Tela tenent.”
But it is neither on facts nor on arguments that slavery seems now to
depend for protection. It neither doubles, nor stands at bay. It has
neither the ingenuity of the hare, nor the intrepidity of the lion. It
defends itself, like the hunted polecat, by the loathsomeness with which
it taints the atmosphere around it; and hopes to escape, by disgusting
those whom it can neither weary nor subdue. We could say much on this
subject. But the sum is, that “the worm will do his kind”--and we have
a more important task to perform. It is our intention to analyse, very
concisely, the valuable work of Mr. Stephen, (1) and afterwards to offer
to our readers some remarks which the perusal of it has suggested.
Mr. Stephen begins, by inquiring into the origin and authority of the
Colonial Slave-laws. It has been commonly supposed in England, that
there exists some known local law in the Colonies, distinct from the law
of England, by which the bondage of the Negro has been introduced and
defined. There is, however, no such law. The Colonists could, at no
time, venture to present an act for such a purpose to an
(1) Mr. Stephen’s work cannot, of course, embrace any
changes which may have taken place in West Indian
Legislation during the last eighteen months or two years.
Some partial modifications of the former code may have taken
place during that time in three or four of the colonies, but
these do not affect the general results.
English {305}sovereign. The Spanish conquerors and the roving pirates
of the Antilles had established that state: and the English settlers
considered themselves as succeeding to the rights of the original
despoilers of America. Those rights, as they at that time existed, may
be summed up in one short and terrible maxim,--that the slave is _the
absolute property_ of the master. It is desirable that this should be
known; because, although a few restraining statutes have of late years
been passed, this odious principle is still the basis of all West Indian
legislation. It is pre-supposed in all meliorating acts. It is the rule,
and the restraints are exceptions. In the benefits which every other
English subject derives from the common law, the Negro has no share. His
master may lawfully treat him as he pleases, except in points regulated
by express enactment.
Mr. Stephen proceeds to analyze the legal nature of the relation between
the master and the slave. Throughout the West Indies, slavery is a
constrained service,--a service without wages. In some of the colonies,
indeed, there are acts which regulate the time of labour, and the amount
of the subsistence which shall be given in return. But, from causes
to which we shall hereafter advert, these acts are nugatory. In other
islands, even these ostensible reforms have not taken place: and the
owner may legally give his slaves as much to do, and as little to eat,
as he thinks fit.
In all the islands, the master may legally imprison his slave. In all
the islands he may legally flog him; and in some of the islands he may
legally flog him at his discretion. The best of the meliorating acts
promise little, and perform less. By some of them it is enacted, that
the slave shall not be flogged, till recovered from the effects of his
last flogging--by others, that he shall not receive more than a certain
number of lashes in one day. These laws, useless as they are, have a
meaning. But there are others which add insult to cruelty. In some of
the Colonial Codes, there are facetious provisions that the slave shall
not receive more than a certain number of lashes at one time, or for
one fault. What is the legal definition of a time? Or who are the legal
judges of a fault? If the master should chuse to say that it is a
fault in his slave to have woolly hair, whom does the law authorize to
contradict him?
It is just to say, that the murder of a slave is now a capital
{306}crime. But the West Indian rules of evidence, to which we shall
hereafter call the attention of onr readers, render the execution of
the laws on this subject almost impossible. The most atrocious kinds of
mutilation,--even those which in England are punished with death,--when
committed upon the person of a slave, subject the offender only to a
fine, or to a short imprisonment. In Dominica, for instance, “to maim,
deface, mutilate, or cruelly torture” a slave, is a crime which is to
be expiated by a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds currency, or
by imprisonment not exceeding the term of three months, By the law of
Jamaica, a master who perpetrates any outrage short of murder on the
person of a slave, is subject to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds
currency, or to imprisonment not exceeding the term of 12 months. In
very atrocious cases, the court may direct the enfranchisement of the
slave. But this, though a benefit, as far as it goes, to the Negro, is a
very slight aggravation of the punishment of the master. At most, it is
only an addition of a few pounds to the fine. And as the possession of a
slave who has been maimed in such a maimer as to render him helpless, is
rather burdensome than profitable, it would, in many eases, be really an
advantage to the criminal.
If these terrible prerogatives were confined to the master alone, the
condition of the slave would be suficiently wretched. Yet it would not
be without alleviations. The proprietor might sometimes be restrained by
a sense of his pecuniary interest, if not by higher considerations,
from those extreme outrages, against which the law affords so scanty a
protection. At all events, during his absence, his Negroes would enjoy
an interval of security. Unhappily, the Colonial Codes permit all the
representatives and agents of the master, black and white, bond and
free, to exercise most of his despotic powers.
We have seen that the slave has no legal property in his own body. It
is almost unnecessary to say, that he has no property in any thing
else,--that all his acquisitions belong, like himself, to his master. He
is, in fact, a chattel. We should rather say, that to serve the purpose
of rapacity and tyranny, he is alternately considered as real and as
personal property. He may be sold or bequeathed at the pleasure of his
master, he may be put up to auction by process of law, for {307}the
benefit of the creditors or legatees of his master. In either of
these ways he may be, in a moment, torn for ever from his home, his
associates, his own children. He is, in addition to this, legally
a subject of mortgages, demises, leases, settlements in tail, in
remainder, and in reversion. The practice of raising money on this
species of property, is favoured by the laws of all the Colonies, and
has been equally fatal to the owner and to the slave. It is fatal to
the owner, because it enables him to risk capital not his own, in the
precarious lottery of the West Indian sugar trade. It is fatal to the
slave, because, in the first place, while it leaves to the master all
his power to oppress, it deprives him of his power to manumit; and
secondly, because it leads the master to keep possession of his Negroes,
and to compel them to labour, when he has no prospect of holding them
long, and is therefore naturally inclined to make as much by them, and
to spend as little upon them as possible,--a fact amply proved by the
miserable state in which the gang is generally found, when transferred
from the ruined planter to the half ruined mortgagee.
Such is the legal condition of the Negro, considered with reference to
his master. We shall proceed to examine into the nature of the relation
in which he stands towards free persons in general.
He is not competent to be a party to any civil action, either as
plaintiff or defendant; nor can he be received as informant or
prosecutor against any person of free condition. He is protected only
as a horse is protected in this country. His owner may bring an action
against any person who may have occasioned the loss of his services.
