78 in the year to 26. 
 Seventy-eight week days in the year, however, is obviously the smallest 
 number which, if the supposition that has been made respecting the 
 practice which had hitherto prevailed in Trinidad be correct, can injustice 
 be appropriated to the Slaves for their own use. They will otherwise be 
 placed in a worse situation than before, as to time for cultivating their 
 grounds. The Order in Council specifies no time which is to be secured 
 to them, but leaves them either to the possession of the number of days, 
 whatever it be, which, in addition to the Sunday they had hitherto 
 been allowed, or to the tender mercies of their master for an increase. 
 
 The continuance of the Sunday market, even till ten o'clock, is, 
 without doubt, greatly to be deplored, whether it be regarded as a volun- 
 tary and unnecessary desecration of that day, by the supreme au- 
 thority of the state, or as a mere question of policy. The Government 
 clearly possessed the power at once to put an end to this immoral 
 and irreligious practice, and no good reason has been assigned for their 
 not putting an end to it. The limitation of the market also to ten 
 o'clock, while it does not save the day from desecration, imposes pe- 
 culiar hardships on the Slaves. Many of them have to travel ten, fif- 
 teen, and twenty miles, with their loads for sale. In what way is it 
 possible for them to attend the market, and to effect their sales, and to 
 make their purchases, before ten o'clock, without sacrificing a night's 
 rest, after a week of labour, in order to reach the Sunday market in due 
 time ? The regulation is therefore a cruel one to the Slaves, if it were 
 possible to observe it ; and if the Sunday markets are still to be con- 
 tinued, it can only be wished that the regulation may not be enforced. 
 
 The reason for this most objectionable prolongation of the practice 
 of Sunday markets, is said to be an apprehension lest, until religious in- 
 struction shall have been provided, the Slaves should abuse the day to 
 purposes of riot and licentiousness. But how is this effect to be obviated 
 by fixing the market on Sunday, and above all by the limitation of that 
 market to ten o'clock ? On the contrary, is not this arrangement more 
 likely than any other to produce the effect which it proposes to avoid ? 
 The slaves are drawn together in great crowds, from distant parts of 
 the country, at an early hour on the morning of Sunday ; and after a 
 fatiguing walk, the length of which they must again retrace before they 
 reach their homes, and with the money obtained by marketing in their 
 pockets, are they not much more likely to be tempted to spend a part 
 of the day idly and dissolutely, and, perhaps, after getting drunk, to 
 unite for purposes of disorder, than if they had been induced, as they 
 would have been had not the market drawn them to town, to remain 
 
8 
 
 quietly at home, to repose themselves after the labours of the week, or 
 to attend to their grounds or to other domestic occupations ? It is an 
 arrangement therefore both impolitic in itself, and most injurious to 
 the slave. 
 
 The abolition of Sunday markets is made, by the Order in Council, 
 to depend on a very vaguely defined, and most dubious contingency ; 
 namely, the making effectual provision for the religious instruction of 
 the Slaves. Until that is provided, much, it is true, may be said for not 
 interfering to prevent their labouring moderately in their gardens, or 
 grounds, on that day ; but no good reason can be assigned for continu- 
 ing on that account the Sunday market. 
 
 It is chiefly, however, when the effect of this part of the Order in 
 Council for Trinidad, upon the conduct and feelings of the other Colo- 
 nies, is contemplated, that its regulations are to be deplored. It is ex- 
 hibited to them as an example ; but they do not find in it the proof of 
 any high regard for the sanctity of the Sabbath ; on the contrary, 
 Sunday markets are, for a time, expressly sanctioned by it. It con- 
 tains no provision for giving to the Slave equivalent time in lieu of Sun- 
 day, though it forbids his compulsory labour, even on his own grounds, 
 on that day. It, moreover, does not contain a single regulation requir- 
 ing or enforcing the religious instruction, or Christian education, of the 
 Slaves, in any degree however limited. To those also who are adverse 
 to the abolition of the Sunday markets, being the great majority of the 
 resident planters, it actually holds out an inducement to abstain from 
 providing that religious instruction, on the existence of which the abolition 
 of them is made to depend. Can it then be any subject of surprise, 
 that with this example before them, only one of the Colonies should 
 have abolished the Sunday market? In the unfortunate laxity of their 
 model, do they not find a sufficient apology, at least, for delay ? 
 Would it not be unreasonable to blame them for not being in advance 
 of the wishes of Government, as those wishes are to be traced in its 
 own acts ? Before improvement in these important respects is to be 
 looked for in any of the Colonies, there must be a revision and correc- 
 tion of those clauses of the Trinidad Order which bear on this sub- 
 ject. Their malign influence on the progress of reform, in the other 
 Colonies, is too plainly visible to be denied. Notwithstanding the ap- 
 pointment of bishops and archdeacons, and additional clergymen, only 
 one Colony, throughout the whole range of the Antilles, has abolished 
 the Sunday market. And, even in the two Colonies, which are the im- 
 mediate residence of the Bishops, no measures have yet been adopted 
 for abolishing it. 
 
 3. The next head, in the list of proposed reforms, is the admission of 
 the evidence of Slaves in courts of justice. When the council of 
 
9 
 
 Trinidad were asked what was the state of the existing law on this point, 
 in that particular colony, they replied, in their minute of the 9th July, 
 1823, that the evidence of Slaves was now received there quantum 
 valeat'; r and to this rule they do not state any exception. Now, if this 
 be a correct account of the matter, and it does not appear to have been 
 disputed, then the condition of the Slave, in respect of his admissibility 
 as a witness, seems to be deteriorated instead of being improved by the 
 Order in Council. For though it be true that the Order in Council has 
 declared that " nothing therein contained shall extend to take away or 
 diminish any power or authority which any court of criminal jurisdiction 
 now hath to admit, in any case, the evidence of persons being in a state 
 of slavery ;" yet it seems difficult to conceive, that the special regulations 
 respecting the admission of the evidence of slaves, introduced into the 
 Order, were intended to have no operation whatever. It is there 
 ordained, that any slave, whom any clergyman, priest, or religious 
 teacher shall certify to understand the nature of an oath, shall be recorded 
 as entitled to give evidence in courts of justice, in all cases civil or cri- 
 minal, excepting in civil suits where the master is concerned, or in trials 
 affecting the life of a white man. Is it not fair to ask, Did these ex- 
 ceptions exist under the old law of Trinidad ? If they did not, then a 
 positive injury is inflicted on the Slave by this (so called) amelioration. 
 But it may be said, that these exceptions were not intended to operate in 
 Trinidad, to the prejudice of the Slaves of that island, whose rights have 
 been reserved by a saving clause in the Order, but were inserted in order 
 to furnish a convenient exemplification of the provisions, on the subject 
 of Slave evidence, which it was desired that the other Colonies should 
 adopt. Even on this ground, each of the proposed exceptions is liable 
 to some formidable objections. 
 
 In the first place, with respect to the non-admissibility of the evidence 
 of Slaves in those civil suits in which their master may happen to be 
 concerned; it is not denied that a Slave may be liable to a strong bias 
 in favour of his master in cases of disputed property between him and 
 third parties. Neither is it denied, that where an action of debt or 
 trespass is brought by a Slave against his master, a species of suit 
 which the Trinidad Order legalizes, the evidence of his fellow Slaves 
 ought to be received with great caution, whether it be for or against the 
 claim. But to shut out that evidence entirely, instead of leaving the 
 question of its competency or credibility to be decided by the proper tri- 
 bunal, seems to be a rule of very dubious import. 
 
 Another of the exceptions, however, is of a still more objectionable 
 nature, namely, that which renders the evidence of Slaves inadmissible 
 in trials affecting the life of a White man. Why, the White man, in par- 
 
 c 
 
10 
 
 ticular, should be protected against the evidence of Slaves is not 
 explained. If it be on the ground of his freedom, or of his proprietor- 
 ship, these are grounds which apply with as much, if not more strength, 
 and especially in Trinidad, to the Brown and to the Black who are free, 
 and who are proprietors of Slaves, than it does to the White class. 
 Throughout the West Indies, the judges and jurors, at present, are all 
 White, and the White class, therefore, possesses, in this very circum- 
 stance, a peculiar guarantee against the evil effects which are to be 
 apprehended from the admission of the evidence of Slaves on the trial of 
 free persons accused of capital offences. If any class of proprietors 
 could be regarded as more endangered than another, by admitting the 
 evidence of Slaves in such cases, it would be the Black and the Brown 
 classes, who are at present wholly excluded, in all the colonies, from a 
 seat either on the bench or in the jury-box. 
 
 But this novel principle of legislation is liable to a still more formi- 
 dable objection. The cruelties, mayhems, mutilations, and murders, 
 which have taken place from time to time in the Slave Colonies, have 
 been chiefly perpetrated by White men. The very strong feeling which 
 has been excited in this country, in favour of the admission of the evi- 
 dence of Slaves, has arisen from an anxious desire and hope of thereby 
 guarding against the recurrence of these evils. The exception in ques- 
 tion puts an extinguisher on that natural and reasonable hope, for it 
 tends to confer impunity on the very parties whom it was desired, by the 
 admission of Slave evidence, to restrain. A White man, under the operation 
 of this exception, might safely murder his Slave, though a hundred or a 
 thousand other Slaves were present. And by the peculiar construction 
 of the Trinidad Order, a temptation seems actually held out to him, (of 
 course undesignedly and through mere inadvertence) to do so in certain 
 supposable cases. If, for example, a White man should be accused of 
 cruelty to a Slave, Slaves may testify against him and convict him. If 
 the same man should be convicted, as he may also be on Slave evidence, 
 of a second offence of the same description, he would be condemned to 
 the forfeiture of all his Slaves, and rendered incapable of ever holding 
 such property, or being entrusted with the management of it. Is it not 
 a possible case, that to avoid this ruinous result, he should be tempted 
 to kill the maimed Slave outright? He would then be secure from con- 
 viction, if no free persons were present, although the whole of the Slave 
 gang should have witnessed the murder. 
 
 It is the more extraordinary that this particular exception should 
 have been admitted into the Trinidad Order, because, in almost every 
 instance where the West India Legislatures have themselves chosen to 
 relax, in any degree, their stern exclusion of the evidence of Slaves, 
 it has included those capital cases in which the Trinidad Order has 
 
11 
 
 rendered their evidence inadmissible. In Tobago, for example, the evi- 
 dence of Slaves has been admitted, against free persons, without excep- 
 tion, in one case and one case only, and that is on their trial for the 
 mayhem or murder of a Slave. In the latest Grenada Act the evidence of 
 Slaves is also admitted against all free persons, but only when they are 
 tried for capital crimes ; and the abortive Bill of the Jamaica Legisla- 
 ture limited the admissibility of Slave evidence to capital offences. The 
 Planters themselves in these islands must have perceived the ground- 
 lessness of those apprehensions which have led the Government to in- 
 troduce so dangerous an exception into the Trinidad Order. 
 
 But there is a third exception, which has not yet been noticed, 
 namely, that which requires the certificate of a clergyman or religious 
 teacher, in order to entitle the Slave to be heard in evidence in any case, 
 civil or criminal. Ought such a certificate to be required? Was it re- 
 quired under the Spanish Slave Code? Was it required in Trinidad 
 under the old law ? Is it now required in Cuba or Porto Rico? Has it 
 ever been required under the operation of the civil law, in the Colonies 
 planted by Holland ? Is it now required of any one of our numerous 
 subjects in Hindostan or in Africa, whatever be the gross and revolting 
 form of idolatry which they practise, or the ignorance in which they are 
 sunk ? What could be more decisive than the language which was 
 held/cluring a late discussion in the House of Commons, by Mr. Peel on 
 this subject? He is reported to have said, that there was one topic 
 above all others, upon which he could not avoid expressing a decided 
 opinion the qualification of Slaves to give evidence in a court of jus- 
 tice. Of that he would say, that he hoped not one year, no, not even a 
 single session would pass by, without the enactment of some regulation 
 on the subject. For, who were the persons to whom that evidence was 
 to be offered? Why, they were the Whites. Could it be said then, 
 that those who were to judge of the value of such evidence were unrea- 
 sonably prejudiced in favour of the Black population? Quite the con- 
 trary. What he wanted was, that the responsibility of rejecting a Black 
 man's evidence should rest, not on the law, but on some known tribunal. 
 Such a measure would be the first step to invest him with those rights 
 which that House considered it right to bestow upon him. And if they 
 were 'resolved to carry their intentions into execution, and raise the 
 Black population to the rank of human beings, he could not understand 
 any reason why they should delay givingeffect to their views, upon this sub- 
 ject, for a single moment. The Slave would be liable to be summoned just 
 in the same manner as an ideot might be in this country; and it would 
 lie with the jury to determine, when he appeared before them, whether 
 his testimony should or should not be believed. For his part, he could 
 not conceive a mind, even the most deeply imbued with West Indian 
 
12 
 
 prejudices, who could see any danger likely to accrue, to the life or pro- 
 perty of the White man, by investing the Slaves with such a privilege. 
 
 Such is in substance the language which Mr. Peel is reported to have 
 held on the 1st of March, 1826. The language is worthy of his enlarged 
 and liberal mind; and it is most ardently to be desired, that the principle 
 which it maintains may form the basis of all future legislation on this 
 subject, whether by the British Parliament, or by the Colonial As- 
 semblies. 
 
 4. The fourth measure of reform proposed to be adopted, was to 
 legalize the marriage of Slaves. This object appears to be effectually 
 accomplished by the Trinidad Order, as far as regards the intermarriage 
 of Slaves with each other but no provision is made for legalizing the 
 intermarriage of Slaves with free persons. 
 
