should here be noticed; that they are personal estate, or moveable
property, and that hence they are liable to be seized and sold for their
Owner’s debts. This operates the more unfavourably towards them,
because, in the West Indies, there is always a more rapid change of
property than in any other country; and never has there been more
speculation, never more general difficulty and distress, consequently
never more seizures and sales, than during the last twenty or thirty
years.
These continual sales, often commonly by auction, not only of recently
imported, but of homeborn and long-settled Negroes, are productive of
the most acute sufferings to the Slaves, by tearing open, in the
Africans, the old wounds, which might after many years have closed, and
by forcing them once more from their homes, their families, and
connections, when they had perhaps taken root in their West Indian soil,
and multiplied their domestic and social holdings. These
transplantations, besides, greatly tend to lessen the little disposition
which the Slaves, circumstanced as they are, naturally feel, to
endeavour to gain a good character, and obtain a master’s confidence, in
the hope that they and their families may possess a place in his esteem.
There is an object which it is obvious will operate most severely in the
case of the most industrious and best-conditioned Slaves. In proportion
as they are of this character, they are likely to have multiplied their
domestic and friendly relations, and in and about their dwelling-places
to have collected such little comforts as have been within their reach,
and as have tended to cause home to present, even to them, an idea of
consolation and refreshment. But all of them have some home, all have
some relatives and acquaintances. From all these they are hurried away,
often necessarily separated from the closest of all connections. They
are sent, probably, to form new settlements, when, perhaps, past the
prime of life, and to encounter hardships, and endure labours, to which
their bodily strength is scarcely equal.[29] At least they have to form
a new home, new connections, new attachments; and, when the best of
their days have now been spent in vain, how must the spirits, even of
the well disposed, sink within them, under the consciousness that they
have to recommend themselves to a new master, when, from the mere decay
of their bodily powers, they cannot hope, by the alacrity and vigour of
their services, to obtain any considerable share of notice or esteem; or
when, if at an earlier period of life, they are discouraged from
attempting it, by the probability, that ere long they may again be
transferred to a new owner.
But I wish you not so much to keep in view the deep wounds which the
happiness of the Slaves must sustain from these frequent sales. It is to
my present purpose to consider their effect in accustoming men to
disregard their comforts and feelings. It is impossible but that such
incidents must tend powerfully, and in various ways, to vilify and
degrade the Blacks in the general estimation, and hence to produce an
habitual disregard to their comforts and feelings.
It may be proper to state, that it was urged by our West Indian
opponents, that the grievance we have been now considering, may fairly
be laid to the charge of the British Parliament, having been sanctioned
by a statute passed in the time of George the Second, for the security
of the creditor in the mother country. The West Indian legislatures, it
was added, were bound not to enact any provision contrary to the laws of
England, and were therefore forced to endure this cruel and pernicious
law.
It would not be difficult to shew that this charge is not well founded;
but it may suffice, for the present, to remark, that, even granting that
the effect of the 5th of Geo. 2d was such as is here supposed, yet that
Slaves were not for the first time rendered by that law personal
property, and liable to be sold separate from the land for the payment
of the simple contract debts of the Master. They have always been in
that wretched state. Still more it might truly be alleged, that the
Legislature of this country was utterly ignorant of the effect of the
law on the happiness of the Negroes, and not even a hint was dropped on
that subject by any one of the many West Indian Gentlemen in Parliament;
and, when the mischievous effects of the statute were explained,
Parliament immediately and unanimously consented to the very first
proposal which was made for repealing it. We do not find however, that
the West Indian legislatures have availed themselves of the acknowledged
right of rescinding it, which they now enjoy. Supposing therefore, what
is not however the fact, that, in this instance only, the British
Parliament and the Colonial legislatures, the former utterly ignorant of
all the practical evils resulting to the Slaves from the law in
question, the latter having them daily before their eyes, to have been
both parties to the wrong; we have at least done our part towards
redressing the injury; they have not done theirs.
[Sidenote: The universal practice of working under the whip.]
The next particular which must be mentioned, is, like all the rest, at
once an evidence and an effect of the degraded state of the Negroes. It
is that universal and established practice of working them under the
whip like cattle.[30] And here is it possible for any one not to feel
peculiarly shocked at the idea of working females in this method; the
consequence of which must unavoidably be, that notwithstanding the
immunities which may be allowed in more advanced stages of pregnancy, or
even as soon as a woman is known to be in that state, yet that females
will in fact be often worked in this mode, at times, and under
circumstances, when Nature peculiarly calls for forbearance, tenderness,
and support. Let me repeat, that it is not civilization merely, and
politeness, as sometimes happens in the case of artificial wants; it is
Nature herself, which, in such circumstances, claims some sympathy and
indulgence. And is this a time, are these circumstances, in which a
female should be urged to her labour by the stroke, or even the crack of
the whip? To view the practice in a mere mercenary view, surely if the
West Indian Gentlemen had been seriously and earnestly intent on
superseding the necessity of purchasing from the Slave market, by
rearing Negroes on their own estates, the younger women at least, if
employed in field-work at all, would not be worked in this rude and
undistinguishing manner, when a single inconsiderate lash of the
driver’s whip, intended not as a punishment, but as a quickener, or a
memento, may in its consequences, prevent the birth of a future infant.