But it is plain that the slave may sustain many civil injuries, to which
this circuitous mode of obtaining redress is not applicable; and even
when it is applicable, the damages are awarded, not to the injured
party, but to his master. The protection which indictments and criminal
informations afford, is also of very narrow extent. Many crimes which,
when committed against a white man, are considered as most atrocious,
may be committed by any white man against a slave with perfect impunity.
To rob a slave, for instance, is, in most of the islands, not even
a misdemeanour. In this case, the grand principle of Colonial law is
suspended. The property of a slave, it seems, is considered as belonging
to his owner for the purpose {308}of oppression, but not for the purpose
of protection. By the meliorating laws of some of the Colonies, the
crime of highway robbery upon a Negro, is punished by fines, which, as
far as we are informed, in no case exceed thirty pounds currency.
But this is not all. The natural right of self-defence is denied to the
slave. By the laws of almost all the islands, a slave who should defend
himself from murder or torture, to the injury of a White person, though
such White person should posess no authority whatever over him might be
punished with death.
We now come to the laws respecting the evidence of slaves,--laws which
the Colonists stoutly defend,--and with reason; for, while these remain
unaltered, the meliorating acts, feeble at best, must always be utterly
inefficient. The testimony of these unfortunate beings is not admissible
in any cause, civil or criminal, against a White person. To this general
rule there are, in a very few of the smaller Colonies, some partial
exceptions. It is needless to say, that every crime may be easily
perpetrated in a community of which only one member in ten is a
competent witness. The Government have pressed this point on the
consideration of the Colonial Assemblies. In Jamaica, the proposed
amendments were recently negatived by a majority of 34 to 1. In
Barbadoes they have met with a similar reception. The only excuse we
ever heard made for so disgraceful a law, is this, that the Negroes are
ignorant of the nature and obligations of an oath, and, in fact, are
scarcely responsible beings. But from this excuse the legislators of
Jamaica have excluded themselves, by enacting, that a slave who commits
perjury, in a criminal cause, against another slave, shall suffer the
same punishment as the prisoner, if convicted, would have suffered. If
a slave be ignorant of the nature of an oath, why is he admitted as a
witness against any human being? Why is he punished, in some cases,
with death, for an offence which subjects his more enlightened, and
therefore, more guilty master, only to transportation? If, on the other
hand, he possesses the moral and intellectual qualifications which
are required in a witness, why is he not suffered to appear against an
European?
But we must proceed. The slave, thus excluded from the protection of the
law, is subject to all its restraints. He undergoes {309}the miseries
of a beast of burden, without enjoying its immunities. He is bound,
notwithstanding that alleged inferiority of his understanding, which is
admitted as a reason for curtailing his rights, but not for lightening
his responsibility, by the whole of the criminal code which is in force
against free persons. And, in addition to this, he is subjected to
another most unjust and cruel code, made for his class alone. If he
flies from the colony, he is put to death. If he goes beyond the limits
of the plantation to which he is attached, without a written permission,
he is liable to be severely punished. Actions in themselves perfectly
innocent,--buying or selling certain goods in a market,--raising certain
descriptions of produce,--possessing certain species of live stock,--are
crimes for which the Negro is punished, unless he can produce a written
authority from his owner. In some of the Islands, not even the command of
his owner is admitted as an excuse. To beat a drum, to blow a horn, to
dance, to play at quoits, to throw squibs, to make fireworks, are
all offences when committed by a slave, and subject him to the cruel
chastisement of the whip. When things merely indifferent are visited
with such severe penalties, it may easily be imagined that real
delinquencies are not very mercifully dealt with. In fact, many
actions for which a White man is only imprisoned, or otherwise slightly
punished, if punished at all, are capital crimes when committed by a
slave. Such are stealing, or attempting to steal, to the value of 12d.
currency, killing any animal of the value of 6s., uttering mutinous
words, and a long list of equally heinous crimes. We have already
mentioned the infamous law which exists in Jamaica on the subject of
perjury. Another of a most kingly character is in force in the same
Isand. To compass or imagine the death of any of the White inhabitants,
(God bless their Majesties!) is an enormity for which a slave is
punished with death. It is contrary to the duty of their allegiance!
Such is the penal code to which the slaves are subject. The manner in
which they are tried is, if possible, still more disgraceful. On charges
which do not affect their lives, a single justice is, for the most part,
competent to decide. In capital cases, several justices must attend,
and, in most of the Colonies, a Jury is summoned, if that name can
be applied where there is neither parity of condition nor right of
challenge. {310}No indictment is preferred No previous investigation
takes place before a Grand Jury. In most of the Islands no record is
drawn up. In some, it is enacted, that the execution shall immediately
follow the sentence. The prisoner is now sufficiently lucky to be
hanged. But formerly it was not unusual to inflict what the Colonial
codes style “exemplary punishment.”
When it was thought expedient to exercise this right, the offender was
roasted alive, hung up in irons to perish by thirst, or shut up in a
cage and starved to death! These punishments were commonly reserved for
wretches who had committed the diabolical crime of insurrection against
the just and paternal government, of which we have feebly attempted to
delineate the excellence.
The bondage, of which we have given this description, is hereditary. It
is entailed on the posterity of the slave to the remotest generations.
The law does not compel his master to enfranchise him, on receiving a
fair price. On the contrary, it interferes to prevent the master, even
when so inclined, from giving him his liberty. In some of the islands
a direct tax is imposed on manumission; and in all, the encouragement
which is given to the practice of raising money on Negroes by mortgage,
tends to obstruct their liberation.
Slavery in the West Indies is confined to Negroes and people of colour.
This circumstance is peculiar to the slavery of the New World; and its
effects are most calamitous. The external peculiarities of the African
race are thus associated in the minds of the Colonists with every thing
degrading, and are considered as the disgusting livery of the most
abject servitude. Hence it is, that the free Negroes and Mulattoes
he under so many legal disabilities, and experience such contemptuous
treatment, that their condition can be esteemed desirable only when
compared with the bondage to which it has succeeded. Of the rules to
which this class is subjected, we shall notice only one of the most
odious. We speak of the presumption against liberty, which is a
recognised principle of colonial law. The West Indian maxim is, that
every Negro and Mulatto is to be considered as a slave, till, by
documentary evidence, he can be proved to be otherwise. It may
be notorious, that he has been free since he first resided in the
colony,--that he has lived twenty years in England,--that he is a
citizen of Hayti or Columbia. {311}All this is immaterial. If he cannot
produce a deed of manumission, he is liable to be put up to sale by
public auction! On this subject remarks would be superfluous. Thank God,
we are writing; for a free people.