 5. By the Trinidad Order, the Slave is protected in the acquisition, 
 possession, and transmission of property, and is empowered to hold land 
 as well as every other species of property, whether real or personal. 
 This is, without doubt, a most important enactment, and fraught with 
 the most beneficial consequences, provided the equivalent time to 
 which the Slave is entitled, in lieu of the Sunday, is fairly and effectu- 
 ally secured to him ; and provided also his industry is relieved from the 
 cruel restrictions under which the law of Trinidad, in common with the 
 law of every other Slave Colony in the British empire, has placed it. By 
 that law the Slave is prohibited, under severe penalties, from cultivating 
 or selling any of the staple productions of the island, any articles, in 
 short, of exportable produce. It is perfectly obvious, that under the 
 operation of this law, if it is allowed to remain in force, (and Lord 
 Bathurst himself admits it to be now in force*) the new regulation, 
 liberal as it is in its terms, which gives to the Slave the power of hold- 
 ing land and of acquiring other property, is deprived of a great part of 
 its value and efficiency, while a powerful motive to industrious effort, on 
 the part of the Slave, is most unjustly withheld from him. At least, 
 this principle of unqualified exclusion, which is now exercised towards 
 the Slaves, throughout the Colonies, with respect to the liberty of culti- 
 vating or selling any articles of exportable produce, surely might, without 
 prejudice to the interests of their immediate owner, admit of very exten- 
 sive modifications. 
 
 6. The next point respects the removing of all obstructions to manu- 
 mission, and the empowering of the Slave to effect the redemption of 
 himself, and of other members of his family, at a fair appraisement. 
 Upon this vital point, 'the provisions of the Trinidad Order, are, as far as 
 they go, full and effective. They enable the Slave, if he has the 
 
 * See the Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 82. 
 
13 
 
 means of paying the appraised value, to compel the liberation of him- 
 self, of his wife, or of his child. The beneficial effect of this regu- 
 lation, however, would be greatly promoted, if it were combined with 
 that admirable principle of the Spanish Colonial Code, which enables a 
 Slave to purchase his freedom by instalments, and if measures were 
 also at once taken for fixing, by anticipation, the maximum of price, 
 which could be required for the different classes of Slaves, according to 
 their age, sex, and acquirements.* 
 
 7. It was understood that the separation of families by sale, would be 
 entirely prevented by the Trinidad Order.f This separation, however, is 
 there prohibited only in the case of judicial sales. On what principle it 
 is that the power of separating by sale, or otherwise, husband and wife, 
 parents and children, which is denied to courts of justice, should be 
 continued to the private owner, is not very obvious. On the contrary, it 
 seems to be still more imperatively requisite to restrain the exercise of 
 this cruel power, in the case of private individuals, than even in that of 
 courts of justice. The latter are only occasionally called to interfere in 
 such sales. The former enjoy, and may exercise the power at any time, 
 when interest or inclination may prompt them to use it. There is no 
 restraint on their sales or bequests ; and the very threat of a separate 
 sale by the owner may paralyze every exertion of industry in the Slave. 
 
 Neither by the Spanish nor by the Portuguese law can the husband 
 and wife be separated, on any account whatever, except for crime. So 
 jealous is the Spanish law especially, on this point, that it even enacts, 
 (as may be seen in the Cedulaof 31st May, 1789,) that " Slaves are 
 not to be hindered from marrying with the Slaves of other masters ; in 
 which case, if the estates are distant from one another, so that the new 
 married couple, cannot fulfil the object of marriage, the wife shall follow 
 her husband, whose master shall buy her at a fair valuation, (by ap- 
 praisers,) and if the master of the husband does not agree to the 
 purchase, the master of the wife shall have the same facility." The same 
 principle is made to regulate the sale of husband and wife residing on 
 neighbouring estates, but belonging to different owners. 
 
 How far short of these regulations the Trinidad Order falls, which 
 merely forbids the separation of husband and wife and children by ju- 
 dicial sale, it is unnecessary to point out. 
 
 The Trinidad Order further provides, that not only the husband and 
 wife and children, but the reputed husband and wife and children shall 
 
 * See on this subject the Society's Second Report, p. 7779, and a communi- 
 cation from Mr. Kilbee, the British Commissioner at the Havannah, to Mr. 
 Canning, printed in the Parliamentary Paper, respecting the Slave Trade in 
 1825. Mr. Kilbee's Report will be found at the end of the Tract, entitled 
 Negro Slavery, No. XV. 
 
 t See Mr. Canning's Speech on 16th March 1816. 
 
14 
 
 not be separated by judicial sale. This provision seems to render it 
 indispensable, that some subsidiary regulations should be forthwith 
 adopted for ascertaining and recording these relations by repute, and for 
 giving them a legal sanction ; otherwise extreme confusion must, in no 
 long time, necessarily arise in carrying into effect the existing law. Such 
 a measure might, moreover, be rendered eminently useful in putting an 
 easy termination to the unlawful and injurious practice of polygamy in 
 all our Colonies. 
 
 8. The eighth head of reform proposes to prevent the seizure and 
 sale of Slaves detached from the estate or plantation to which they be- 
 long. The Order in Council for Trinidad does not contain any provision 
 to this effect, nor has such been adopted by any of the other Colonies. 
 
 9. The Trinidad Order contains some judicious regulations for restrain- 
 ing the abuse of that arbitrary power of corporal punishment, at the will 
 of the master, which is still left to him. It limits the number of lashes 
 which he can inflict on a male Slave at one time, and for one offence, to 
 twenty-five, and no fresh punishment can be inflicted until former lacera- 
 tions are completely healed. It requires that twenty-four hours should 
 elapse, after an offence has been committed, before it can be punished ' 
 and when punishment is inflicted, it must be in the presence of a com- 
 petent witness, besides the person by whose authority it is inflicted. It 
 further requires that, on all plantations, a record should be kept specify- 
 ing the crime which has been committed, and the kind and extent 
 of punishment which has been inflcted ; this record to be signed 
 by the parties present, and copies of it to be regularly transmitted, 
 certified on oath, to the Governor, and by him to the Secretary of State. 
 The above regulations apply only to punishments which exceed three 
 lashes ; but it is not said how often punishments to that amount may be 
 inflicted, nor is the instrument of punishment defined. 
 
 One of the clauses connected with this subject, which, in the Trinidad 
 Order, is numbered the twenty-first, is extremely important. It pro- 
 vides that if any owner or manager is prosecuted for cruelly and unlaw- 
 fully punishing a Slave, and if the Slave, alleged to be illegally punished, 
 is produced in court with the marks of recent flogging or laceration, and 
 such Slave shall make a consistent statementof the circumstances, then 
 the owner or manager shall be bound to prove either that the punishment 
 was not inflicted by him or with his consent, or that it was a lawful 
 punishment and was lawfully inflicted ; and in default of such proof, 
 shall be adjudged guilty of the offence imputed to him. 
 
 It is one of the evils of the system of Slavery, that the British Govern- 
 ment should thus feel itself compelled to regulate the manner in which 
 private caprice may inflict the torture of the cart whip on the bodies 
 of human beings, without even defining the offence for which it is 
 to be inflicted. It is impossible that a system can long be maintained 
 
15 
 
 which is considered to impose on that Government the painful necessity 
 of placing so tremendous a discretion as that of inflicting on a fellow sub- 
 ject twenty-five lacerations of such an instrument, in the hands of an in- 
 dividual, whatever be that individual's character,who may thus combine 
 in his own person the offices of accuser, jury, and judge, and if he will, 
 executioner also. This is, indeed, a dire necessity, the ground of which 
 ought to be anxiously considered by the Government and Parliament of 
 this country, under a sense of the weighty responsibility which is attached 
 to the rash delegation of such a power. 
 
 But not to dwell on this painful part of the subject, it seems im- 
 portant to remark, before closing the observations on this head, that the 
 record of punishments is confined to plantations. The number of per- 
 sonal Slaves, however, in Trinidad, that is to say, of Slaves not attached 
 to plantations, is considerable. Their owners are exempted from all the 
 controul arising from the necessity of keeping and returning a record of 
 the punishments they inflict, and from the formalities with which, in the 
 case of plantations, those punishments must be accompanied. But is 
 this exemption either expedient or just? Are a third or a fourth part of 
 the Slaves in Trinidad to be thus abandoned to the tender mercies of 
 their owners, without even that degree of protection which this part of the 
 Order in Council affords to the remainder ? Jobbing gangs, the Slaves 
 of mechanics of various classes, and domestics, are ail thus left out of the 
 pale of this beneficial restraint on the arbitrary power of the master, while 
 they are subjected to the immense disadvantage of being more under his 
 eye, and therefore more exposed to the effects of his passion and caprice, 
 than the others. Why should not the infliction of punishment in these 
 cases be taken out of the hands of the master, and placed in the hands of 
 the magistrate? It cannot be deemed right that it should remain on its 
 present footing. 
 
 10. The entire abolition of the degrading and indecent corporal pu- 
 nishment of female Slaves, which is secured by the Trinidad Order iu 
 Council, must be hailed as a great improvement. 
 
 11. The abolition of the driving whip is another most important im- 
 provement. It would be well, however, if we were informed what is the 
 precise substitute now practically adopted for that powerful stimulus, 
 which the Planters of Trinidad have declared to b.e so indispensable as to 
 be, in fact, identified with the very existence of Slavery. It is no ques- 
 tion of idle curiosity to ascertain this point. It would, therefore, 
 confer an essential service on humanity, if those who deny that the 
 Negroes will work from any other motive than coercion would inform 
 the public what are the precise means, which, in the absence of the 
 driving whip, and without the temptation of wages, have procured from 
 the Slaves in Trinidad, during the year 1825, the quantity of labour 
 
16 
 
 which they have yielded to their owners. It would be important to know 
 the whole process of this extraction ; the nature and extent of the task ; 
 the criterion of its fairness ; the penalty annexed to its non-performance ; 
 the advantage accruing from its speedy and correct execution ; the pro- 
 portion which the defaulters bear from day to day to the whole gang-, 
 with various other problems connected with the subject. 
 
 12. The establishment of Savings' Banks, under proper regulations, 
 cannot be too highly applauded. 
 
 On the question of the effect, on the freedom of an individual, of his 
 inability to establish his right to it by evidence, nothing is said in the 
 Order for Trinidad ; nor was it necessary : the registry act which is in 
 force there, has settled that point in favour of freedom. 
 
 The Trinidad Order likewise recognizes the important principle that 
 a man is disqualified for the office of protector and guardian of Slaves 
 by being himself a planter. But while this principle is recognized, it 
 is much to be regretted that its application should have been so limited 
 as to divest it of much of its utility. It is true, that the protector and 
 guardian of Slaves in Trinidad is prohibited from owning, or from being 
 concerned in managing, a plantation cultivated by Slaves, in that 
 island; but then he is not debarred from being the owner of plantations, 
 and plantation Slaves, in every other Colony in the Antilles. He may 
 be more deeply interested, in the maintenance of the Slave system with 
 all its evils, than any planter in the island ; and yet merely because his 
 estates are not locally situated within its limits, they constitute no dis- 
 qualification for an office, which, of all others, requires to be filled by 
 an impartial and disinterested functionary. Nor this is all. Though 
 he may not possess a plantation, worked by Slaves, in Trinidad itself, 
 he may, nevertheless, not only possess plantations worked by Slaves in 
 other Colonies, but be a master of Slaves within that Colony to almost 
 any extent. He may be the owner of a jobbing gang ; he may possess 
 numerous mechanics; his domestic establishment may be filled wholly 
 by Slaves ; and though not a proprietor of estates within the island, he 
 may, for a number of years, have been a manager of the estates of 
 others, until he has become imbued with the worst prejudic3S of the 
 system ; but none of these circumstances, nor allt-f them together, will 
 form a ground of disqualification for this important office. 
 
 It may be argued, that without the liberty of holding domestic Slaves, 
 it is impossible to live with comfort in the West Indies. But there is 
 no Colony in the West Indies where domestics of free condition may not 
 be obtained for hire, and in Trinidad especially, where there are 15,000 
 free Blacks and persons of Colour, the argument is preposterous. But, 
 independently of this circumstance, so long as this country continues to 
 garrison its Colonies with European soldiers, it is absurd to maintain 
 
17 
 
 that the requisite number of European domestics may not also be pro- 
 cured by public functionaries. By such a course, a part, however 
 small, of the excess of our population at home would find beneficial 
 employment, while the safety of the Slave Colonies would be promoted 
 by thus diminishing the disproportion between the free and the en- 
 slaved. 
 
 To permit the protector and guardian of Slaves, therefore, to hold 
 Slaves of any description, or in any part of the world, is as unneces- 
 sary, as it is manifestly unfavourable to the progress of Colonial Reform, 
 
 The case is still worse as it respects the assistant guardians, for 
 they are not debarred, by the Order, from being the possessors of plan- 
 tations, and of Slaves, within the Colony, whether domestic or predial. 
 Now [as in all the Colonies, all the larger Colonies especially, the main 
 duties connected with the office of protector and guardian must of neces- 
 sity devolve on his assistants, it is plain that the whole intentions of 
 the Government may be, and probably will be, frustrated by such an 
 arrangement. The Slaves will be no better off than before. They will 
 be as entirely and unreservedly as ever in the power of functionaries 
 who are Slave-holders, and who will still be without efficient check or 
 controul. The picture drawn by Mr. Dwarris of the operation of 
 the former guardian act of Grenada, will thus be realized in all the 
 Colonies. " It is not," says the attorney-general of that island, 
 " a dead letter/' (though the symptoms of its life have certainly not 
 been very visible,) " but the misfortune is that proper persons cannot 
 be found to carry it into effect. They are those who may be liable to 
 it themselves who are the guardians. Perhaps a man may be a guar- 
 dian one year, and his neighbour the next, which would prevent his 
 acting strictly according to the act." The governor of Grenada testifies 
 to the same effect. " There are -so persons to be found to Jill the situa- 
 tion of guardian, such as must have been contemplated by the act, who 
 are, as they ought to be, independent. They are chiefly overseers or manag- 
 ers. Can THEY be expected to say, that the clothing or foodfurnished by 
 their employers is insufficient ? Or if they do, may they not be afraid 
 of the charge being retaliated?"* And this is said of Grenada, the most 
 liberal and enlightened, as we are told, of all the Colonies. What then 
 must be the case in Trinidad under a similar constitution of things ? 
 With an immense list of naval and military officers on half-pay, is it 
 impossible to apply any remedy to this evil ? Is there not to be found 
 in that list a sufficient number of highly respectable and meritorious 
 men who, at a small expense, might be most beneficially employed in 
 filling these important offices in all our Colonies, and whose remunera- 
 
 * See Mr. Dwarris's Report, p. 96 and 98, and the Society's Third Report, p. 34. 
 