Surely I need not enlarge on this disgusting topic, or enumerate in
detail the various evils which must result from so hateful a practice;
it’s tendency greatly to lessen, if not almost utterly to extinguish in
the Slaves, all honest, I had almost said, all mercenary emulation or
competition, all the hopes of obtaining a master’s approbation and
confidence; it’s admitting no occasional remissions of labour,
afterwards to be compensated by increased exertions; it’s making no
allowance for different states of mind or body; but, without inquiry as
to these, as the post-horse is to go through his stage, so the Slave
under the same impulse is to keep up with his fellows: In short, it’s
utter forgetfulness of _mind_ in the human subject, who is thus
considered and treated as of an inferior species, as not capable of
being worked upon by the ordinary motives of the hope of reward, or even
the fear of punishment; as one who, like the vilest of the brute
species, has no foresight or recollection, and must therefore be
subjected to the same humiliating regimen.
[Sidenote: Cruel and indecent public punishments of Slaves.]
Another particular, concerning which I am doubtful whether it ought to
be noticed chiefly as a cause of the degradation of the Negro race, or
as an evidence and effect of that degradation, is the cruel, and, in the
case of the female sex, still more the highly indecent punishments
inflicted in places of public resort, and in the face of day. Unless the
feelings of sympathy towards Blacks, as fellow creatures, or of decency
respecting them as of our own species, were not, to so great a degree,
extinct, such exhibitions would not be continued, if from no better
motive, yet because they would counteract their own effect, when they
were the execution of a public sentence, by interesting all beholders in
favour of the criminal, and bringing, to use the phrase of our law, the
Government into hatred and contempt; or because, when they were
punishments ordered by a master or mistress, besides probably producing
a riot, they would render those who ordered them the subject of general
obloquy. But, regarded as Blacks now are by the bulk of the population,
there seems to have been no fear lest public executions, by the most
cruel and protracted tortures, should be matter of public scandal. As
for the punishments of Owners, when General T. saw the shameless and
cruel flogging, on the public parade, of two very decent women, who,
while waiting at table where he was visiting, had been ordered by their
mistress, in spite of his expostulations, to go with the Jumper (or
public Flogger), to receive a dozen, each stroke of which brought flesh
from them, we do not find that the incident excited any surprize or
attention in any one but the General himself.[31] If such could be the
treatment sanctioned by public opinion, and general feeling, of decent
young women, publicly and in the face of day, what consideration would
be likely to be paid to the comforts and feelings of the field Negroes,
who are regarded as a far inferior race to the domestics, especially
when there are no officious bystanders to witness what may take place.
Let me but ask, what must be the effect necessarily produced on the mind
from having been habituated to such scenes as these from early infancy?
Can we be surprized to hear that, too often, even the delicacy and
tenderness of the female sex is not proof against the natural
consequences of daily beholding such spectacles?[32] Should we not be
almost prepared to find, the particular which I confess has ever most
deeply affected my mind as being of all others the most decisive proof
of the utter vileness and degradation of the Negro race, [Sidenote:
Other signs of degradation.] that utter contempt which too generally
prevails of their social and domestic feelings; that they are too
commonly regarded as below instruction, below the range of moral
precepts and prohibitions, below the sphere of the obligations, duties,
restraints, and comforts of conjugal, domestic, and social life.
Hence, doubtless, proceeds their being in some degree regarded, like
their fellow brutes, as below the necessity of observing towards others
the proper decencies of life, or of having these decencies observed by
others towards them. Hence, while Mr. Parke assures us, that in Africa,
adultery is not more frequent than in this country, we hear the most
respectable Colonists treat the very idea of introducing marriage among
the Slaves, in their present state, as perfectly hopeless or ridiculous.
Do we not here find the explanation of that strange phenomenon, formerly
mentioned, that while the prevalence and evils of dissoluteness are
universally acknowledged, scarcely any one thinks of applying that which
has already appeared from experience so safe, so appropriate, and so
beneficial a remedy?
[Sidenote: Inadequate legal protection.]