We have now accompanied Mr. Stephen through most of the leading topics
of his work. We have occasionally departed from his arrangement, which
indeed is not always the most convenient. This, however, is to be
attributed, not to the author, but to the circumstances under which
the work was composed. If there be any thing else to which we should be
inclined to object, it is to the lengthened parallels which Mr. Stephen
draws between the Slave laws of the West Indies and those which have
existed in other countries. He is not, we think, too severe upon our
Colonists. But we suspect that he is a little too indulgent to the
Greeks and Romans. These passages are, at the same time, in a high
degree curious and ingenious, though perhaps too long and too frequent.
Such blemishes, however, if they can be called such, detract but in a
very slight degree from the value of a book eminently distinguished by
the copiousness and novelty of the information which it affords, by the
force of its reasoning, and by the energy and animation of its style.
We have not alluded to that part of the work, in which the lamentable
state of the law, on the subject of religious instruction, is described;
because the evil has been universally acknowledged, and something
intended for a remedy has at last been provided. The imagined specific,
as our readers are aware, is an Ecclesiastical Establishment. This
measure, we doubt not, is well intended. But we feel convinced that,
unless combined with other reforms, it will prove almost wholly
useless. The immorality and irreligion of the slaves are the necessary
consequences of their political and personal degradation. They are not
considered by the law as human beings. And they have therefore, in some
measure, ceased to be human beings. They must become men before they can
become Christians. A great effect may, under fortunate circumstances,
have been wrought on particular individuals: But those who believe that
any extensive effect can be produced by religious instruction on this
miserable race, may believe in the famous conversion wrought by St.
Anthony on the fish. Can a preacher prevail on his bearers strictly to
fulfil their conjugal duties in a country where {312}no protection is
given to their conjugal rights.--in a country where the husband and
wife may, at the pleasure of the master, or by process of law, be in an
instant, separated for ever? Can he persuade them to rest on the Sunday,
in Colonies where the law appoints that time for the markets? Is
there any lesson which a Christian minister is more solemnly bound
to teach,--is there any lesson which it is, in a religious point of
view,--more important for a convert to learn, than that it is a duty
to refuse obedience to the unlawful commands of superiors? Are the
new pastors of the slaves to inculcate this principle or not? In other
words, are the slaves to remain uninstructed in the fundamental laws
of Christian morality, or are their teachers to be hanged? This is
the alternative. We all remember that it was made a charge against Mr.
Smith, that he had read an inflammatory chapter of the Bible to his
congregation,--excellent encouragement for their future teachers to
“declare unto them,” according to the expression of an old divine, far
too methodistical to be considered as an authority in the West Indies,
“the whole counsel of God.”
The great body of the Colonists have resolutely opposed religious
instruction; and they are in the right. They know, though their
misinformed friends in England do not know, that Christianity and
slavery cannot long exist together. We have already given it us our
opinion, that the great body of the Negroes can never, while their
political state remains the same, be expected to become Christians. But,
if that were possible, we are sure that their political state would
very speedily be changed. At every step which the Negro makes in the
knowledge and discrimination of right and wrong, he will learn to
reprobate more and more the system under which he lives. He will not
indeed be so prone to engage in rash and foolish tumults; but he will be
as willing as he now is to struggle for liberty, and far more capable
of struggling with effect. The forms in which Christianity has been
at different times disguised, have been often hostile to liberty. But
wherever the spirit has surmounted the forms,--in France, during the
wars of the Huguenots,--in Holland, during the reign of Philip II.,--in
Scotland, at the time of the Reformation,--in England, through the
whole contest against the Stuarts, from their accession to their
expulsion.--in New-England, through its whole history,--in every
place,--{313}in every age,--it has inspired a hatred of oppression,
and a love of freedom! It would be thus in the West-Indies. The attempts
which have been made to press a few detached texts into the cause of
tyranny, have never produced any extensive effect. Those who cannot
refute them by reasoning and comparison, will be hurried forward by the
sense of intolerable wrongs, and the madness of wounded affection. All
this the Colonists have discovered; and we feel assured that they will
never suffer religious instruction to be unreservedly given to the
slaves. In that case, the Establishment will degenerate into a job.
This is no chimerical apprehension. There have been clergymen in
the West-Indies for many years past; and what have they done for the
Negroes? In what have they conduced, either to their temporal or to
their spiritual welfare? Doubtless there have been respectable men among
them. But is it not notorious, that the benefices of the colonies have
been repeatedly given to the outcasts of English society,--men whom the
inhabitants would not venture to employ as book-keepers, yet whom they
desired to retain as boon companions? Any person who will look over the
Parliamentary papers which contain the answers returned by the colonial
clergy to certain queries sent out a few years ago by Lord Bathurst,
will see some curious instances of the ignorance, the idleness, and the
levity of that body. Why should the new Establishment be less corrupt
than the old? The dangers to which it is exposed are the same; we do not
see that its securities are much greater. It has Bishops, no doubt; and
when we observe that Bishops are more active than their inferiors on
this side of the Atlantic, we shall begin to hope that they may be
useful on the other.
These reforms have begun at the wrong end. “God,” says old Hooker, no
enemy to Episcopal Establishments, “first assigned Adam maintenance for
life, and then appointed him a law to observe.” Our rulers would have
done well to imitate the example,--to give some security to the hearth
and to the back of the slave, before they sent him Bishops, Archdeacons,
and Chancellors and Chapters.
The work of Mr. Stephen has, we think, disposed forever of some of
the principal arguments which are urged by the Colonists. If those who
conscientiously support slavery be open to conviction, if its dishonest
advocates be susceptible of {314}shame, they can surely never again
resort to that mode of defence, which they have so often employed when
hard pressed by some particular case of oppression. On such occasions
their cry has been, “There are individual instances. You must not
deduce general conclusions from them. What would you say, if we were
to form our estimate of English society from the Police Reports, or the
Newgate Calendar? Look at the rules, and not at the exceptions.” Here,
then, we have those boasted rules. And what are they? We find that the
actions which other societies punish as crimes, are in the West Indies
sanctioned by law;--that practices, of which England affords no example
but in the records of the jail and the gibbet, are there suffered to
exist unpunished;--that atrocities may there be perpetrated in the
drawing-room or in the market-place, on the persons of untried and
unconvicted individuals, which here would scarcely find an asylum in the
vaults of the Blood-Bowl House.