 D 
 
IS 
 
 lion might be made to depend on the regularity of their returns, and 
 the propriety of their conduct ? 
 
 There still remain two points of objection to the Trinidad Order in 
 Council, which it will be convenient briefly to notice in this place. 
 
 One is that the hours of labour are not fixed. It is possible that there 
 may already exist some law in Trinidad for that purpose : it is desirable, 
 however, that it should be known. But whatever may be the limitation of 
 the hours of field labour in Trinidad, it is manifest that there, as in the 
 other Colonies, is superadded the oppressive task (after the labours of 
 the field are closed) of collecting, and bringing to an appointed place, 
 bundles of grass for the horses and cattle on the estate. It is difficult 
 adequately to describe the vexatiousness of such a task; and it is evi- 
 dent, from the returns of punishment in Trinidad, that there is no part 
 of the duties required from the Slaves which leads to more frequent 
 inflictions of punishment than this. Instead of employing, during the 
 day, an individual or two to cut and carry the grass which is needed, 
 the whole gang, men and women, at the close of a day of exhausting 
 toil, under a vertical sun, must be engaged, for an hour or two after it 
 is dark, in cutting and carrying large bundles of grass, perhaps tho- 
 roughly wet with rain, for a mile or two on their heads ; till having all 
 assembled, (possibly after long waiting,) and delivered their bundles, 
 they are dismissed to their homes; some of them, perhaps, first receiv- 
 ing a few lashes, or being punished with a night in the stocks, on ac- 
 count of the scantiness of their bundles. This is an enormous abuse, 
 which ought not to be endured for a day longer.* 
 
 But there is another, and perhaps a still more important, blemish in 
 the Order in Council. It consists in a supplementary enactment, which 
 directs that upon the complaint of a Slave to the magistrate, of an 
 illegal punishment having been inflicted, the accused, if convicted, 
 shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds ; but that should 
 the complaint prove groundless OR malicious, the magistrate shall re- 
 turn the Slave, with a written declaration of the cause of dismissing 
 the charge, to his master, who thereupon may inflict punishment, at his 
 discretion, to the extent of 25 lashes ; or, if deserving of a higher 
 punishment, the Slave may be remitted to the proper tribunal. 
 
 It is impossible not to feel that this system of making Slaves liable 
 to punishment when ihey fail to establish, by satisfactory evidence, the 
 truth of their complaint, (a system which prevails throughout the whole 
 of the West Indies,) is radically vicious, and ought not to have been 
 
 * See Collins's Practical Planter; Watson's defence of West Indian Metho- 
 dist Missions ; the Tract, Negro Slavery, No, 1 ; and the Slave Colonies of 
 Great Britain, p, 30. and p. 8690. 
 
19 
 
 sanctioned by His Majesty's Government. A Slave fails to prove the 
 truth of a complaint, involving, even if established, a penalty not ex- 
 ceeding ten pounds ; and for this failure, the complainant may be sub- 
 jected to 25 lashes of the cart-whip, inflicted by an exasperated master, 
 and that without his being arraigned, or tried, or having any opportu- 
 nity afforded him of preparation, or of producing witnesses in his 
 favour, but merely on the ground of what may have transpired before 
 the magistrate, not on an examination of a specific charge against him- 
 self, but on the trial of a charge against his master. It may be per- 
 fectly proper to punish malicious complaints, but surely the punishment 
 ought to follow a regular arraignment, and a regular trial and convic- 
 tion, after all fair means of disproving the charge of malice have been 
 allowed to the accused. The attorney-general, in a recent debate, 
 expressed most strongly, in common with Mr. Canning and Mr. Peel, 
 his sense of the obligation which lay on Parliament to provide that the 
 Negro should enjoy the same protection from the law, both in its sub- 
 stance and its forms, as the White man. But what can be a more 
 direct contravention of that principle, than the provision that has been 
 mentioned ; a provision, not only radically unjust in itself, but pregnant 
 with the most disastrous effects on the happiness of the Slave popula- 
 tion. Of the extent of those effects, some idea may be formed from 
 the proceeding which took place in Trinidad itself, as detailed in the 
 papers before the House of Commons, in the case of two slaves, Mar- 
 quis and Regis; but still more from the returns of the fiscals of 
 Demerara and Berbice. In the report of this last, especially, are to 
 be found numerous instances of Slaves having been severely punished 
 on the pretence that, supported only by the evidence of the very indi- 
 viduals against whom they complained, their complaints were unfounded. 
 
 It has been necessary to dwell at so much length on the Order in 
 Council for Trinidad, because it is professedly the model on which the 
 Government has declared its intention of acting, with respect to all the 
 Colonies directly subject to its own legislation. It is extremely im- 
 portant therefore that its defects should be understood. In five of those 
 Colonies, however, nothing has yet been done for giving effect to any one 
 of its provisions, although it has been stated to be the intention of 
 Ministers no longer to delay the necessary measures for that purpose. 
 These Colonies are BERBICE, ST. LUCIA, HONDURAS, the CAPE or 
 GOOD HOPE, and the MAURITIUS. Of them, therefore, nothing need 
 now be said ; as the legal condition of their Slave population remains 
 still in precisely the same state in which it was on the 15tbof May, 1823. 
 In DEMERARA alone has any thing as yet been done for assimilating its 
 Slave laws to those of Trinidad. 
 
 It was Lord Bathur^t's instructions to the governor of I). -nu-r,ra, that 
 
20 
 
 the whole of the provisions of the Trinidad Order should be introduced 
 into that Colony ; and it might have been introduced there, as easily as 
 as it had been introduced into Trinidad, merely by exercising the same act 
 of the Royal authority in the one case as in the other. It was thought ex- 
 pedient to pursue a different course, and to prevail, if possible, with the 
 Demerara Court of Policy, to adopt and promulgate the new code as their 
 own enactment. Two years were passed in efforts to this effect, until Lord 
 Bathurst was at length obliged to intimate to them, that " however de- 
 sirous His Majesty's Government might be that the origination of this 
 measure should proceed from the Court of Policy," it was necessary 
 to explain that if they did not adopt his suggestions, His Majesty's 
 Government " would feel it their paramount duty to issue, without fur- 
 ther delay, an Order in Council for the purpose of carrying them into 
 effect."* This intimation led to the adoption, by the Court of Policy, of 
 the draft of an Order, which was transmitted to Lord Bathurt by Sir B. 
 D'Urban, on the 14th of March, 1825 ; and of which an analysis with 
 observations will be found in a former publication of the Society.f 
 
 On the 9th of July, 1825, Lord Bathurst returned this draft to 
 Demerara, with a strong expression of His Majesty's approbation of 
 the zeal with which the Court of Policy had proceeded to give effect 
 to his wishes; and although he admits that the law will be imperfect 
 until some important additions shall have been made to it, he neverthe- 
 less directs that a law, expressed in the terms of the draft, should be 
 forthwith promulgated ; his Lordship being anxious that the chief civil 
 authorities of the Colony should appear to the Slaves to be the immediate 
 authors of the beneficial change in their condition. He guards them, 
 however, against considering the adoption of this course as, in any 
 degree, admitting the claims of the Court of Policy, or compromising 
 the rights of His Majesty, to the legislative authority in Demerara ; or, 
 as implying that Government meant to abandon any of the principles of 
 reform enforced and acted upon in Trinidad, as nothing short of a 
 complete compliance with those principles will satisfy them. 
 
 These observations are accompanied by a repetition of the arguments 
 that had been already used by his Lordship in his dispatch of the 20th 
 November, 1824, 1 in reply to the objections of the Court of Policy ; and 
 he closes with expressing a hope, that they will spare him the necessity 
 of introducing, into the Order in Council, regulations which the Court of 
 Policy shall not have previously adopted. 
 
 The Court of Policy having taken this dispatch into their consider- 
 ation, refused to modify any part of their draft, excepting the clause 
 
 * See Lord Bathurst's letter to Sir B. D'Urban, dated 20th Nov. 1824 ; and 
 the Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 25. 
 
 t Slave Colonies, &c. p. 27 83. J Ibid, p. 25. 
 
21 
 
 relating to the marriage of Slaves, which they have now agreed shall 
 when solemnized in the prescribed mode, " be held, and considered 
 binding, valid, and effectual in law; provided nevertheless, that such 
 marriages shall not confer, on the parties or their issue, any rights incon- 
 sistent with the duties which Slaves owe to their owners or to the govern- 
 ment, or at variance with those rights which the owner or the govern- 
 ment are by law entitled to assert over Slaves and their progeny, or sub- 
 ject such Slaves, so intermarrying, to any penal infliction the effects of 
 which might destroy the rights or injure the property of their owners."* 
 
 The Demerara Ordonnance has been promulgated in this state of mu- 
 tilation, and came into operation on the 1st of January, 1826. 
 
 The defects of the Order in Council for Trinidad, have been already 
 pointed out. These defects, of course, remain in the law which has been 
 adopted in Demerara, and they remain there in greater force in conse- 
 quence of the omission, in the Demerara law, of several of the most im- 
 portant and most beneficial of the provisions of the Trinidad Order. 
 
 On the subject of these omissions, Lord Bathurst addressed the Gover- 
 nor of Demerara, in a dispatch, dated February 25, 1826. The first to 
 which he ad verts, respects Sunday labour, various kinds of which, as pot- 
 ting sugar, turning and drying coffee and cotton, &c. the Court of Policy 
 contend it is necessary to continue, compulsorily, and without wages. Lord 
 Bathurst, in commenting upon this statement, observes, that it is neces- 
 sary to maintain inviolate the maxim that the owner of a Slave has no 
 title to his labour, except during six days of the week.f All labour, 
 therefore, on Sunday, for the preservation of the crops, must be neces- 
 sary to that end, and must both be voluntary on the part of the Slave 
 upon any estate, and must be paid for at a regulated rate by the master. 
 This principle of remuneration to the Slave for Sunday labour cannot, 
 his Lordship says, be departed from ; and that remuneration must be 
 paid, not in a small portion of the produce, but by ascertainable wages. 
 Lord Bathurst is, therefore, of opinion, that the reasons alleged by the 
 Court of Policy for permitting, in certain cases, the compulsory labour 
 of Slaves without wages on Sunday, are insufficient to justify the 
 practice. 
 
 With respect to the Slave's right of property, Lord Bathurst seems 
 disposed to concede, that Slaves should be debarred from cultivating or 
 
 * See Papers of March, 1826. 
 
 t The transcribing of these and similar expressions, is not to be considered as 
 implying an acquiescence in the justice of the principles which they involve. It 
 would obviously be difficult for the owner to establish, on any very satisfactory 
 ground, his just title to the labour of his fellow-men for six, or for any, days in 
 the week. 
 
22 
 
 selling the staple articles of sugar, coffee, and cotton, on. the ground 
 alleged by the Planters, both of Trinidad and Demerara, that a permis- 
 sion to cultivate or sell the staple commodities of the Colony, would 
 tempt the Slaves to commit depredations on their owners' property. 
 But even such a restriction as Lord Bathurst proposes would fall far 
 short of that imposed by the law of Demerara, which enacts that " All 
 slaves, as well males as females, are prohibited from selling or barter- 
 ing with any one whatever, any produce, sugar, coffee, cocoa, indigo, 
 cotton, rokow, syrup, rum, bottles, or flasks, or any thing else ; being 
 permitted to sell only vegetables and ground provisions, the produce of 
 their garden, or stock which they are permitted to rear; on pain of their 
 being severely flogged, on the plantation to which they belong, for the 
 first offence ; and, for the second, to be punished by sentence of the 
 court, according to the exigency of the case.' M 
 
 If this law, or even the modified version of it proposed by Lord 
 Bathurst, is to be maintained, what hope can reasonably be entertained 
 of productive industry, beyond the mere supply of their necessities, on 
 the part of the Slaves ? What would be thought of a law in this country 
 which should prohibit labourers, who might be the owners or occupiers 
 of a few acres of land, from cultivating upon it any of the staple articles 
 of production ? But the Planters say, that if the existing prohibition 
 were removed, a door would be opened to depredations on the Master's 
 property. If depredation is practicable, the Master will be liable to it, 
 whether such a law exists or not. But even if all the weight were al- 
 lowed to the argument which is claimed for it, it does seem alto- 
 gether unwarrantable to make the prohibition, as it now is, universal and 
 unqualified. Why should the slaves of a sugar estate be debarred from 
 growing coffee, or the slaves of a coffee plantation from growing cot- 
 ton, or the slaves of a cotton plantation from growing coffee, ginger, and 
 other exportable articles? The law, as it stands at present, is con- 
 ceived in the very worst spirit of a pure and unmitigated monopoly; 
 and if it shall be deemed necessary to continue it, it will only serve to 
 convince the people of this country, more fully than ever, of the untract- 
 able nature of Slavery, and of the necessity, on every sound principle, 
 whether of morals or of political economy, to effect its utter ex- 
 tinction. The Court of Policy had also brought forward an array of 
 objections to the allowing Slaves to hold property in land, or to the 
 giving them a power of civil action in regard to their property ; to some 
 of which objections it is to be regretted that Lord Bathurst seems to 
 attach sufficient weight to incline him to modify, in some degree, the 
 provisions of the Trinidad Order. 
 
 * Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 26. 
 
23 
 
 The third grand omission in the Demerara Order respects the right 
 proposed to be given to the Slave to purchase his manumission. On 
 this point Lord Bathurst justly observes, "no system of measures would 
 satisfy the feelings of this country, or execute the purposes of the House 
 of Commons, which did not contain some direct provision, some acting 
 principle, by which the termination of Slavery may be gradually ac- 
 complished." He regards therefore the right in question as " a vital 
 part of the whole measure," which " cannot be dispensed with." His 
 Lordship then discusses at some length, and refutes, the reasoning of 
 the Court of Policy on this subject, though occasionally on grounds 
 which are themselves liable to very considerable question, and with occa- 
 sional concessions which expose even his main principle to the risk of 
 becoming practically inefficient. His Lordship's dispatch thus con- 
 cludes 
 
 ;< This principle of emancipation will proceed on presumptive evi- 
 dence of the Slave having acquired habits of industry which, may fit 
 him for an independent existence, while it will secure to the owner that 
 compensation to which it may be found by experience, as the measure 
 advances in operation, he will be fairly entitled ; and it is by experience 
 alone that this can be truly ascertained.* 
 
 " A manumission of Slaves under these regulations will be in confor- 
 mity with the concluding Resolution of the House of Commons in 1823, 
 which declares that the great object of emancipation must be accom- 
 plished * at the earliest period which shall be compatible with the well- 
 being of the Slaves themselves, with the safety of the Colonies, and 
 with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private pro- 
 perty. 
 
 " But the Court of Policy must recollect, that if, on the one hand, 
 Parliament and His Majesty's Government stand pledged to give the 
 Planters an equitable compensation, they stand equally pledged to take 
 such measures as may ultimately, though gradually, work out the free- 
 dom of the Slaves. 
 
 " The Court of Policy may be assured, that from the final accomplish- 
 ment of this object this country will not be diverted. 
 
 " It remains for me only to add, that I now, for the last time, bring 
 these regulations under the consideration of that Court, with no other 
 alternative, in the event of their declining to admit them, than that of 
 
 * This proposition is not a very obvious one, although its tendency is scarcely 
 to be mistaken. But, after all, is not the real value of any article, whether it be 
 a machine, or cattle, or the human animal, if we must so degrade him, the amount 
 which it will command in the market ? 
 
24 
 
 ray humbly submitting to His Majesty the expediency of enacting- them 
 by direct royal authority."* 
 
 There is, however, a fourth most important omission not noticed in 
 the dispatch of Lord Bathurst, though mentioned by him on former oc- 
 casions, namely, that clause numbered 21 in the Trinidad Order, 
 which directs that on the prosecution, of any Owner, &c., for inflicting 
 any illegal punishment on a Slave, if the Slave so alleged to be pu- 
 nished shall be produced in open court, and if the marks of recent 
 laceration shall appear on his person, and if the Slave shall make a con- 
 sistent and probable statement of the facts, the accused shall be bound 
 to prove either that the punishment was not inflicted by him or with his 
 privity, or that it was a lawful punishment, lawfully inflicted ; and in 
 default of such proof he shall be convicted. 
 
 But besides the defects belonging to the Trinidad Order in Council, 
 and which are also attributable to that of Demerara, and the further im- 
 portant omissions which have now been noticed in the latter, there are 
 to be found in it some minor but yet material deviations from the Trini- 
 dad model, which ought not to be overlooked in any Royal Order it 
 may be necessary to issue. 
 
 The interval between an offence and its punishment is altered from 
 the definite period of twenty-four hours in the Trinidad Order, to 
 " after sun-rise" of the day next following that of the offence ; which 
 may allow an interval of only six or seven hours. Again, instead of re- 
 quiring, as in Trinidad, a free witness of the punishment, it is made 
 sufficient that six Slaves shall witness it. It is surely a hazardous in- 
 novation to make the witnesses in such a case persons so wholly de- 
 pendent on the punisher as his own Slaves must be ; and the pretence 
 for it, too, seems inadmissible, namely, that it may be impracticable to 
 obtain, in any reasonable time, a free person,White, Brown, or Black, to 
 attend and witness the infliction. If free persons are so extremely scarce 
 
 $ See the papers laid before Parliament, March 1826. 
 
 The author of a pamphlet, more largely noticed below, has justified the course 
 of referring this matter to the Court of Policy, by pointing out the important in- 
 fluence which will be produced, on the other Colonies, by the example of a local 
 legislature like that of Demerara appearing to take into its own hands the ini- 
 tiation of such an Ordonnance. But those Colonies are not in ignorance of the 
 real facts of the case. They know them as well as the author of the pamphlet. 
 He cannot throw dust into their eyes on this subject, as they may have done too 
 successfully into his. They well know that, whatever appearance may be given to 
 the transaction, both the initiation and the completion of it belong to His Ma- 
 jesty's Government, and not to the Court of Policy. The attempt, therefore, to 
 exhibit it to them under such a semblance, can seive no rational purpose what- 
 soever. 
 
25 
 
 in Demerara, as to require such an arrangement, it is only a proof of the 
 importance of imposing additional checks on arbitrary punishment, inr 
 stead of granting additional facilities for its exercise. A delay of forty- 
 eight hours is allowed in recording punishments, on what account does 
 not appear. The penalty for failing to deliver, every six months, a copy 
 of the record on oath, is only 300 guilders, or 25Z. sterling. 
 
 The hours for fold work in Demerara are made to extend from six in 
 the morning till six in the evening, with an interval, in the whole, of 
 two hours for rest and meals; being half an hour less than in the other 
 Colonies. But, as has been already observed, field work by no means 
 comprises the whole of the labour exacted from Slaves. One of the 
 most onerous, vexatious, and injurious of the tasks daily imposed on 
 them follows after the cessation of field work. We speak not of the labour 
 of crop, as grinding and boiling sugar, pulping coffee, &c., which are al- 
 lowed to be continued for half the night, thus depriving the Slaves, for 
 several months of the year, of a great part of their natural rest ; but of the 
 prevalent practice, when the field work is over, of obliging the Slaves to 
 collect food for the horses, cattle, and other live stock a task which 
 necessarily consumes from one to two hours of the evening in a most 
 troublesome and unhealthy occupation ; bringing with it also a needless 
 multiplication of penal inflictions.* 
 
 In Demerara the Fiscal has been appointed the protector and guar- 
 dian of Slaves. The two offices seem not to be very compatible ; and 
 if we may judge by the returns, already received from this very gen- 
 tleman, of his decisions on the complaints of Slaves, they certainly 
 present no satisfactory ground of confidence that he is peculiarly qua- 
 lified for his new office. 
 
 After having pointed out the comparative defects of the Demerara 
 Order, as compared with that of Trinidad, it is but an act of justice to 
 state wherein it has improved upon that model. A record of punishments 
 is directed to be kept not only on all plantations, as in Trinidad, but by 
 all persons having gangs of Slaves exceeding six. Those who possess 
 a smaller number are not subject to any such regulation ; and yet per- 
 sons in low circumstances are both less likely to be accustomed to 
 restrain their passions, and less liable to observation than others. Their 
 slaves, therefore, if no record of their punishments is to be kept, ought 
 surely to be exempt from any arbitrary inflictions (at least beyond the 
 three lashes which may be given in all cases without a record), unless 
 by the order of a magistrate. 
 
 The Demerara law of evidence is also more favourable to the Slaves 
 than that of Trinidad, inasmuch as it admits the evidence of Slaves ii 
 
 * See above, p. 18. 
 
 JE 
 
26 
 
 civil suits in which the Owner is concerned, and on the trial of Whites 
 charged with capital offences. 
 
 Such, then, is the actual extent of the improvements effected in the 
 seven Slave Colonies subject to the crown. In Trinidad an Order has 
 been promulgated, comprizing many beneficial regulations, but falling 
 short of even that measure of reform which the public had been led to 
 expect. In Demerara an Ordonnance has been published, which, as 
 has been seen, falls, in some very important respects, below that of Tri- 
 nidad. * In the other five Colonies nothing has as yet been done. 
 
 The Colonies having Legislatures of their own are thirteen in number. 
 To these the Trinidad Order was transmitted by Lord Bathurst in the 
 year 1824 (full instructions to the same purport having been sent out in 
 the preceding year), recommending it to them, in the strongest manner, 
 to frame their Slave Codes accordingly. The result of these recommen- 
 dations will now be explained. Nine of these have done nothing, viz. 
 Antigua/ Barbadoes,* Bermuda, Dominica,f Jamaica,} Montserrat, 
 Nevis, St. Kitt's, and Tortola, or the Virgin Islands. 
 
 In these nine Colonies, therefore, not one of the twelve or rather 
 fourteen heads of proposed improvement specified above (p. 1, 2.) has 
 been adopted, in consequence of the recommendations of His Majesty. 
 
 There remain, however, four Colonies in which something, it appears, 
 has been done. We proceed to shew to what that something amounts. 
 
 * In the paper laid before Parliament, containing a " Statement of Slave 
 meliorating Provisions recommended by His Majesty's Government," and en- 
 acted in the Colony of BarWdoes, the word " none" is affixed to each separate 
 head of improvement. 
 
 t In the same paper several particulars are given of a Bill that had been 
 proposed to the Legislature of Dominica, but had not yet passed into a law ; 
 but these cannot be regarded in the light of actual, but merely of projected 
 ameliorations, which may or may not be adopted. Dominica has, however, at 
 length repealed its tax on manumission, which Barbadoes has not done. 
 
 J Some trifling regulations have been adopted in Jamaica, which cannot be 
 considered as meeting any one of the recommendations of His Majesty's Go- 
 vernment, and which tend rather to relieve the master than the slave. Of what 
 benefit, for example, can it be to the Slaves, generally, that they are free from 
 arrest on Saturday as well as Sunday, unless their masters are pleased to do 
 what they are not now obliged to do to give them Saturday as well as Sunday 
 for their own use ? So, the facilities given to manumission are facilities for the 
 accommodation of the master, in his voluntary acts of manumission, but which 
 convey no rights to the Slave. And as for the power which is given of bequeath- 
 ing money or chattels to Slaves, it is only permissive to the testator and executors. 
 It conveys to the Slave no right of property even in the bequest which is made 
 to him, and it expressly excludes him from the power of instituting any action 
 or suit at law or in equity for the recovery of such legacy. 
 
27 
 
 I. THE BAHAMAS. 
 
 The papers laid before Parliament would shew that improvements 
 had been introduced into the law of the Bahamas, passed in 1824, in six 
 particulars, namely, religious instruction, manumission, regulation of 
 punishment, female flogging, marriage, and the separation of families. 
 With respect, however, to the first three of these heads, they ought to 
 have been entirely excluded, for reasons which shall now be given. 
 
 1 st. All that the new Act says on the subject of religious instruction 
 is to this effect : " That all Masters, or, in their absence, their Over- 
 seers, shall, as much as in them lies, endeavour to instruct their Slaves 
 in the Christian Religion ; and shall do their endeavour to fit them for 
 baptism, and as soon as conveniently may be, shall cause to be baptized 
 all such Slaves, as they can make sensible of a Deity and of the Christian 
 faith." Now these words, which form the 9th clause of the Act of 1824, 
 are the very identical words which form the 6th clause of the Slave Act 
 of the Bahamas of 1796, and which will probably be found in every ge- 
 neral Slave Act passed before or since. Precisely the same words, 
 without any variation, stand as a part of the Jamaica Slave Act of 1696,* 
 and have continued to be transferred to each successive Act down to 
 the last which was passed there in 1816. The very same clause, there- 
 fore, which is now produced as an amelioration, has stood a perfectly 
 dead letter in the Bahama Code for at least thirty, and in the Jamaica 
 Code for 130 years. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? The clause 
 provides neither time nor means for performing the prescribed duty, 
 and attaches no penalty to its neglect. Be its value, however, what it 
 may and it is not apprehended that any man will contend that it has 
 had any practical operation whatever it is not a new or even improved 
 enactment, but one almost as old as the Colonies themselves; standing 
 on their statute books, not as a monument of their zeal for religious in- 
 struction, but of the utter inefficiency of all such mere recommendatory 
 provisions. The same worthless and wholly inoperative clause meets 
 the eye in the codes of several of the other Islands. 
 
 2. The clause with respect to manumission has, if possible, still less 
 claim to be exhibited as an improvement. It professes to suspend all 
 acts imposing a tax on manumissions, when, in point of fact, no such 
 acts were in existence. This is gaining credit for amelioration at a 
 very moderate cost. Whoever will take the trouble of looking at a 
 paper ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on the 14th of 
 May, 1823, and numbered among the papers of that year, No. 347, 
 will find there, at p. 15!, a return from S. Nesbitt, the Secretary of the 
 
 * See Privy Council Report of J78U. 
 
28 
 
 Bahamas, dated 5th November, 1821, which states that there are " no 
 taxes imposed on manumissions in this Colony," and that the fee 
 Charged for recording an act of manumission is only five shillings. 
 