But it is time to pass to another most important particular, which, like
those already mentioned, is at once both cause and effect, both an
evidence and a consequence of degradation—the inadequate protection
afforded to the Slaves by the laws.
Here again let me not be misunderstood. It is not the matter of my
present complaint, that, from the inadequate penalties annexed to the
ill-treatment of Negro Slaves, and that still more from the evidence of
black and coloured men not being admissible, they are subject to the
restraints of civilized society, without being partakers of its
benefits. Much might be said, much has been said, to prove how
insufficiently they are secured by the laws against injuries and
insults. On the other hand, considerable stress, too has sometimes been
laid on the mildness of the penalties where the offences of Slaves were
to be punished, and still more on the laws which have from time to time
been passed for the protection of Slaves. The former assertion might be
but too effectually disproved, by appealing to various passages in the
Colonial statute book; and, where admitted, the lenity might be traced
to a cause less generous than disinterested humanity. It might have been
suggested to one of the most powerful of our colonial opponents, who
urged that capital executions of Slaves had taken place in very few
instances, that they might naturally be expected to be more rare, and
punishments in general more lenient, where men’s own property would
suffer from severity.
Concerning all laws for the protection of the Slaves, it might be justly
remarked, that so far as the protection of Slaves is concerned against
ill usage from all but their Masters, it was natural that the Slaves of
any man should be protected equally with his cattle, or any other
articles of his property; nor did the Slaves, any more than the cattle,
owe this protection to the humanity of the legislature. They were
protected merely like the rest of his substance.
But as to the far more important consideration, concerning legal
protection from the Owner’s ill usage, it is unquestionably true, that
be the laws what they may, “so long as the evidence of black or coloured
men against whites continues inadmissible,” the latter, in all that
respects the treatment of Negroes, are “in a manner put beyond the reach
of the law.” Such were the very words in which a much respected Colonial
Proprietor, though called as one of our opponents witnesses,
acknowledged the important truth.
His testimony on this head was the more worthy of attention, because,
besides his long residence in the West Indies, and his known
intelligence and habits of observation, he was for some time Chief
Justice of one of our islands. He also acknowledged, that till black
evidence should be admissible, he knew no possible mode of preventing
the most gross infractions of any laws against the ill-treatment of
Negroes. The subsequent death of this valuable man is deeply to be
regretted; because, with several of his immediate connections, he was
exempt from many of the prejudices which, in colonial proprietors, too
often obstruct the reform of West Indian abuses.
A remarkable proof was afforded how little the Slaves were regarded as
under the protection of law, against their Masters ill usage, by a
transaction which took place a few years ago, in one of our oldest sugar
colonies, and of which an account is contained in the Privy Council
report:
A man, named Herbert, in low circumstances, and of very indifferent
character, had been guilty of an act of the most wanton cruelty, which
was rendered still more atrocious by being committed against the
helplessness of infancy. He had most wantonly and cruelly lacerated the
mouth and face of a child six years old, his own Slave, in a shocking
manner, and bruised various parts of its little body. The crime happened
to be committed under circumstances which admitted of legal proof, and,
owing to the benevolent and spirited exertions of a man of legal
eminence, who then resided in the neighbourhood, and who himself was
able to give decisive evidence, a prosecution was carried on against the
perpetrator. The facts were clearly established, and most horrible they
were; yet so strange and novel a doctrine did it appear to the jury,
that a Master was liable to punishment for any act of cruelty exercised
on his own Slave, that, after long consultation, they brought in a
conditional verdict, “Guilty, subject to the opinion of the Court, if
immoderate correction of a Slave, by his Master, be a crime indictable.”
The Court determined in the affirmative; and what was the punishment of
this abominable act of barbarity? A fine of forty shillings currency,
equivalent to about thirty shillings of our money! This was the more
extraordinary, because only two years before, in consequence of some
recent acts of abominable cruelty, an Act of Assembly had been passed
for the express purpose of preventing barbarities of a similar nature,
and a fine of £.500 currency, together with six months imprisonment, had
been annexed as the punishment of such offences. But so little were the
enactments of law in unison with the general feelings of the bulk of the
people, that even after this statute had been passed, not only did a
jury doubt whether the most wanton barbarity towards an infant, by its
owner, was liable to any punishment; but the idea of calling a Master to
account for this ill-treatment of one of his own Slaves created a
popular ferment, and a violent cry against the prosecutors of the
delinquent, and was resented as a gross and novel infraction of the
rights and privileges of ownership. This very Herbert afterwards brought
his action against the Provost Marshal, for having taken the poor
unoffending boy into his custody, partly that the child might be
forth-coming, partly to save him from the violence of his brutal Master.