Is it any answer to this charge, now most fully established, to say that
we too have our crimes? Unquestionably, under all systems, however wise,
under all circumstances, however fortunate, the passions of men will
incite them to evil. The most vigilant police, the most rigid tribunals,
the severest penalties, are but imperfect restraints upon avarice and
revenge. What then must be the ease when these restraints are withdrawn?
In England there is a legal remedy for every injury. If the first prince
of the blood, were to treat the poorest pauper in St. Giles’s as the
best code in the West Indies authorizes a master to treat his slave, it
would be better for him that he had never been born. Yet even here we
find, that wherever power is given, it is occasionally abused; that
magistrates, not having the fear of the Court of King’s Bench before
their eyes, will sometimes be guilty of injustice and tyranny, that even
parents will sometimes starve, torture, murder the helpless beings to
whom they have given life. And is it not evident, that where there are
fewer checks, there will be more cruelty?
But we are told, the manners of a people, the state of public opinion,
are of more real consequence than any written code. Many things, it is
confessed, in the Colonial laws, are cruel and unjust in theory: but
we are assured that the feeling of the Colonists renders the practical
operation of the system lenient and liberal. We answer, that publie
feeling, though {315}an excellent auxiliary to laws, always has been,
and always must be, a miserable and inefficient substitute for them. The
rules of evidence on which public opinion proceeds are defective, and
its decisions are capricious. Its condemnation frequently spares the
guilty, and falls on the innocent. It is terrible to sensitive and
generous minds; but it is disregarded by those whose hardened depravity
most requires restraint. Hence its decrees, however salutary, unless
supported by the clearer definitions and stronger sanctions of
legislation, will be daily and hourly infringed; and with principles
which rest only on public opinion, frequent infraction amounts to a
repeal. Nothing that is very common can be very disgraceful. Thus public
opinion, when not strengthened by positive enactment, is first defied,
and then vitiated. At best it is a feeble check to wickedness, and at
last it becomes its most powerful auxiliary.
As a remedy for the evils of a system of slavery, public opinion must be
utterly inefficacious; and that for this simple reason, that the opinion
of the slaves themselves goes for nothing. The desire which we feel to
obtain the approbation, and to avoid the censure of our neighbours,
is no innate or universal sentiment. It always springs, directly or
indirectly, from consideration of the power which others possess to
serve or to injure us. The good will of the lower orders, is courted
only in countries where they possess political privileges, and where
there is much they can give, and much that they can take away. Their
opinion is important or unimportant, in proportion as their legal rights
are great or small. It can, therefore, never be a substitute for legal
rights. Does a Smithfield drover care for the love or hatred of his
oxen? and yet his oxen, since the passing of Mr. Martin’s meliorating
act, are scarcely in a more unprotected condition than the slaves in our
islands.
The opinion then, which is to guard the slaves from the oppressions of
the privileged order, is the opinion of the privileged order itself. A
vast authority is intrusted to the master--the law imposes scarcely tiny
restraints upon him--and we are required to believe, that the place of
all other checks will be fully supplied by the general sense of those
who participate in his power and his temptations. This may be reason at
Kingston; but will it pass at Westminster? We are not inveighing against
the white inhabitants of the West {316}Indies. We do not say that they
are naturally more cruel or more sensual than ourselves. But we say that
they are men; and they desire to be considered as angels!--we say as
angels, for to no human being, however generous and beneficent, to no
philanthropist, to no fathers of the church, could powers like theirs be
safely intrusted. Such authority a parent ought not to have over his
children. They ask very complacently, “Are we men of a different species
from yourselves? We come among you;--we mingle with you in all your
kinds of business and pleasure;--we buy and sell with you on Change in
the morning;--we dance with your daughters in the evening. Are not our
manners civil? Are not our dinners good? Are we not kind friends, fair
dealers, generous benefactors? Are not our names in the subscription
lists of all your charities? And can you believe that we are such
monsters as the saints represent us to be? Can you imagine that, by
merely crossing the Atlantic, we acquire a new nature?” We reply, You
are not men of a different species from ourselves; and, therefore, we
will not give you powers with which we would not dare to trust
ourselves. We know that your passions are like ours. We know that your
restraints are fewer; and, therefore, we know that your crimes must be
greater. Are despotic sovereigns men of harder hearts by nature than
their subjects? Are they born with a hereditary thirst for blood--with a
natural incapacity for friendship? Surely not. Yet what is their general
character? False--cruel--licentious---ungrateful. Many of them have
performed single acts of splendid generosity and heroism; a few may be
named whose general administration has been salutary; but scarcely one
has passed through life without committing at least some one atrocious
act, from the guilt and infamy of which restricting laws would have
saved him and his victims. If Henry VIII. had been a private man, he
might have torn his wife’s ruff, and kicked her lap-dog. He was a King,
and he cutoff her head--not that his passions were more brutal than
those of many other men, but that they were less restrained. How many of
the West Indian overseers can boast of the piety and magnanimity of
Theodosius? Yet, in a single moment of anger, that amiable prince
destroyed more innocent people than all the ruffians in Europe stab in
fifty years. Thus it is with a master in the Colonies. We will suppose
him to be {317}a good natured man, but subject, like other men, to
occasional fits of passion. He gives an order. It is slowly or
negligently executed. In England he would grumble, perhaps swear a
little. In the West Indies, the law empowers him to indict a severe
flogging on the loiterer. Are we very uncharitable in supposing that he
will sometimes exercise his privilege?