 3. The pretence to improvement with respect to the regulation of 
 punishment is equally destitute of all foundation. The 1 8th clause in the 
 Bahama Act of 1824, which is quoted as justifying this part of the state- 
 ment, is to the following effect, being in fact a literal transcript of the 
 llth clause of the printed act of 1796, viz. " In order to restrain arbi- 
 trary punishment" " no Slave shall receive more than TWENTY lashes 
 at any one time, or for anyone offence, unless the owner or employer of 
 such Slave, or supervisor of the workhouse, or keeper of the goal be 
 present;" and these several persons are then restricted from inflicting 
 more than THIRTY-NINE lashes at one time and for one offence. But 
 surely the framer of the abstract of ameliorations which has- been laid 
 before Parliament, must have been aware that this enactment was no 
 amelioration, though it is represented as such. Thirty-nine is the great- 
 est number of lashes which any law of any Colony has permitted to be 
 given, at the will of the master. And the number TWENTY, which the 
 driver in the Bahamas is allowed to give, is double the number to what 
 he is now limited in almost all the other Islands, and has been limited 
 in Jamaica for at least thirty-eight years.* 
 
 4. The clause relative to whipping females is to this effect, not that 
 females shall not be flogged, as all Slaves may be flogged, with twenty 
 lashes by the driver, and with thirty-nine lashes by the master, and, if it so 
 please them, as heretofore, on the bare body ; but that no female slave, 
 above the age of twelve, shall be so punished otherwise than in private. 
 In short, the Bahama Legislators, by way of improving their penal code, 
 have borrowed a leaf from that of the Spanish Inquisition : their pu- 
 nishments of females are henceforward -to be in secret. 
 
 5. The clauses respecting marriage direct that marriages of Slaves, 
 or of Slaves and free persons, may be solemnized (one free witness at 
 least being present) by clergymen or justices of the peace, without pub- 
 lication of banns or licence ; but only on Sunday, between eight and 
 twelve, a fortnight's notice being given ; and provided the parties pro- 
 fess the Christian religion, and produce the written consent of their 
 owners. Such marriages are to be registered, and are declared to be 
 valid, and their issue legitimate ; " saving always the just rights of 
 ownership, which in no case whatsoever shall be hurt, prejudiced, 
 straitened, or otherwise affected thereby ;" and also, " provided that 
 the marital power and authority to be thus acquired, shall in no such 
 
 * See the Jamaica Act of 1788, limiting the driver to ten lashes, and the 
 bwner to thirty- 
 
29 
 
 case impugn, diminish, or interfere with the "rights or authority of the 
 owner or owners in, to, and over such slave or slaves, in any manner 
 whatsoever." It is a remarkable part of this provision that it debars from 
 the benefits of the marriage tie all slaves who are not Christians, or 
 who are married by any religious teachers but clergymen, and this in a 
 eolony where but for the labours of the Methodists there would be few 
 if any Christians. The legislators of the Bahamas might have known that, 
 in other parts of the British dominions, among the many millions of our 
 Hindoo and Mahommedan subjects, for example, and even in Great 
 Britain itself, the profession of Christianity is no necessary condition of 
 a valid marriage. Jews and others may there form valid marriages 
 without any such profession, nor is any thing of the kind required even 
 in that most religious part of the empire, Scotland. One would have 
 expected that wise legislators would rather have been desirous of re- 
 moving all possible impediments to marriage, than of thus multiplying 
 them. The present limitation is one, which, through the utter insuffi- 
 ciency of the clause enjoining religious instruction, must shut out a 
 large portion of the slave population of the Bahamas from the benefit of 
 this provision. 
 
 6. The regulation with respect to the non-separation of families is 
 less liable to just exception than any that has been mentioned. Slaves 
 being husband or wife, or reputed husband and wife, and their child, or 
 reputed children under fourteen, being the property of the same owner, 
 are not, whether by private contract, or public sale, or by virtue of any 
 mortgage, execution, or other legal process, to be sold separately, or 
 otherwise than in one lot, and to the same person ; and the same rule 
 applies to slaves passing by bequest. This law supplies one great de- 
 fect in that of Trinidad on the same subject, prohibiting the separation 
 of families by private sale, as well as by judicial process. The remarks 
 already made on the subject of reputed marriages, (see p. 13.) are ap- 
 plicable equally to the Bahamas as to Trinidad. Such marriages ought 
 at once to be registered and rendered valid. 
 
 It is unnecessary now to refer to the many unjust provisions of the 
 new Slave Law of the Bahamas. They are pointed out in the pamphlet 
 entitled the Slave Colonies of Great Britain, (p. 4 11.) But, besides 
 these, it has not provided for the religious instruction or Christian edu- 
 cation of the slaves; or for the observance of the Sunday (equivalent 
 time being given to the slaves on other days) ; or for the admission of 
 " slave testimony ; or for the protection of slave property ; or for facilita- 
 ting manumissions ; or for preventing the sale of slaves detached from 
 the plantation ; or for restraining the power of arbitrary punishment ; or 
 for abolishing the corporal punishment of females; or for putting down 
 the driving whip ; or for establishing saving banks. 
 
30 
 
 II. TOBAGO. 
 
 Tobago has been the first of the Colonies, having legislatures of their 
 own, to adopt any of the proposed ameliorations. A brief view of some 
 very serious objections to various provisions of its recent act, may be seen 
 in the pamphlet already referred to, the Slave Colonies of Great Britain 
 (p. 78). At present the object is to shew wherein its legislation has 
 been improved. The points in which any improvement is alleged to 
 have taken place are the observance of Sunday ; the admission of 
 slave evidence ; the right of property ; the regulation of arbitrary 
 punishment; and the sale of Slaves detached from the estate. 
 
 1. The observance of Sunday. In this island alone have Sunday 
 markets been as yet abolished. In future the markets are to be held on 
 Thursday. It is not however provided that the slaves shall have the 
 Thursday on which to go to market; neither is equivalent time allowed 
 them in lieu of the Sunday. The allowance of time to the slaves, 
 indeed, for the cultivation of their grounds, besides the Sunday, is 
 more liberal than in any other colony. It amounts to thirty-five week 
 days in the year : but even this is far below what the equity of the case 
 calls for ; for the Sunday being now no day of labour, as formerly, the 
 addition to the preceding allowance of week days, whatever it was, ought 
 to have been fifty-two. 
 
 2. Slave evidence is admitted, by the Tobago act, in no civil case 
 whatever, and in no criminal case, excepting where a free person is 
 charged with murder or mayhem of, or cruelty to, a slave ; and when 
 no free person was present, or can be produced to prove the facts. In 
 that case, if two slaves testify to the same fact, and their credibility be 
 unimpeached, their testimony is to have the effect of the testimony of one 
 White ; and the slave suffering the mayhem, &c. may be one of the two. 
 
 3. Slaves are declared to be entitled to hold personal property, 
 "fairly acquired" and to sell the same, and to bring all actions per- 
 sonal for recovering the same, slavery being no plea in abatement of 
 such action. Here, however, no means are pointed out by which a slave 
 shall proceed in asserting his right, nor any penalty affixed to his being 
 hindered or molested in doing so. 
 
 4. The regulation of punishments consists in limiting the power of 
 the owner, &c. to the infliction of twenty stripes, being fewer than any 
 other law authorizes, and in requiring that a free witness should be pre- 
 sent whenever the punishment exceeds twelve stripes. Drivers are 
 restrained from punishing without express orders; but those orders, it 
 is obvious, may be renewed from day to day. One clause, the 25th, 
 appoints the President of the Council, the Speaker of the Assembly, 
 and the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, guardians, to inquire 
 
31 
 
 into complaints of cruelty towards slaves, and to direct, if need be, their 
 prosecution by the Attorney General. The uselessness of such a re* 
 gulation may be seen in the case of Grenada as stated above (p. 17). 
 Indeed Grenada has just repealed its Guardian Act. 
 
 5. It is said that the separation of slaves from the land was prevented 
 by a former law of Tobago. There is, it is true, a law of some standing 
 which makes slaves, as well as cattle, real estate; but then this appears 
 to be only for certain special purposes. They are to be real estate, in 
 so far as to descend to the heir at law, and that widows may be endowed 
 thereof; but they are still to be chattels, if the owner's other goods are 
 not sufficient to pay his debts. 
 
 Here then we have the amount of improvement in Tobago. No 
 means are provided, and no time set apart for religious instruction. 
 Equivalent time in lieu of Sunday is not given to the slaves. Their 
 testimony is admitted in a very partial and restricted manner. Their 
 marriages are not legalized. Facilities are not afforded to manumis- 
 sion. The separation of families by sale is not prevented. The flogging 
 of females is not prohibited. The use of the driving whip is retained. 
 Saving banks are not established ; and free persons are not adequately 
 protected in the enjoyment of their liberty. And yet the authorities of 
 Tobago declare, in the most peremptory terms, that they have reached 
 their ultimate point in the scale of improvement, and that they will not, 
 in deference to a wild fanaticism, sacrifice their inalienable rights by 
 proceeding another step. 
 
 III. GRENADA. 
 
 The points in which, since May 15th, 1823, the Legislature of this 
 Colony has adopted the recommendations of his Majesty, are stated, 
 in the papers recently laid before Parliament, to be eight; namely, reli- 
 gious instruction; the observance of the Sabbath; the evidence of 
 slaves ; manumission ; the non-separation of families ; the regulation of 
 punishment; the driving whip ; and the slave's right of property. These 
 different points are mentioned, without doubt, in an act recently passed 
 in Grenada; but how far they merit to be mentioned as ameliorations, 
 will more clearly appear on an examination of them in detail. 
 
 1. Religious instruction. On this head, though it is so stated in the 
 abstract, there is really no amelioration. The Grenada slave act of 
 1788 contained a clause on this subject, which was far more specific 
 than the corresponding clause in the recent act, and had penalties an- 
 nexed to it which the new act has not. The penalties and specification 
 of the old act have been abandoned, and the barren generalities of 
 the Jamaica act of 1696, the established form of evasion throughout 
 the West Indies, have been substituted. Nay more, the former Gre- 
 nada acts were prefaced by an imposing preamble, recognizing in solemn 
 
32 
 
 terms the obligation to introduce among their slaves a knowledge of the 
 Christian religion (see the act of 1 797) ; and yet so utterly useless, so 
 devoid of all force and vitality has been this parade of legislation, that 
 the clergymen of that island, in making their returns to Lord Bathurst 
 of the state of religion (see Papers printed by the House of Commons 
 in July 1818), admit that very few of the slaves attend divine service. 
 " Sunday is the general public market day," " and almost the only one 
 on which slaves have an opportunity of bartering the produce of the pro*- 
 vision grounds allotted to them for other commodities." " These 
 markets are generally at their height during the performance of divine 
 service, and being holden on the Sabbath day, little attention or respect 
 is shewn to the religious duties of the day." " When I remonstrate," 
 says one of these gentlemen, the Rev. W. Nash, " they reply, that if 
 they come to church they must starve, as Sunday is the only day they 
 have to cultivate their garden. The plea is so reasonable that I cannot 
 oppose it ; but I heartily wish their masters would deprive them of it by 
 allowing them one day in each week to labour for themselves." " If 
 they have not time for instruction," he justly remarks, " ignorance is 
 unavoidable" though " to human beings whose moral feelings and in- 
 tellectual faculties have been suspended for ages unknown, and at 
 length almost annihilated by an execrable system of oppression, under 
 which, in order to endure existence, it was necessary to suppress every 
 generous sentiment, to stifle every tender emotion, to forget they were 
 men, every consideration that the horror of their situation can suggest, 
 and the benevolence of the Christian religion inspire is certainly due."* 
 
 Now if the more stringent clauses of 1788 have produced no effect, 
 and have never been alleged to have produced any, are we to be de-> 
 luded into a hope of amelioration by the repetition of words which have 
 been repeated to satiety, and without effect, for 1 30 years ; which point 
 to no means ; prescribe no time ; and are accompanied by no sanctions ? 
 Here the movement is absolutely a retreat and not an advance. 
 
 2. At the time that Mr. Nash wrote the report which is cited in the 
 last paragraph, it is obvious that there was in Grenada no observance 
 of the Sabbath, that first preliminary requisite to effectual religious in- 
 struction, and which would have done more for religion than all its 
 other specious but hollow enactments. 
 
 Had the Slaves come to church, in quest of the religious instruction 
 the act required to be given to them, Mr. Nash tells us, they must have 
 starved, as Sunday was the only day they had to cultivate their grounds. 
 
 * This passage, with many others of the same description transmitted to 
 Lord Bathurst at the same time, lay unheeded on the table of the House of 
 Commons for five long years. 
 
33 
 
 The law, it is true, allowed them even then one day in fourteen out of 
 crop, or about eighteen days in the year. Mr. Nash does not say that 
 those eighteen days, though allowed them by the letter of the law were, 
 like the religious instruction, in practice withheld from them, though his 
 language seems to imply it. But, whether that were the case or not, it 
 is still plain from his statement, that, in his opinion, with fifty-two 
 Sundays in the year at their own disposal, they could not have come to 
 church without the risk of being starved. But what does the new Act do 
 to remedy this state of things ? Does it give the Slaves equivalent time 
 for their fifty-two Sundays, so that Sunday may be left for repose and 
 instruction ? No. The act merely prescribes, that the Slaves shall have 
 twenty-eight days in the year, that is ten more than they were allowed 
 before. Now, to fulfil the purposes of Government as to religious in- 
 struction and the observance of Sunday, and to give the Slaves equi- 
 valent time in lieu of Sunday, seventy days in the week ought to be given 
 them, whereas they have only twenty-eight. This is a singular mode of 
 improving their condition and of rendering common justice to the Slaves. 
 