The Provost Marshal, after a long course of judicial proceeding, would
have had heavy penalties to pay, had he not got off on a point of law.
Herbert was considered as a persecuted man, and became a highly popular
character in the community.
But that which renders this incident most of all worthy of remark, is,
that unsatisfactory as the issue might appear to us to have been, a
detailed account of it, with some other instances too much in the same
spirit, was sent over to the Privy Council, by the Council and Assembly
of the island, with some apparent satisfaction, as a proof of the
protection enjoyed by the Slaves against immoderate punishment or
cruelty on the part of their Masters.
Not to insist in this place on the impossibility of enforcing any laws
which may be enacted for the protection and comfort of Slaves, a topic
on which I may have occasion to say more hereafter, law and slavery are,
in their own nature, absolutely and universally incompatible. The
Slave’s best protection must ever be found in his Master’s kindness,
especially where kindness is combined with affluence; and, by giving to
the Slaves a nominal right to definite legal privileges, you only infuse
a spirit of discontent into them, and a spirit of suspicion and
resentment into their Masters; at least, until the absolute nullity of
the law be clearly manifest to both parties. The Master has not the same
motives for tenderness, (motives ever powerful in a generous mind) as
when all right, all rivalship are excluded, and he knows that his Slaves
are given up completely into his power; that they are entirely dependent
on his will, and that they must receive every favour as flowing
altogether from his spontaneous beneficence. It is not therefore going
too far, to affirm, that by destroying, or at least impairing, the force
of these feelings, you do the Slave more harm, than can be compensated
by any benefit he can derive from the laws.
[Sidenote: Considered in the view of its degrading effects.]
But to quit this view of the subject, it is the effect, in another
direction, of this inadequate protection of the laws, to which I wish to
point your particular attention. I wish you to observe the proofs which
it affords of the low estimate of the Negro race; as well as the
tendency which it must have to keep them in their present abject and
depressed condition.
But here, instead of quoting passages from the statute books and
judicial records of the several islands, which might be objected to, as
an unfair test of the opinions and feelings of the present generation, I
will extract from a set of papers, laid not long ago before the House of
Commons by Government, the account, given from the most respectable
authority, of some transactions which have recently taken place, and
which shew the degraded state of the Negro race in, excepting Jamaica,
the largest and oldest settled of all our West Indian colonies.
[Sidenote: Late incidents in Barbadoes.]
The Governor of Barbadoes, Lord Seaforth himself, I understand, an old
West Indian proprietor, in consonance with the wishes of many
respectable inhabitants, endeavoured lately, from the most honourable
motives, to procure the repeal of a law which had long been the disgrace
of the Barbadoes statute book, and for the rescinding of which an effort
had been in vain made a few years before; a law, by which the wilful
murder of a Slave was punishable only by a fine of £.15. currency, or
about £.11. 4_s_. sterling[33]. His Lordship therefore sent a message in
the common form to the House of Assembly, recommending that an act
should be passed to make the murder of a Slave a capital felony. There
seems every reason to believe that the Council, or Colonial House of
Lords, would gladly have assented to the proposition. But, strange as it
may appear to those who are unacquainted with the West Indian
prejudices, notwithstanding the time and manner in which the proposition
was brought forward, the House of Assembly absolutely refused to make
the alteration. But if the bare statement of this fact must shock every
liberal mind, how much will the shock be increased, when it is known
under what circumstances it was that this refusal took place.
For it happened, that, very recently, several of the most wanton and
atrocious murders had been committed. Some of these were accompanied
with circumstances of such horrid and disgusting barbarity, as to be too
shocking for recital; and yet it scarcely seems justifiable to allow
such horrid deeds, from their very atrociousness, to derive impunity.
But one of the accounts you must submit to hear, because the narrative
contains circumstances which strikingly illustrate the condition and
estimation of the Negro race. To myself, to say the truth, it tells me,
in the view in which I shall here regard it, nothing more than I already
knew; but it was scarcely to be expected that Providence would furnish
such undeniable and glaring proofs, of the assertions we had before
established by the most respectable testimony.
_Extract of a Letter from the Right Hon. Lord Seaforth, to Earl Camden,
one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, dated Barbadoes,
7th Jan. 1805._
“I inclose the Attorney General’s letter to me on the subject of the
Negroes so most wantonly murdered. I am sorry to say, _several other
instances of the same barbarity_ have occurred, with which I have not
troubled your Lordship, as I only wished to make you acquainted with the
subject in general.”
It will be enough for me to quote that part of the Attorney General’s
letter in which he gives the account of the single murder which I wish
to lay before you:
_Extract of a Letter from the Attorney General of Barbadoes, to the
Governor of the Island._