It by no means follows that a person who is humane in England will be
humane to his Negroes in the West Indies. Nothing is so capricious and
inconsistent as the compassion of men. The Romans were people of the
same flesh and blood with ourselves--they loved their friends--they
cried at tragedies--they gave money to beggars;--yet we know their
fondness for gladiatorial shows. When, by order of Pompey, some
elephants were tortured in the amphitheatre, the audience was so shocked
at the yells and contortions by which the poor creatures expressed their
agony, that they burst forth into execrations against their favourite
general. The same people, in the same place, had probably often given
the fatal twirl of the thumb which condemned some gallant barbarian to
receive the sword. In our own time, many a man shoots partridges in such
numbers that he is compelled to bury them, who would chastise his son
for amusing himself with the equally interesting, and not more cruel
diversion, of catching flies and tearing them to pieces. The
drover goads oxen--the fishmonger crimps cod--the dragoon sabres a
Frenchman--the Spanish Inquisition burns a Jew--the Irish gentleman
torments a Catholic. These persons are not necessarily destitute of
feeling. Each of them would shrink from any cruel employment, except
that to which his situation has familiarized him.
There is only one way in which the West Indians will ever convince
the people of England that their practice is merciful, and that is,
by making their laws merciful. We cannot understand why men should so
tenaciously fight for powers which they do not mean to exercise. If the
oppressive privileges of the master be nominal and not real, let him
cede them, and silence calumny at once and for ever. Let him cede them
for his own honour. Let him cede them in compliance with the desire, the
vain and superfluous desire, we will suppose, of the people of England.
Is the repeal of laws which have become obsolete,--is the prohibition
{318}of crimes which are never committed, too great a return for a
bounty of twelve hundred thousand pounds, for a protecting duty most
injurious to the manufacturers of England and the cultivators of
Hindustan, for an army which alone protects from inevitable ruin the
lives and possessions of the Colonists?
The fact notoriously is, that West Indian manners give protection even
to those extreme enormities against which the West Indian laws provide.
We have already adverted to one of the most ordinary sophisms of our
opponents. “Why,” they exclaim, “is our whole body to be censured for
the depravity of a few? Every society has its miscreants. If we had our
Hodge, you had your Thurtell. If we had our Huggins, you had your Wall.
No candid reasoner will ground general charges on individual eases.” The
refutation is simple. When a community does nothing to prevent guilt, it
ought to bear the blame of it. Wickedness, when punished, is disgraceful
only to the offender. Unpunished, it is disgraceful to the whole
society. Our charge against the Colonists is not that crimes are
perpetrated among them, but that they are tolerated. We will give a
single instance. Since the West Indians are fond of referring to
our Newgate Calendar, we will place, side by side, a leaf from that
melancholy Register, and another from the West Indian Annals.
Mr. Wall was Governor at Goree. In that situation he flogged a man to
death, on pretence of mutiny. On his return to England, he was indicted
for murder. He escaped to the Continent. For twenty years he remained
in exile. For twenty years the English people retained the impression
of his crime uneffaced within their hearts. He shifted his residence--he
disguised his person--he changed his name,--still their eyes were upon
him, for evil, and not for good. At length, conceiving that all danger
was at an end, he returned. He was tried, convicted, and hanged, amidst
the huzzas of an innumerable multitude. (1)
Edward Huggins of Nevis, about fifteen years ago, flogged upwards of
twenty slaves in the public market-place, with such severity as to
produce the death of one, and to ruin the
(1) We should be far, indeed, from applauding those shouts,
if they were the exultation of cruelty; but they arose from
the apprehension that Court favour was about to save the
criminal; and the feeling expressed was for the triumph of
justice.
constitutions {319}of many. He had grossly violated the law of the
Colony, which prescribes a limit to such inflictions. He had violated it
in open day, and in the presence of a magistrate. He was indicted by
the law officer of the crown. His advocate acknowledged the facts, but
argued that the act on which he was tried, was passed only to silence
the zealots in England, and was never intended to be enforced. Huggins
was acquitted! But that was a trifle. Some members of the House of
Assembly lost their seats at the next election, for taking part against
him. A printer of a neighbouring island was convicted of a libel, merely
for publishing an official report of the evidence, transmitted to him by
authority. In a word, he was considered as a martyr to the common cause,
and grew in influence and popularity; while a most respectable planter,
an enlightened and accomplished gentleman, Mr. Tobin, who, nobly
despising the prejudices of his class, had called the attention of the
government to these diabolical outrages, was menaced with prosecutions,
assailed with slanders, and preserved only by blindness from challenges.
Let these cases be compared. We do not say that Wall was not as bad a
man as Huggins; but we do say that the English people have nothing to do
with the crime of Wall, and that the public character of the people of
Nevis suffers seriously by the crime of Huggins. They have adopted the
guilt, and they must share in the infamy. We know that the advocates
of slavery affect to deride this and similar narratives as old and
threadbare. They sneer at them in conversation, and cough them down in
the House of Commons. But it is in vain. They are written on the hearts
of the people; and they will be remembered when all the smooth nothings
of all the official defenders of such transactions are forgotten.
The truth is simply this. Bad laws and bad customs, reciprocally
producing and produced by each other, have given to the Whites in
all the slave islands--Dutch, Spanish, French and English--a peculiar
character, in which almost all the traits, which, in this quarter of the
world, distinguish the different nations, are lost. We think we describe
that character sufficiently when we call it the despotic character.
In nothing does this temper more strongly appear than in the rage and
contempt with which the Colonists receive{320} every command, and indeed
every admonition, from the authorities of the mother country. When the
territorial power and the commercial monopoly of the East India Company
haws been at stake, has that great body conducted itself thus? Do even
foreign powers treat us in this manner? We have often remonstrated with
the greatest sovereigns of the Continent on the subject of the slave
trade. We have been repulsed--we have been deluded. But by whom have
we been insulted? The representations of the King and people of England
have never been met with outrageous scorn and anger,--except by the men
who owe their food to our bounties, and their lives to our troops.
To the most gentle and moderate advice, to the suggestions of the most
respectable of the West Indian proprietors resident in England, they
reply only in ravings of absurd slander, or impotent defiance. The
essays in their newspapers, the speeches of their legislators, the
resolutions of their vestries, are, almost without exception,
mere collections of rancorous abuse, unmixed with argument. If the
Antislavery Society would publish a small tract, containing simply the
leading articles of five or six numbers of the Jamaica Gazette, without
note or comment, they would, we believe, do more to illustrate the
character of their adversaries than by any other means which can be
devised. Such a collection would exhibit to the country the real nature
of that malignant spirit which banished Salisbury, which destroyed
Smith, and which broke the honest heart of Ramsay.