 The Sunday market, however, is not abolished in Grenada. Some- 
 thing is said, indeed, about extending the market hours on Thursday, 
 and it seems to have been assumed, by the framer of the abstract, that 
 the clause on this subject is intended as an amelioration of the condition 
 of the Slaves. But the clause has nothing whatever to do, necessarily, 
 with the Slaves. It is to this effect 
 
 That, " whereas by the laws at present in force" (what are those laws ?) 
 " for regulating the public markets, the hours thereby limited may not 
 afford sufficient time for the sale of provisions and other articles necessary 
 for the consumption of the inhabitants, be it therefore enacted, that in 
 addition to the time already appointed for holding such markets," (what 
 is that time ?) " the market hours on Thursday, throughout the year, 
 shall be extended from six o'clock in the morning till six o'clock in the 
 evening." And what does this clause do for the poor Slaves ? Does it 
 give them the Thursday on which to go to market ? No such thing. 
 They, for aught that appears to the contrary, are occupied wholly in the 
 field in that day. Nay, it may be even impossible for their masters to 
 allow them on that day to travel to market for fear of arrest. The 
 clause has not the slightest immediate bearing on the condition of the 
 Slaves, except as it serves to throw dust in the eyes of the people of 
 England. With precisely the same effect, as respects them, might the 
 market have been extended from six to six on every day of the week, as 
 well as on Thursday. Sunday would still of necessity be the Negro's 
 market day. He can have no other unless it is specially given to him 
 by law, or by the special favour of an unincumbered owner. As for the 
 clause that no stores are to be kept open on Sundays, under a penalty 
 
34 
 
 of 10 it is an enactment of precisely the same description ; it may do 
 to be read in England, but cannot, in present circumstances, be acted 
 upon in Grenada. A law, precisely in the same terms, was passed in Ja- 
 maica in 1816, but it could not be rigidly acted upon, as the markets con- 
 tinued to be held on Sunday. Indeed, how is it possible, that while 
 Sunday continues the market day for the Slaves, and no other has been 
 appointed, that this law can be enforced ? If it were possible, it would 
 to them be most cruel. 
 
 A clause forbids the employing of the Slaves on Sunday. If this 
 mean nothing more than that they shall not work elsewhere than in 
 their grounds on that day, which is, in fact, working for their masters, 
 nothing is gained by it ; for this has always been the law and the general 
 practice in all the islands in which the Slaves are fed from their own 
 provision grounds. But, if it means that they are not to work on their 
 own grounds on that day, then a positive wrong is done to them : they 
 are deprived of their Sunday without an equivalent. So much for the 
 amelioration in respect to religious instruction, and the observance of the 
 Sunday, in Grenada. 
 
 3. The evidence of a Slave is only admissible by this new law against 
 a free person on a charge for a capital offence ; and even then, he must 
 produce from the clergyman a certificate of baptism, and of compe- 
 tency as a witness, and also of good character from the proprietor, &c., 
 who may be the very man against whom the charge is made. But no 
 free person shall be convicted, unless two Slaves shall clearly and con- 
 sistently depose to the same facts, and unless their evidence shall be 
 corroborated by circumstantial evidence to the satisfaction of the court 
 and jury. It may be fairly assumed, that few convictions will take place 
 on evidence so fettered. 
 
 4. The Slave's right of property. The clause which is cited in the 
 abstract as giving this right, does not in fact give any such right. It 
 merely provides, that if any owner or any other person shall unlawfully 
 take away from, or deprive, any Slave of any personal property by him 
 possessed, such person shall forfeit 10 over and above the value of the 
 property taken away. And this is all. It is not enacted, that a Slave 
 may legally hold and enjoy property, or legally transmit it to others, or 
 may sue for it by himself, or any one else in his name, or that he can cite 
 others as witnesses in his behalf, or that to take it unlawfully from him 
 is theft or robbery, as the case may be ; but whatever be the circum- 
 stances, the person so unlawfully taking it, forfeits ten pounds. As the 
 matter ought not to be treated as a debt, but a crime; the penalty 
 is rather a protection to the free person against the legal con- 
 sequences of such a crime, than of the Slave against lawless depredation. 
 
 5. In the clause also which pretends to afford facilities for manu- 
 
35 
 
 missions, all that is done is to permit the owner of an estate, upon 
 which there may be a mortgage, to manumit a Slave, provided he can 
 put in his place another Slave of equal value, to be ascertained by ap- 
 praisement. This clause can produce little or no benefit to the Slaves 
 generally. Its chief practical effect will be to enable mortgagors in pos- 
 session, or their representatives, to redeem their own spurious offspring, 
 or the mother of such offspring from slavery. 
 
 6. It is enacted, that no married^ Slave, or unmarried female Slave, 
 having a child or children under twelve, who may belong to the same 
 owner, shall be sold by judicial process, except together and to the same 
 person. But thus far, according to Mr. Dwarris, Grenada had previ- 
 ously gone. His words are, " Unattached Slaves are ordered to be 
 sold one by one, except mother and child under ten years of age." The 
 necessary condition of being actually married in order that husband and 
 wife may not be separated, is peculiarly hard in a Colony, the returns 
 from which shew that no marriages had taken place there for fourteen 
 years. 
 
 7. The regulation of arbitrary punishment, by the master, consists in his 
 not being allowed to inflict beyond fifteen lashes, except in the presence of a 
 free person ; or more than ten without a record to be produced only when 
 called for ; or more than twenty-five for any one offence on any one day, or 
 till the Slave has recovered the effects of the former whipping. But, if the 
 owner thinks that the Slave's fault, though not cognizable by law, is of 
 such enormity as to deserve a more exemplary punishment than twenty- 
 five lashes, it shall be lawful for the owner to carry the offending Slave 
 before ONE or more justices of the peace, who may direct such corporal 
 punishment, not extending to life or limb, as the offence shall in HIS or 
 their discretion merit ; and all this without appeal. This enactment is 
 itself an enormity. What then are the crimes, not cognizable by law 
 (the West India Penal Laws, as they affect slaves, are surely sweeping and 
 comprehensive enough) of which a Slave can be guilty, which shall be of 
 such enormity, as to require that ONE justice or any number of justices, 
 shall have the power of inflicting upon him an exemplary corporal pu- 
 nishment to any extent short of life or limb ? Is it impossible to ima- 
 gine two neighbouring owners or managers, each in the commission of 
 the peace, agreeing to execute this summary and terrible justice on the 
 slaves of each other, for crimes not cognizable by law, and therefore 
 violating no law ? Is there not enough in this single enactment to shew 
 not merely the uselessness, but the criminality, of continuing to commit 
 the well being and happiness of so many thousands of our fellow sub- 
 jects to persons capable of framing, apparently without a feeling of its 
 cruelty and injustice, such a provision as this ? And then, with respect 
 to the record of punishment, directed to be kept by the owner or the 
 
36 
 
 justice, there is no penalty imposed for its not being kept, and no return 
 required on oath, or otherwise, of its contents. They are to produce it 
 only when called for, but without any penalty for refusing to do so. 
 
 8. The 12th clause, respecting the driving whip, affords a happy in- 
 stance of legislative evasion. It enacts that, " no Slave or Slaves shall 
 carry any whip, cat, or other instrument of the like nature, as a mark or 
 emblem of his, her, or their authority, while superintending the labour of 
 any slaves on any estate, and the persons so offending, and each and 
 every person who shall or may direct, instigate, or abet such illegal 
 use or exhibition of any such whip, cat, or other instrument, shall be 
 deemed guilty of a misdemeanour, and being thereof convicted, shall 
 suffer such punishment as the Court before which such misdemeanour 
 is cognizable may direct." Now, let this miserable, unmeaning, and 
 worthless enactment be compared with the corresponding clause in the 
 Trinidad Order, which the Grenada legislators had before their eyes at 
 the time they framed it. " And it is further ordered, that it is, and shall 
 henceforth be illegal/or any person or persons, within the island of Tri- 
 nidad, to carry any whip, cat, or other instrument of the like nature, 
 while superintending the labour of any slaves in or upon the fields or 
 cane pieces upon any plantation, or to use any such whip, cat, or instru- 
 ment, for the purpose of impelling or coercing any Slave to perform any 
 labour of any kind or nature whatever, or to carry or exhibit, upon any 
 plantation or elsewhere, any whip, cat, or other instrument of the like 
 nature, as a mark or emblem of the authority of the person so carrying 
 or exhibiting the same over any Slave," and then all persons doing so, 
 or authorizing, or aiding, or abetting " such illegal driving, or use, or 
 exhibition of any such whip," shall be deemed guilty of a misdemea- 
 nour, to which is attached a fine not exceeding 500 nor less than 50 or 
 imprisonment for not more than six months, or less than one month, or both 
 flne and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court. 
 
 In the Grenada act, it will be seen that the prohibition as to carrying 
 a whip is confined to Slaves, as if no one but a Slave could be em- 
 ployed as a driver. The crime prohibited too is not the using a whip 
 to impel or coerce labour, but the carrying and exhibiting it as an em- 
 blem of authority. The evasion is of so gross a kind as to defeat 
 its object ; but it shows the reluctance which prevails to part with the 
 driving-whip. 
 
 In one point the framer of the abstract has not done full justice to 
 the Grenada act. He has omitted to notice that it contains a clause 
 permitting any Slave, who may be desirous of intermarrying with any 
 other Slave belonging to the same owner, to apply to any Clergyman of 
 the Church of England, or any Catholic priest, or " other persons 
 thereto legally authorized," who are required to solemnize the same, 
 
37 
 
 provided a written permission is produced from the owner; and the 
 clergyman, &c. shall consider the Slave to have an adequate know- 
 ledge of the nature of the marriage vow. It is unnecessary to repeat 
 the observations already made (p. 28.) on this strange restriction. The 
 clause, however, after all, while it permits marriages of Slaves in cer- 
 tain cases, dexterously avoids conferring upon them any legal validity. 
 It was, perhaps, on this account that all notice of it was omitted in the 
 abstract. 
 
 Another reason for the omission, no less valid, may have been that 
 this clause, instead of being an ameliorating provision, falls far short of 
 the Grenada law of 1788, which not only authorizes the marriages of 
 Slaves, but imposes penalties on the clergyman who shall refuse to so- 
 lemnize them ; and furthermore imposes penalties of a still heavier 
 kind, on all who shall violate the purity of married females, being Slaves. 
 Thirty-four years after this law had been passed, in the returns laid 
 on the table of the House of Commons, in March, 1823, we are told 
 by one clergyman of Grenada, Mr. Nash, that" the legal solemnization 
 of marriage between Slaves in this island, is a thing unheard of;" by 
 two others, Mr. Webster and Mr. Macmahon, that NO application had 
 ever been made to them to marry Slaves. The former, during an incum- 
 bency of 12 years, and the latter, during one of 37 years, had " never 
 heard of such a thing" as the marriage of a Slave. And yet, in the 
 ameliorating Slave law of Grenada, the same enactment as to mar- 
 riage is again inserted, but divested of all the penalties which seemed 
 to afford some chance of its efficiency, and without any provision for 
 giving a legal effect and validity to Slave marriages. 
 
 This act sweeps away the whole system of guardians of Slaves, 
 which the legislators of Grenada had exhibited in their former Slave 
 acts, as the very perfection of West India legislation ; and which, as 
 they have repealed it, Tobago has taken up. This is another curious illus- 
 tration of the uncertainty of Colonial legislation. It would be endless to 
 go through the different clauses of this act, in order to shew the gross 
 injustice of many of the provisions which it retains, and which are to 
 much the same effect as those which will be found in the Slave acts of 
 the Bahamas and Barbadoes.* A few instances will suffice. 
 
 By clause 7, The hours of labour are fixed from day-break till sunset, 
 with an interval of two hours and a half for breakfast and dinner (half 
 an hour more than Demerara gives), and slaves are not to be compelled 
 to work beyond that time, except in " manufacturing such produce as 
 necessarily requires night or extra labour/' or " in the carrying a bundle 
 
 * See Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 419. 
 
38 
 
 of grass or stock meat irom the field to the stable or other place where 
 the same is consumed."* 
 
 By clause 15, A slave complaining, and whose complaint shall appear 
 to the justices to be groundless, shall be punished, not exceeding thirty- 
 nine stripes. f A person taken up as a runaway slave, but claiming to 
 be free, may (by the 22d clause) be sold by order of a meeting of Justices, 
 even though no one prefers any claim to his services. And this is the 
 more remarkable, because one clause, the 48th, throws the onus pro- 
 bandi on the claimant of a slave in a question of slave or free. But the 
 Justices, by this act, may sell a man to whom no one else can establish 
 a claim, merely because they are not satisfied he is free. 
 
 By clause 29, Any person carrying off or attempting to carry off from 
 the island a slave without the owner's leave, shall be guilty of felony 
 without benefit of clergy. 
 
 By clause 33, Swearing, committing any indecent act in any place, 
 getting drunk, quarrelling, wilfully gallopping, cantering, or trotting a 
 horse in the town of St. George, may be punished in a slave with twenty- 
 five lashes by any justice. 
 
 By clause 35, Black men and women pretending to communication 
 with the devil, or (clause 37) compassing or imagining the death of a 
 free person^ may be punished with death. A slave breaking loose from 
 prison, when committed for felony (clause 38), is punishable with death, 
 without benefit of clergy. 
 
 By clause 40, Slaves executed or transported, or condemned to hard 
 labour for life, are to be valued and the price paid to their owners. 
 
 Such are some of the barbarous provisions contained in this new act, 
 passed in 1825, and they make it the more to be regretted that Lord 
 Bathurst, while he objects to many of the clauses, should have expressed 
 himself so strongly as he has done in approbation of it. " I cannot 
 but be sensible," he says, " that it falls short of what has been recom- 
 mended, yet it deserves to be considered as an important improvement 
 of the existing code.J Its provisions are all of a beneficial nature as far 
 as they go" " I instruct you, therefore," he writes to the governor, " to 
 convey to the legislature his Majesty's gracious approbation of what 
 has been done ; to recommend first that they should revise those enact- 
 ments in the late act to which 1 have more particularly called their at- 
 tention in a separate dispatch, and secondly, to take into their serious 
 consideration the important measures which are yet wanting to fulfil the 
 expectations entertained from them." 
 
 * See Slave Colonies of Great Britain, p. 30, and 86, and above p. 18. 
 
 t See above, p. 18, 19.. 
 
 t As compared with the act of 1788, it is the reverse of an improvement. 
 