It is remarkable, that most of these zealots of slavery have little or
no pecuniary interest in the question. If the colonies should be ruined,
the loss will fall, not upon the book-keepers, the overseers, the herd
of needy emigrants who make up the noisy circles of Jamaica; but upon
the Ellises, the Hibberts, the Mannings, men of the most respectable
characters and enlightened minds in the country. _They_ might have
been excused, if any person could be excused, for employing violent
and abusive language. Yet they have conducted themselves, not perhaps
exactly as we might wish them, but still like gentlemen, like men of
sense, like men of feeling. Why is this? Simply because they live in
England, and participate in English feelings. The Colonists, on the
other hand, are degraded by familiarity with oppression. Let us not be
deceived. The cry which resounds from the West {321}Indies is raised by
men, who are trembling less for their property than for the privileges
of their caste. These are the persons who love slavery for its own sake.
The declarations so often made by the Parliament, by the Ministers, by
the deadliest enemies of slavery, that the interests of all parties will
be fairly considered, and that wherever a just claim to compensation can
be established, compensation will be given, bring no comfort to
them. They may have no possessions, but they have white faces. Should
compensation be given, few of them will receive a sixpence; but they
will lose the power of oppressing with impunity every man who has a
black skin. And it is to these men, who have scarcely any interest
in the value of colonial property, but who have a deep interest,--the
interest of a petty tyranny, and a despicable pride in the maintenance
of colonial injustice, that the British Parliament is required to give
up its unquestionable right of superintendence over every part of our
empire. If this were requested as a matter of indulgence, or recommended
as a matter of expediency, we might well be surprised. But it is
demanded as a constitutional right. On what does this right rest? On
what statute? On what charter? On what precedent? On what analogy? That
the uniform practice of past ages has been against their claim, they
themselves do not venture to deny. Do they mean to assert, that a
parliament in which they are not represented ought not to legislate for
them? That question we leave them to settle with their friends of
the Quarterly Review and the John Bull newspaper, who, we hope, will
enlighten them on the subject of virtual representation. If ever that
expression could be justly used, it would be in the present case; for
probably there is no interest more fully represented in both Houses of
Parliament, than that of the colonial proprietors. But for ourselves we
answer, What have you to do with such doctrines? If you will adopt the
principles of liberty, adopt them altogether. Every argument which you
can urge in support of your own claims, might be employed, with far
greater justice, in favour of the emancipation of your bondsmen.
When that event shall have taken place, your demand will deserve
consideration. At present, what you require under the name of freedom is
nothing but unlimited power to oppress. It is the freedom of Nero.
“But {322}we will rebel!” Who can refrain from thinking of Captain
Lemuel Gulliver, who, while raised sixty feet from the ground on the
hand of the King of Brohdignag, claps his hand on his sword and tells
his Majesty that he knows how to defend himself? You will rebel! Bravely
resolved, most magnanimous Grildrig! But remember the wise remark of
Lord Beelington--“courage without power,” said that illustrious
exile, “is like a consumptive running footman.” What are your means of
resistance? Are there, in all the islands put together, ten thousand
white men capable of hearing arms? Are not your forces, such as they
are, divided into small portions which can never act in concert? But
this is mere trifling. Are you, in point of fact, at this moment able
to protect yourselves against your slaves without our assistance? If
you can still rise up and lie down in security--if you can still eat the
bread of the fatherless, and grind the faces of the poor--if you can
still hold your petty parliaments, and say your little speeches, and
move, your little motions--if you can still outrage and insult the
Parliament and people of England, to what do you owe it? To nothing but
to our contemptuous mercy. If we suspend our protection--if we recall
our troops--in a week the knife is at your throats!
Look to it, that we do not take you at your word. What are you to us
that we should pamper and defend you? If the Atlantic Ocean should pass
over you, and your place know you no more, what should we lose? Could
we find no other cultivators to accept of our enormous bounties on
sugar?--no other pestilential region to which we might send our soldiers
to catch the yellow fever?--no other community for which we might pour
forth our blood and lavish our money, to purchase nothing but injuries
and insults? What do we make by you? If England is no longer to be the
_mistress_ of her colonies,--if she is to be only the handmaid of their
pleasures, or the accomplice of their crimes, she may at least venture
to ask, as a handmaid, what are to be the wages of her service,--as
an accomplice, what is to be her portion of the spoil? If justice, and
mercy, and liberty, and the law of God, and the happiness of man, be
words without a meaning, we at least talk to the purpose when we talk of
pounds, shillings, and pence.
Let us count our gains. Let us bring to the test the lofty phrases
{323}of Colonial declamation. The West Indies, we are told, are a source
of vast wealth and revenue to the country. They are a nursery of
seamen. They take great quantities of our manufactures. They add to
our political importance. They are useful posts in time of war. These
absurdities have been repeated, till they have begun to impose upon the
impostors who invented them. Let us examine them briefly.
Our commercial connexion with the West Indies is simply this. We buy our
sugar from them at a higher price than is given for it in any other part
of the world. The surplus they export to the Continent, where the price
is lower; and we pay them the difference out of our own pockets. Our
trade with the West Indies is saddled with almost all the expense
of their civil and military establishments, and with a bounty of
1,200,000l. Let these be deducted from the profits of which we hear so
much, and their amount will shrink indeed. Let us then deduct from the
residue the advantages which we relinquish in order to obtain it,--that
is to say, the profits of a free sugar trade all over the world; and
then we shall be able to estimate the boasted gains of a connexion to
which we have sacrificed the Negroes in one hemisphere, and the Hindoos
in the other.
But the West Indians take great quantities of our manufactures! They
can take only a return for the commodities which they send us. And from
whatever country we may import the same commodities, to that country
must we send out the same returns. What is it that now limits the
demands of our Eastern empire? Absolutely nothing but the want of
an adequate return. From that immense market--from the custom of one
hundred millions of consumers, our manufacturers are in a great measure
excluded, by the protecting duties on East Indian sugar.
But a great revenue is derived from the West Indian trade! Here, again,
we have the same fallacy. As long as the present quantity of sugar is
imported into England, no matter from what country, the revenue will
not suffer; and, in proportion as the price of sugar is diminished, the
consumption, and, consequently, the revenue, must increase. But the
West Indian trade affords extensive employment to British shipping and
seamen! Why more than any equally extensive trade with any other part of
the world? The more {324}active our trade, the more demand there will
be for shipping and seamen; and every one who has learnt the alphabet of
Political Economy, knows that trade is active, in proportion only as it
is free.
There are some who assert that, in a military and political point of
view, the West Indies are of great importance to this country. This is
a common, but a monstrous misrepresentation. We venture to say, that
Colonial empire has been one of the greatest curses of modern Europe.
What nation has it ever strengthened? What nation has it ever enriched?
What have been its fruits? Wars of frequent occurrence and immense cost,
fettered trade, lavish expenditure, clashing jurisdiction, corruption in
governments, and indigence among the people. What have Mexico and Peru
done for Spain, the Brazils for Portugal, Batavia for Holland? Or, if the
experience of others is lost upon us, shall we not profit by our own?
What have we not sacrificed to our infatuated passion for transatlantic
dominion? This it is that has so often led us to risk our own smiling
gardens and dear firesides for some snowy desert or infections morass
on the other side of the globe: This inspired us with the project
of conquering America in Germany: This induced us to resign all the
advantages of our insular situation--to embroil ourselves in the
intrigues, and fight the battles of half the Continent--to form
coalitions which were instantly broken---and to give subsidies which
were never earned: This gave birth to the fratricidal war against
American liberty, with all its disgraceful defeats, and all its barren
victories, and all the massacres of the Indian hatchet, and all the
bloody contracts of the Hessian slaughterhouse: This it was which, in
the war against the French republic, induced us to send thousands and
tens of thousands of our bravest troops to die in West Indian hospitals,
while the armies of our enemies were pouring over the Rhine and the
Alps. When a colonial acquisition has been in prospect, we have thought
no expenditure extravagant, no interference perilous. Gold has been to
us as dust, and blood as water. Shall we never learn wisdom? Shall we
never cease to prosecute a pursuit wilder than the wildest dream of
alchemy, with all the credulity and all the profusion of Sir Epicure
Mammon?
Those who maintain that settlements so remote conduce to the military or
maritime power of nations, fly in the face of history. {325}The colonies
of Spain were far more extensive and populous than ours. Has Spain, at
any time within the last two centuries, been a match for England either
by land or by sea? Fifty years ago, our colonial dominions in America
were far larger and more prosperous than those which we at present
possess. Have we since that time experienced any decay in our political
influence, in our opulence, or in our security? Or shall we say that
Virginia was a less valuable possession than Jamaica, or Massachusetts
than Barbadoes?
The fact is, that all the evils of our Colonial system are immensely
aggravated in the West Indies by the peculiar character of the state of
slavery which exists there. Our other settlements we have to defend only
against foreign invasion. These we must protect against the constant
enmity of the miserable bondsmen, who are always waiting for the moment
of deliverance, if not of revenge. With our other establishments we may
establish commercial relations advantageous to both parties. But these
are in a state of absolute pauperism; for what are bounties and forced
prices but an enormous poor-rate in disguise?
These are the benefits for which we are to be thankful. These are the
benefits, in return for which we are to suffer a handful of managers
and attorneys to insult the King, Lords, and Commons of England, in the
exercise of rights as old and sacred as any part of our Constitution. It
the proudest potentate in Europe, if the King of France, or the Emperor
of all the Russias, had treated our Government as these creatures of
our own have dared to do, should we not have taken such satisfaction as
would have made the ears of all that heard of it to tingle? Would there
not have been a stately manifesto, and a warlike message to both
Houses, and vehement speeches from all parties, and unanimous addresses
abounding in offers of lives and fortunes? If any _English mob_,
composed of the disciples of Paine and Carlile, should dare to pull down
a place of religious worship, to drive the minister from his residence,
to threaten with destruction any other who should dare to take his
place, would not the yeomanry be called out? Would not Parliament be
summoned before the appointed time? Would there not be sealed bags
and secret committees, and suspensions of the Habeas Corpus act? In
Barbadoes all this has been done.
It {326}has been done openly. It has _not_ been punished. It is at this
hour a theme of boasting and merriment. And what is the language of our
rulers? “We must not irritate them. We must try lenient measures. It is
better that such unfortunate occurrences should not be brought before
the Parliament.” Surely the mantle, or rather the cassock, of Sir Hugh
Evans, has descended on these gentlemen. “It is not meet the council
hear a riot. There is no fear of Got in a riot. The council, look you,
shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot.” We have
outdone all the most memorable examples of patience. The Job of Holy
Writ, the Griselda of profane romance, were but types of our philosophy.
Surely our endurance must be drawing to a close.
We do not wish that England should drive forth her prodigal offspring
to wear the rags and feed on the husks which they have desired. The
Colonists have deserved such a punishment. But, for the sake of the
slaves, for the sake of those persons, residing in this country, who are
interested in West Indian property, we should grieve to see it indicted.
That the slaves, when no longer restrained by our troops, would, in
no very long time, achieve their own liberation, cannot be doubted. As
little do we doubt that such a revolution, violent as it would doubtless
be, would be desirable, if it were the only possible means of subverting
the present system. The horrors of a battle or a massacre force
themselves upon our senses. The effects of protracted tyranny,
the terror, the degradation, the blighted affections, the stunted
intellects, the pining of the heart, the premature decay of the frame,
are evils less obvious, but equally certain; and, when continued through
successive generations, make up a greater sum of human misery than was
ever indicted in the paroxysm of any revolution. Still we cannot
doubt that savages, rude in understanding, exasperated by injuries,
intoxicated by recent freedom, would be much benefited by the wise and
merciful control of an enlightened people.
We feel also for the West Indian proprietors who reside in England.
Between them and the inhabitants of the Colonies we see a great
distinction. There may be in this body individuals infected with the
worst vices of the colonial character. But there are also among them
many gentlemen of benevolent feelings and enlarged minds, who have done
much to {327}alleviate the condition of their slaves, and who would
willingly see the meliorating measures which his Majesty’s ministers
have suggested, adopted by the West Indian legislators. They have
scarcely any thing in common with the Colonists, or with the scribblers
whom the Colonists feed and clothe. They have taken little part in the
controversy, ashamed probably of the infamous allies with whom they
would have to cooperate. But what they have said has, upon the whole,
been said manfully and courteously. Their influence, however, is at
present exerted decidedly in favour of slavery, not, we verily believe,
from any love of slavery in the abstract, but partly because they think
that their own characters are in some degree affected by the attacks
which are made on the Colonial system, and partly because they apprehend
that their property is likely to suffer in consequence of the feeling
which at present prevails throughout the country.