39 
 
 The acting Governor, Mr. Paterson, who is himself a planter, in a 
 fetter dated the 21st Nov. 1825, tells his lordship that there are some 
 points which seem to Lord Bathurst to be indispensable, with which he 
 fears it will be " impossible to comply," namely, " the total prohibition 
 of the whip as an instrument of correction of females, and the right of 
 slaves to purchase their freedom." Other things, he says, may admit 
 of being modified or explained but to cease from flogging women, or 
 to give a slave a power of purchasing his freedom, are, in the estimation 
 of this public functionary, ruinous innovations. The women, he says, 
 are the most turbulent of the slaves ; and to allow slaves, he adds, to 
 purchase their freedom would be tantamount to gradual but ultimate 
 ruin ! Now, what hope can be entertained of beneficial enactments, on 
 these subjects, from men who can thus speak and judge ? Mr. Paterson 
 argues against the appointment of a Protector of slaves as unconstituti- 
 onal: he is " an officer unknown to the British constitution." How such 
 an officer could be known to the British constitution which suffers no 
 slavery Mr. Paterson will perhaps explain. But what makes this 
 objection on his part the more extraordinary is, that he must have 
 taken a part in renewing, if not in framing, the boasted Guardian 
 Act of Grenada, by which men's eyes in this country were for a 
 time blinded. Now, however, he has acquired new lights on the 
 subject : neither guardians nor protectors are any longer wanted. " The 
 magistrates," he says, " men of the first note/' all interested in the wel- 
 fare of the slave population, " can afford the injured slave more imme- 
 diate redress than he could receive" from a protector in town. Let the 
 reader look back to the conduct of those Grenada magistrates, as certi- 
 fied by the Governor and Attorney General of the colony (p. 17), and 
 then judge of the delusive nature of the acting Governor's representa- 
 tions. Equally unsound and delusive is every syllable of his defence of 
 Sunday markets; and if all he says were true, yet how inconsistent is it 
 with his reasoning, to impose a fine of 10 on every one who keeps 
 open his store on Sunday ! How are the poor negroes to make their 
 market if that law is enforced on the only market day allowed them? 
 Mr. Paterson does not even pretend that it was meant to give them 
 any other day at present for their markets. On the subject of the 
 whip, he observes, " that its use was not intended to be prohibited, but 
 the exhibition of it to be interdicted, not only as the emblem of autho- 
 rity, but as an instrument of coercion, excepting when sent for, or 
 taken to the field, for the purpose of punishing an offence previously 
 committed, and requiring immediate correction." This is not a fair 
 representation of the Act, as may be seen by referring to the tran- 
 script of it above, (p. 36.) Besides, Mr. Paterson must have known that 
 the principle of immediate correction, for which he manfully contends, 
 
40 
 
 and the benefit of which he exemplifies by a reference, (which, we be- 
 lieve, is wholly unfounded,) to the army, navy, and public schools, is in 
 the teeth of the principle of the King's recommendation, that an interval 
 of 24 hours shall always pass between the offence and the punishment. 
 He defends the discretionary power, given to a single magistrate, of in- 
 flicting any punishment, short of life and limb, on offences not cogni- 
 zable by law, by saying, in the usual style, that " the magistrates are 
 the lawful and willing protectors of the Slaves." " It would be con- 
 trary," Mr. Paterson further tells us, " to the whole system and very 
 existence of Slavery, to admit a right of action in a Slave against his 
 owner, and what no West Indian legislature would or could concede." 
 Then follows some metaphysical reasoning to prove the wis- 
 dom of the Grenada legislation in admitting Slaves to give evidence 
 in the case of capital ofttnces, but refusing to receive such evidence in 
 civil suits, or in petty cases of assault, or of trivial crimes. 
 
 Is it right that men who can thus reason, and thus feel, should be 
 the representatives of His Majesty in protecting, and in administering 
 justice to so large a portion of His subjects; or should be entrusted 
 with the delicate task of legislating for them ? 
 
 IV. ST. VINCENT'S. 
 
 The new act of St. Vincent's resembles that of Grenada in several 
 respects. It contains a similar clause on the subject of religious in- 
 struction. It limits markets to ten on Sundays, and yet shuts up shops 
 on that day, under a penalty of 10; appointing no other day for mar- 
 keting. It does not give equivalent time to the Slave in lieu of the 
 Sunday. It protects the property of Slaves in the same inade- 
 quate manner as the Grenada act, and follows it in adopting, in nearly 
 the same terms, the same evasive enactment respecting the driving- 
 whip. It says nothing of manumission, except that free Black and 
 Coloured freeholders are not to be freeholders for any other purpose 
 than that of holding and assigning their freehold property ; thus dis- 
 franchising, by a stroke of the pen, a large class of His Majesty's sub- 
 jects, whose only crime is the colour of their skin. It says nothing of 
 preventing the separation of families by sale. Slaves are declared, by 
 an old law now renewed, to be real estate and not chattels, and as such 
 shall descend to heirs, and widows be endowed thereof; but if there 
 be not chattels to pay debts, then Slaves shall be taken and sold as 
 chattels. It does not modify the power of arbitrary punishment by the 
 master, but leaves the Slaves, men and women, subject, in all respects 
 as before, to 10 lashes by the driver, or 39 by the owner or manager. It 
 requires a register to be kept on every estate, but it is to be produced 
 only when called for, of all punishments above ten lashes. It requires 
 
41 
 
 clergymen to solemnize the marriages of Slaves, producing the consent 
 of their owners, and understanding the nature of the marriage vow ; 
 but it gives no express validity to such marriages, and declares that they 
 shall confer no rights inconsistent with the duties of Slaves, or subject 
 them to penalties, the effect of which may injure their owners* It 
 admits, in capital cases alone, the evidence of a Slave, provided he 
 produces a certificate of baptism and character ; provided also that 
 two Slaves clearly and consistently depose to the same fact, being ex- 
 amined apart, and that the crime is prosecuted within the year. But 
 no Slave is to give evidence where his owner, or manager, or any White 
 person, is charged with a capital crime. How strangely the principles 
 of West India legislatures vary, even on such a point as this. Grenada 
 and Tobago admit the evidence of Slaves in the very case in which St. 
 Vincent and Dominica exclude it. But besides the defects which have 
 been noticed, more numerous and still greater violations of all just and 
 enlightened principles of legislation are to be found in the new law of 
 St. Vincent, than even in that of Grenada. 
 
 The whole of the alleged improvements, in the Slave codes of our 
 different Colonies, has now passed under revision, with the exception 
 of Dominica. The parliamentary papers, however, having given only 
 the draft of a bill for that Colony, with the blanks not yet filled up, it 
 would answer no purpose to examine it. And even if, as has been 
 stated, that bill has actually passed the different branches of the legis- 
 lature, it would constitute no improvement in the legal condition of the 
 Slave, as compared with the act of the same island, passed in 1788. 
 There is nothing in it really new, except that females are not in future to 
 be whipped in public, and so as to occasion any indecent exposure ; and 
 that a register is to be kept of punishments. The clauses in the new act 
 about religion, and the observance of Sunday, fall even below those of 
 the old act, which are admitted to have been wholly inoperative ; while 
 the clauses in the former act on marriage, and the violation of the pu- 
 rity of married females, so much vaunted at the time of its passing, are 
 wholly omitted in the new. The clause on Slave evidence appears to 
 be of the same restricted kind what was passed eight or ten years ago. 
 
 Such then is the result of that reference of the great work of Colonial 
 Reform, which was made to the local assemblies nearly three years 
 ago. The most cursory reader will at once perceive how widely differ- 
 ent is that result, not only from what was originally proposed by the 
 Government, as the first step in the progress of that reform, but even 
 from the statement recently made, as from authority, in the House 
 of Commons,* of the ameliorations that had actually been effected. 
 
 * On the 28th of February, 1820. 
 a 
 
42 
 
 That statement is reported to have been to this effect, viz. That, since 
 May, 1823, of the Colonies having legislatures of their OMW, EIGHT 
 had taken measures with respect to religious instruction ; the observance 
 of Sunday ; the giving security to the property of Slaves; the modifi- 
 cation of punishment ; and the abolition of the driving-whip : That 
 SEVEN had admitted the evidence of Slaves; and had given facilities to 
 manumission: That FIVE had legalized marriage; prohibited the 
 separation of families ; and abolished the flogging of females : That 
 FOUR had prohibited the sale of Slaves detached from the estate: and 
 That TWO had established saving banks. 
 
 Now, instead of having this flattering picture of improvement realized, 
 it turns out, that, even if we include Dominica in our estimate, only 
 FIVE of the Colonies, out of thirteen, having legislatures of their own, 
 have done any thing whatsoever towards carrying the resolutions of the 
 15th May, 1823, into effect ; and 
 
 Of these five, 
 
 NONE have done any thing with respect to religious instruction.* 
 
 ONE (Tobago) has abolished Sunday markets. 
 
 FOUR (Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent's, and Dominica) have given a 
 very limited protection, in certain cases, to the property of Slaves. 
 
 Two (Tobago and Grenada) have lowered the scale of arbitrary pu- 
 nishment by the master. 
 
 Two (Grenada and St. Vincent's) have made a mere shew of abolish- 
 ing the driving-whip. 
 
 THREE (Tobago, Grenada, and St. Vincent's) have admitted the evi- 
 dence of Slaves in a very limited degree. 
 
 NONE have given to the Slave the power of effecting his manumis- 
 sion by purchase. 
 
 * We are aware of the statements on this head which have been made, both 
 in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons ; but they do not go in the 
 slightest degree to invalidate the position, that nothing has been done by Colo- 
 nial legislation for the religious instruction or for the education of the Slaves, 
 since May, 1823. The passing of a law to regulate the ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 of the Bishop, or the raising money to build a church, are both very proper mea- 
 sures ; but they do not constitute either religious instruction or education, ex- 
 cept in the view of those who conceive that when a clergyman has received 4500 
 dollars for baptizing 9000 Slaves in a year, or two years, he has made them all 
 Christians. Barbadoes, for example, has had eleven, and Jamaica nineteen, 
 Churches, for at least a century. It is stated, as a proof of the religious zeal of 
 the people of those Islands, that they are about to build another. This is very 
 laudable j but will this twelfth or twentieth church do for the Slaves more than 
 the former eleven or nineteen ? The bishops and clergy lately sent may, with- 
 out doubt do much, if they are so disposed, for the religious instruction and 
 education of the Slaves : but they are appointed by the Crown, not by the 
 Colonies. 
 
43 
 
 ONE (Bahamas) has legalized marriage, and TWO (Grenada and 
 St. Vincent's) have permitted it in certain cases. 
 
 ONE (Bahamas) has prohibited the separation of families, either by 
 private or judicial sale ; and ONE (Grenada) has prohibited it by judicial 
 sale. 
 
 NONE have abolished the flogging of females. 
 
 NONE have prohibited the sale of Slaves detached from the estate. 
 
 NONE have established saving banks. 
 
 And now, after reading this meagre statement, let any man look care- 
 fully at the vain and inefficient, and often contradictory and unjust pro- 
 visions, by which it is pretended to ensure even the scanty measure of 
 improvement which the most partial advocate of the Colonies can deduce 
 from these papers, and he must feel convinced, that no useful or con- 
 sistent legislation is to be expected by continuing to pursue the present 
 course. Delay and disappointment can be its only results. 
 
 In the first place, the great mass of the enactments are framed in 
 direct contradiction to the admirable principle involved in the following 
 passage of one of Lord Bathurst's letters to the Governor of the Baha- 
 mas : u Since the superiority of jrank and education which belongs to 
 the White inhabitant, is an aggravation of the offence committed by him, 
 there is an injustice in assigning to the aggravated offence the minor 
 punishment." He also condemns those clauses which enact that. a 
 severer punishment should be inflicted on a crime committed by a Slave, 
 " whose ignorance is an extenuation of his guilt," than by others, " for 
 whose guilt no such extenuation can be presumed." And yet it is the 
 uniform character of the, so called, meliorating laws which have now 
 been reviewed, that they are built upon this reprobated principle. 
 
 The enactments in question are further at war with the important 
 principle laid down in a late debate,* by such high authorities as Mr. 
 Canning, and the Attorney .General, namely, that it was indispensable to 
 the ends of justice, that there should be, both in form and in substance, 
 an equal administration of it to White and Black. These enactments 
 proceed on a totally different principle. 
 
 Further, even those provisions of law which wear the semblance of 
 amelioration, are almost all destitute of adequate sanctions, or of an 
 executory principle ; and they are all confided to the administration of 
 the very men whose power it ought to be their object to controul, and 
 against whom it is the universal feeling of the country, that the Slave 
 requires to be protected. 
 
 In short, if such impotent and evasive enactments, as most of those 
 
 * On the motion of Mr, Denman, the 1st of March, 1820. 
 
44 
 
 now laid before the public, are to be represented, under the sanction of 
 the highest authority in the state, as " Slave meliorating provisions ; " 
 and if some of the views, as far as we understand them, which have been 
 developed, or rather hinted at, in certain quarters, are henceforth to 
 regulate the measures to be taken in respect to Slavery, the hope of 
 an early and effectual reform, not to say extinction, of that opprobrious 
 condition of society, is, to say the least, very greatly discouraged. 
 
 But here the Colonists, and their friends in this country, meet every 
 call for parliamentary interference, by using, in order to combat the ex- 
 pediency of that line of policy, the very arguments which have been 
 advanced in its favour. " It is utterly impossible," they say, " and 
 your own statements prove it, that Parliament can legislate effectively 
 for the Colonies, unless the Colonists become the willing and concurrent 
 executors of its enactments. No benefit can be hoped for, from laws, 
 however excellent, which the courts and juries of a country combine to 
 frustrate or to elude. The feelings and prejudices of the community 
 will triumph over the most skilfully framed statutes." 
 