On both points they are mistaken. We are convinced that there is not, in
any quarter, a feeling unfriendly to them, or an indisposition to give a
fair consideration to their interests. The honest, but uninformed zeal,
of individuals, may sometimes break forth into intemperate expressions:
But the great body of the people make a wide distinction between the
class of which we speak and the Colonial mob. Let it be their care to
preserve that distinction indelible.
We call for their support. They are our natural allies. Scarcely have
the Ministers of the Crown, scarcely have the Abolitionists themselves,
been more rancorously abused by the orators of Jamaica, than those
persons. The objects of the two classes are wholly different. The one
consists of English gentlemen, naturally solicitous to preserve the
source from which they derive a part of their revenue. The other is
composed, in a great measure, of hungry adventurers, who are too poor
to buy the pleasure of tyranny, and are therefore attached to the only
system under which they can enjoy it gratis. The former wish only to
secure their possessions; the latter are desirous to perpetuate the
oppressive privileges of the white skin. Against those privileges let us
declare interminable war, war for ourselves, and for our children,
and for our grand-children,--war without peace--war without truce--war
without quarter! But we respect the rights of property as much as we
detest the prerogatives of colour.
We {328}entreat these respectable persons to reflect on the precarious
nature of the tenure by which they hold their property. Even if it were
in their power to put a stop to this controversy,--if the subject of
slavery were no longer to occupy the attention of the British public,
could they think themselves secure from ruin? Are no ominous signs
visible in the political horizon? How is it that they do not discern
this time? All the ancient fabrics of colonial empire are falling
to pieces. The old equilibrium of power has been disturbed by the
introduction of a crowd of new States into the system. Our West-India
posessions are not now surrounded, as they formerly were, by the
oppressed and impoverished colonies of a superannuated monarchy, in
the last stage of dotage and debility, but by young, and vigorous, and
warlike republics. We have defended our colonies against Spain. Does it
therefore follow that we shall be able to defend them against Mexico or
Hayti? We are told, that a pamphlet of Mr. Stephen, or a speech of Mr.
Brougham, is sufficient to excite all the slaves in our colonies to
rebel. What, then, would be the effect produced in Jamaica by the
appearance of three or four Black regiments, with thirty or forty
thousand stand of arms? The colony would be lost. Would it ever be
recovered? Would England engage in a contest for that object, at so vast
a distance, and in so deadly a climate? Would she not take warning by
the fate of that mighty expedition which perished in St. Domingo? Let
us suppose, however, that a force were sent, and that, in the field, it
were successful. Have we forgotten how long a few Maroons defended the
central mountains of the island against all the efforts of disciplined
valour? A similar contest on a larger scale might be protracted for half
a century, keeping our forces in continual employment, and depriving
property of all its security. The country might spend fifty millions
of pounds, and bury fifty thousand men, before the contest could be
terminated. Nor is this all. In a servile war, the master _must_ be the
loser--for his enemies are his chattels. Whether the slave conquer or
fall, he is alike lost to the owner. In the mean time, the soil lies
uncultivated; the machinery is destroyed. And when the possessions of
the planter are restored to him, they have been changed into a desert.
Our policy is clear. If we wish to keep the Colonies, we must take
prompt and effectual measures for raising the condition {329}of the
slaves. We must give them institutions which they may have no temptation
to change. We have governed the Canadians liberally and leniently;
and the consequence is, that we can trust to them to defend themselves
against the most formidable power that anywhere threatens our Colonial
dominions. This is the only safeguard. You may renew all the atrocities
of Barbadoes and Demerara. You may inflict all the most hateful
punishments authorised by the insular codes. You may massacre by the
thousand, and hang by the score. You may even once more roast your
captives in slow fires, and starve them in iron cages, or flay them
alive with the cart-whip. You will only hasten the day of retribution.
Therefore, we say, “Let them go forth from the house of bondage. For woe
unto you, if you wait for the plagues and the signs, the wonders and the
war, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm!”
If the great West Indian proprietors shall persist in a different line
of conduct, and ally themselves with the petty tyrants of the Antilles,
it matters little. We should gladly accept of their assistance: But we
feel assured that their opposition cannot affect the ultimate result of
the controversy. It is not to any particular party in the church or in
the state; it is not to the right or to the left hand of the speaker; it
is not to the cathedral or to the Meeting, that we look exclusively for
support. We believe that, on this subject, the hearts of the English
People burn within them. They hate slavery. They have hated it for
ages. If has, indeed, hidden itself for a time in a remote nook of
their dominions: but it is now discovered and dragged to light. That is
sufficient. Its sentence is pronounced; and it never can escape! never,
though all the efforts of its supporters should be redoubled,--never,
though sophistry, and falsehood, and slander, and the jests of the
pothouse, the ribaldry of the brothel, and the slang of the ring or
fives’ court, should do their utmost in its defence,--never, thoug44h
fresh insurrections should be got up to frighten the people out of their
judgment, and fresh companies to bubble them out of their money,--never,
though it should find in the highest ranks of the peerage, or on the
steps of the throne itself, the purveyors of its slander, and the
mercenaries of its defence! (1)
(1) Since the above article was prepared for the press, we
have met with a new and very important work on the subject
of West-India Slavery. It is entitled, “The {330}West Indies
as they are, or a real Picture of Slavery, particularly in
Jamaica,” by the Rev. H. Bickell, a clergyman of the Church
of England, who resided a considerable time in that island.
The work is ill written; and it might have been reduced with
advantage to half its present size. It produces, however, an
irresistible impression of the honesty and right intentions
of the author, who was an eyewitness of the scenes he
describes: and it continues, in a remarkable manner, all the
leading statements which, on the authority of Mr. Cooper,
Dr. Williamson, and Mr. Meabing, were laid before the public
two years ago, in the pamphlet called “Negro Slavery.” Mr.
Bickell has also brought forward various new facts of the
most damning description, in illustration both of the
rigours of Negro bondage, and of the extraordinary
dissoluteness of manners prevailing in Jamaica. We strongly
recommend the work to general perusal, as a most seasonable
antidote to those delusive tales of colonial amelioration,
by which it has been attempted to abate the horror so
universally felt in contemplating the cruel and debasing
effects of the slave system.