 It would be vain to deny that a very formidable difficulty is here 
 brought forward, and that if it admits of no satisfactory solution, the 
 evils of Colonial bondage are irremediable, except by one of those con- 
 vulsions which shall suddenly and irresistibly burst the chains that bind 
 the Slave, involving, perhaps, him and his master in one common ruin. 
 For that the Colonists will of themselves frame and execute laws, which 
 shall carry into full effect the recommendations of His Majesty and the 
 wishes of the nation, is what no one, who is acquainted with their sen- 
 timents, can be weak enough to suppose. They see nothing but ruin 
 in every measure tending to emancipation; and they will not, they 
 plainly tell us, be themselves the artificers of that ruin. 
 
 But " what," it is asked, "can Parliamentary legislation effect, to 
 obviate this formidable and fatal difficulty ? " The question requires, 
 and shall receive, a distinct answer. 
 
 1. In the first place, it will be admitted that good laws are better than 
 bad laws. In as far as the Colonial statutes are chargeable with a want 
 of uniformity and consistency ; with gross inequality and injustice ; 
 and with the absence of adequate sanctions and executory provisions ; 
 it would clearly be in the power of Parliament to apply a remedy. The 
 object of Parliament would be to give effect to its own wishes and reso- 
 lutions : the object of the Colonists, in all the Colonies, is rather 
 to resist, and, if they cannot resist, to elude, their accomplishment. 
 Here, at least, would be a manifest advantage on the side of Parlia- 
 mentary legislation. And when it is considered how very contracted is 
 the White population of most of the Colonies, and how large a portion 
 
45 
 
 of that class are necessarily in low and servile situations ; and, of the 
 remainder, how few are qualified, by their rank in life, and by the union 
 therewith of intelligence and high principle, to form wise and enlight- 
 ened legislators, in points at once so difficult, and so deeply affecting 
 their pride, their passions, and their interests; it would evince an extra- 
 ordinary disregard of the claims of humanity and justice, if, after expe- 
 rience has so fully confirmed all the deductions of reason on this subject, 
 we should continue to delegate to them the task of legislating for the 
 entire Black and Coloured population of our Colonies. 
 
 If it be doubted whether any good may be done by means of checks 
 and sanctions, introduced into the Colonial Acts by some paramount 
 authority, it is only necessary to refer to the Trinidad Order in Council. 
 It is there provided, that the Protector of Slaves shall not be entitled to 
 receive his salary until the returns, which are required from him, have 
 been made in a complete and satisfactory manner. This single provision 
 will serve to illustrate what may be effected by the judicious regulations 
 of willing legislators, in enforcing even those laws which are obnoxious 
 to the general feelings of a community. 
 
 2. But, in the second place, however well the laws may be framed, 
 as to their letter, it must be admitted, that if the judicial administration 
 of the Colonies remains on its present footing ; if the Judges are still to 
 be Planters, and to be dependent for their salaries on assemblies of 
 Planters ; comparatively little good would result from the improvement. 
 But is it not the duty of Parliament to provide, not only that the laws 
 should be good and just, but that they should be justly, and equitably, 
 and faithfully administered ? Would it make no difference in the cha- 
 racter of that administration, if the offices of Judge, Attorney General, 
 and Fiscal (to say nothing at present of Governors, and of Protectors and 
 Assistant Protectors of Slaves), were filled by barristers of a certain stand- 
 ing, wholly disconnected from Colonial interests, with fixed and suitable 
 salaries, altogether independent of the local assemblies, and receiving their 
 authority and their instructions from the Crown ? Would it make no dif- 
 ference, if the whole judicial administration were placed under the super- 
 intending care, and the responsibility of such intelligent and independent 
 functionaries, receiving regular reports of every judicial proceeding from 
 the inferior tribunals, and transmitting them, together with their own 
 records, to the supreme authorities of the State, to be by them laid before 
 Parliament ? Would not the institution of this universal system of record, 
 report, inspection, publicity, and consequent responsibility, go far, of 
 itself, and still more when combined with the suggested change in the 
 executive department of the law, to reform many of the existing evils of 
 the Colonial system ? And is it not in the power of Parliament to follow 
 up its enactments for the improvement of the law, by such improve- 
 
46 
 
 ments in the administration of that law as have now been hinted at ? 
 And if in the power, is it not also, the duty, of Parliament to do so ? 
 
 3. But it will be argued that, though something may be done, by re- 
 forming the judicial administration of the Colonies, to correct the exist- 
 ing evils of the Slave system, yet the juries must still be composed of 
 men actuated by the prevailing Colonial prejudices, and equally ready 
 as now to render nugatory every obnoxious law. Neither the Judge, 
 however able and upright, nor the Parliament itself, can prevent the 
 powerful influence of the esprit de corps on the minds of jurymen. 
 
 This is to a certain degree true. There is, however, a large depart- 
 ment of the judicial administration which is entirely in the hands of the 
 judges, independently of juries; and even in that department of it which 
 rests wholly on the decisions of a jury, it cannot be supposed that the 
 presence and dicta of an intelligent and unbiassed judge, and the sys- 
 tem of revision and publicity which has been suggested, would not 
 produce a very powerful and salutary effect on those decisions. 
 
 Besides this, there is another and obvious palliative at least, if not 
 remedy, for the evil under consideration, in the admission to the jury 
 box of those free Blacks and persons of colour, who are qualified by 
 their property, and intelligence, and acquirements, to take a share in the 
 administration of justice. Why should they be excluded ? Have they 
 not interests, and large interests too, at stake ? Even foreigners have 
 a right, when tried, to have a moiety of their peers foreigners like 
 themselves. By what strange anomaly in British jurisprudence is it that 
 native born subjects, men possessing a common interest in the state, 
 shall, not on account of the want of a qualification as to property, or in- 
 telligence, or loyalty, but on account of the varying shades of their com- 
 plexion, be excluded, as a degraded caste, from the first and dearest 
 right of the British Constitution, a trial by their peers ? 
 
 That such reforms are in the power of parliament ; and that, if made, 
 they would improve the administration of justice, and afford increased 
 security to the slave, and thus obviate the only solid objection to par- 
 liamentary legislation, cannot be questioned ; and without parliamentary 
 legislation, what hope exists that slavery will either be materially miti- 
 gated, or finally extinguished? 
 
 The object of these pages has been fulfilled. It would therefore be 
 out of place to enter upon a variety of questions, foreign to its imme- 
 diate purpose, though connected with the general subject, to which the 
 public attention has recently been directed by various publications, par- 
 ticularly by a pamphlet entitled " The West India question practically 
 considered," and to which rumour has assigned somewhat of an official 
 origin. 
 
 This pamphlet, though it be impossible now to enter upon it, may 
 
47 
 
 require an early discussion. This remark, however, has no reference to 
 the pains the author has taken to convince the world that the views 
 entertained by the leading abolitionists, in 1826, on the subject of the 
 necessity and expediency of legislative interference with the colonies, 
 has undergone a great change since 1792, and even since 1807. This 
 fact is not only admitted, but stands forward as the very ground of their 
 recent proceedings.* But if they then placed, it may be, an unwar- 
 ranted, but nevertheless, a liberal, confidence in the purposes of the 
 colonists, with respect to the improvement of the condition of their 
 slaves, are they, or those who have entered into their labours, to be 
 blamed as wanting in good faith, because the painful experience of 
 twenty years has satisfied them that their confidence was misplaced, 
 and all hope of improvement, except from parliamentary interference, 
 vain and illusory ? 
 
 On this point the author may enjoy his victory undisturbed. There 
 are other questions however from which not only the Anti-Slavery 
 Society, but the whole British public will dissent, and which are either 
 distinctly stated, or may be deduced as fair corollaries from the reason- 
 ing employed in this and some other kindred writings. Such, for ex- 
 ample, are the following : 
 
 That because the British parliament and people have participated largely 
 in the crime of slavery, they ought not, though convinced of its guilt, 
 to cease from that crime, lest some of their accomplices should be losers. 
 
 That because great cruelties are among the necessary incidents of 
 slavery, it is our duty not to make a noise about what cannot be pre- 
 vented. 
 
 That though it is of the very essence of despotic power to be abused, 
 and its existence has hitherto been deemed a curse, yet such is the pecu- 
 liar character of our colonists, that the most unmeasured despotism 
 ever exercised by man over his fellows is converted, in their case, into a 
 blessing to the subjects of it. 
 
 That though it may be proved that the slave population of our colo- 
 nies are in the singular situation of being a diminishing population, yet 
 we are bound, in common courtesy, to believe that they are leniently 
 treated, moderately worked, well fed, clothed and lodged ; because 
 many honourable men, the masters of these slaves, have affirmed the fact. 
 
 That it is so great an evil to irritate and provoke the colonists, that 
 we must not call the crimes they commit by their appropriate names, but 
 regard them as the unhappy accidents of their unfortunate situation. 
 
 That on the same principle, we must be content to indulge them for 
 a few years longer, until they can be weaned from former habits, with 
 
 * See substance of the debate of 15 May 1823 Preface, p. xi. 
 
48 
 
 the privilege of lacerating the flesh of men and women, and of urging 
 them to their labour like cattle by the lash. 
 
 That though the colonial legislatures have hitherto framed their laws 
 in such a manner as to deprive the Slave of all effective legal protection; 
 and though they protest against an extension of his civil rights as utter 
 ruin to themselves ; they are still to have the abused trust of legislating 
 for him confided to their hands. 
 
 That though it is admitted that slavery is a bad and vicious system, 
 debasing the slave and corrupting the master, and though it cannot be 
 affirmed that those who are born of slaves are incapable of being reared 
 for the duties and rights of freemen, yet the government and parliament 
 of Great Britain are bound to retain, in all the acknowledged vices of 
 slavery, the successive generations of the negro race, until it shall have 
 been ascertained that the value of an acre of land in Demerara may not 
 suffer some depreciation from educating them for freemen. 
 
 That for Black men, especially if they live on the edge of forests, and 
 on a fertile soil, slavery is a condition of life infinitely preferable to 
 freedom. 
 
 That though sugar planting, as conducted in our colonies, has been 
 proved to be the most deathful of all the branches of slave culture, those, 
 nevertheless, are guilty of cruelty and injustice, who refuse to buy the 
 sugar thus raised at the price of blood, or who protest against paying 
 largely in bounties and protecting duties to enable the planters to con- 
 tinue thus to raise it. 
 
 That though this deathful occupation has been over and over again 
 admitted by the planters to be unprofitable, nay ruinous, still we are 
 bound, in deference to their wishes, to apply large sums to its support. 
 
 That though our manufacturers are starving for want of a market for 
 their productions, and though India opens an indefinite field for the con- 
 sumption of those productions, we must dam up this easy channel of re- 
 lief, lest we should be deprived of the pleasure of paying the West India 
 Planters a compensation, in bounties and protecting duties, for the 
 destruction of Negro life, caused by sugar planting and sugar manu- 
 facturing. 
 
 That though it cannot be denied, that the free Blacks and people of 
 Colour, of Jamaica, Grenada, Trinidad, &c. (themselves emancipated 
 Slaves, or the descendants of such,) have been growing in wealth, intel- 
 ligence, and respectability, notwithstanding a variety of heavy restric- 
 tions and oppressions under which their industry labours, it still remains 
 a problem to be solved, whether, as a tropical sun is hot, and tropical 
 soils productive, emancipated Slaves will ever think of bettering their 
 condition, or whether, on the contrary, they will not merge agaiij into 
 an inert and savage state. 
 
 That although, according to West Indian statements, the Negro 
 
49 
 
 Slaves, who are all, of course, well fed and clothed by their masters, 
 and therefore stand in need of nothing, do, nevertheless, while they 
 continue in slavery (such are the blessed fruits of that state), employ 
 their small pittance of time so industriously and to such advantage, 
 that many of them abound in wealth and luxuries ; yet, the same Negroes, 
 also, if manumitted (such is the baneful effect of freedom) would make 
 no effort whatever to better their condition, but would sink into penury, 
 and wretchedness, and into a greater degree of moral degradation than 
 ever. 
 
 That though it is admitted that the British nation and the Colonists 
 have been guilty of a great crime, in subjecting the Negroes to Slavery, 
 vet compensation is due, not from the criminals to each other, or to the 
 victims of their crime, but is due from the Negroes to their oppressors ; 
 and that in order to furnish this compensation to the criminals, the un- 
 offending victims of their crime must be retained, for ages if need be, in 
 their present abject and degraded state. 
 
 And lastly, that though some of the executive officers, entrusted 
 with (he administration of the Colonies, may entertain and promulgate 
 such views as these, Parliament, and the electors of Parliament, are 
 bound still to wait, in patience and silence, the developement, in some 
 future age, of their wise and philanthropic plans. 
 
 Leaving these and similar positions of our author and other Colonial 
 writers to produce their effect on the Electors of Great Britain, it will be 
 sufficient to say, that as the Colonial interests have found in him a 
 zealous and certainly an able advocate, so neither will there be wanting, 
 both in and out of Parliament, advocates, if not so able yet no less zea- 
 lous, of the interests of the Negro race, who will be ready to expose such 
 positions as these to the reprobation they merit. Let justice, indeed, be 
 done (and who resists it?) to the claims of the Planters upon the British 
 nation; but let it not be done at the expense of their wretched bonds- 
 men. These, Mr. Dwarris, himself a West Indian, has told us, with an 
 emphasis and eloquence we should in vain attempt to rival ; these poor 
 outcasts from the pale of humanity, in one at least of our Colonies, 
 even when " MAIMED, MUTILATED, DISFIGURED, AND DISMEM- 
 BERED;" have their " WOUNDS," as " THE ONLY TONGUE TO RELATE 
 THEIR WRONGS." But they will find, in free and happy England, if no 
 where else, some who will put a tongue into those wounds, which will 
 make all the cold-blooded sophisms and unstatesman-like and unchris- 
 tian paradoxes that have now been exposed, to shrink into their due 
 dimensions of littleness and imbecility. 
 
 Printed by S. BAGSTER, Jun, Printer and Stereotype Fmuultr, 
 14, Bartholomew Close, London, 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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