separate consideration; but let me also remark, that our retiring
gradually from the trade, would greatly favour the entrance of other
nations into the post we had before occupied. It would be utterly
impossible for them to find capital or other means sufficient for
undertaking the whole of so extensive a commerce; but were we to give it
up by degrees, they might possibly be able, by great efforts, to obtain
the means of carrying on, part after part, what we should have
abandoned.
[Sidenote: Abolitionists falsely deemed inconsistent for not
emancipating the West Indian Slaves.]
And here, perhaps, it may be right to answer a strange objection, which
our opponents, at a loss, surely, for sound arguments, have urged
against us. I may be able also at once to vindicate the Abolitionists
from two opposite charges, which have been brought against them. One
class of their opponents, in spite of repeated and most positive
assurances to the contrary, have imputed to them the design of
immediately emancipating the Slaves. Can it be necessary to declare,
that the Abolitionists are full as much as any other men convinced, that
insanity alone could dictate such a project. On the other hand, by
another class of opponents, they have been charged with being unfaithful
to their own principles, in not immediately emancipating the Slaves
already in the islands, as well as immediately putting a stop to our
ravages in Africa. Sometimes it has been argued, that we ourselves prove
by our conduct in this instance, that the laws of justice must
occasionally concede somewhat to considerations of expediency. That
therefore they do but extend a little further than we, the limits of
that concession, when they propose that the Slave Trade itself, with all
its horrors, should be suffered to continue.
It scarcely would be requisite to expose the sophistry of this argument,
if it had not sometimes proceeded from men of understanding, whose use
of it however can only be accounted for by the supposition, that they
are utterly unacquainted with the circumstances of the case.
Supposing they were themselves to discover an unfortunate human being,
who, by long imprisonment and severe treatment, had been driven into a
state of utter madness; would either justice or humanity prompt them to
grant at once to this unfortunate man the unconstrained enjoyment of his
natural liberty? On the contrary, would not these principles rather
inculcate the duty of endeavouring by proper medical regimen, by
salutary restraint, and if necessary even by the harsher expedient of
wholesome discipline, to restore him to his senses, and qualify him for
that freedom which he might afterwards enjoy?
The West Indian Slaves are in a state which calls for a course of
treatment founded on similar principles. It would be the grossest
violation and the merest mockery of justice and humanity, to emancipate
them at once, in their present unhappy condition. God forbid (with most
serious reverence I use the expression) that we should not desire to
impart to the Negro Slaves the blessings of freedom. No man, I believe,
estimates liberty more highly, or loves it better, than myself. True
liberty, of course, I mean, the child of reason and law, the parent of
order and happiness; such liberty, as that, of which they must be dull
indeed who do not understand the nature and feel the value, who have
lived in the enjoyment of the blessings which it dispenses under the
form of a British Constitution; while they have beheld also its perfect
contrast, both in nature and effects, in the wild licentiousness of a
neighbouring kingdom.
It is indeed a “plant of celestial growth,” but the soil and climate
must be prepared for its reception, or it will not bring forth its
proper fruits. These are fruits, alas! which our poor degraded Negro
Slaves are as yet incapable of enjoying. To grant it to them
immediately, would be to insure not only their masters ruin, but their
own. A certain previous course of discipline is necessary. They must be
trained and educated for this most perfect state of manly maturity; and,
by a singular felicity of coincidence, the stoppage of all further
importations from Africa, with all the consequences which it introduces
in its train, is the very shortest and safest path by which the Slaves
can travel to the enjoyment of true liberty.
[Sidenote: Other objections to Abolition.]
Besides the great argument urged by the opponents of the abolition, that
of not being able to maintain their stock of Slaves at its present
number and force, without importation from Africa, a position which, I
trust, has been now most satisfactorily refuted by decisive appeals both
to speculation and experience; other allegations also were made
concerning the injurious consequences of the abolition, and of these it
may now be proper to take a brief review.
It should however be borne in mind, that they all depend on the
determination of the great question concerning the keeping up of the
population, except so far only as the African Slave Trade is in
question; and, with the exception before made, of persons connected with
places whence this bloody traffic is carried on (now, to the honour of
the kingdom, but two, London and Liverpool), none have been found such
steady advocates for the Slave Trade, as to contend for its continuance
merely for it’s own sake.
The opponents of abolition, and especially some of our great colonial
antagonists, have confidently stated, that our measure would effect the
speedy destruction of our West Indian colonies; and that in consequence
of the loss of national capital which we should sustain, and from our no
longer importing the productions of our Western colonies, the abolition
would bring down utter ruin on the commercial, manufacturing, maritime,
and financial interests of the empire.
[Sidenote: Abolition injurious to our Commerce, Manufactures, &c., &c.]
I am far from denying the political, commercial, and financial
advantages we have derived from the West Indies, or the benefit
resulting to us, as a maritime nation, from the distant situation of
those possessions. Still it is impossible to admit the principles of
calculation, any more than the reasoning, of our opponents, when they
state the whole loss which the public will sustain by the abolition of
the Slave Trade.
They commonly begin by putting down as loss, very nearly the whole value
of our exports to Africa, together with that of all the ships and
sailors employed in that branch of commerce. They enlarge much also on
the evils resulting from the suddenness of the shock, by so large a
share of the national capital, as well as of our ships and seamen, being
all at once thrown out of employment; they then pass over to the West
Indies, and sum up the value of the West Indian estates of all kinds
belonging to British subjects, with their buildings, Negroes, and other
stock. To these they add the value of all the exports and imports, to
and from the West Indies; with all the revenue derived from them, and
the shipping and sailors which they employ; and then they tell us, that,
adding the value of all these various articles together, we shall find
the amount of our loss.
With respect to the African branch of the foregoing statement, all who
believe with me, that the Africans are not incapable of civilization,
and that when the fatal barrier shall be broken down, which along the
whole western frontier has shut out all the improvements to be derived
from a bloodless intercourse with more polished nations, they may
gradually advance to a state of social order, comfort, and abundance;
all who entertain hopes like these, will anticipate the immense amount
of the commercial transactions which Britons in future times may carry
on with that vast continent; and surely our descendants will, at the
same time, wonder that their forefathers, on principles even of mere
commercial gain, could be blind to the advantages to be derived from
diffusing our manufactures through a region which constitutes almost a
third part of the habitable globe.
Even our opponents themselves will acknowledge, that the suddenness of
the shock is alone to be regarded. The objection on this ground was
quite satisfactorily, though briefly refuted, in the concise statement
formerly referred to. It appears, that, even before the abolition of
that large part of the Slave Trade which consisted in supplying
foreigners, and the French and Dutch conquered settlements with Slaves;
the capital employed in the Slave Trade was but about one thirty-fifth
part of the whole of our capital employed in foreign trade; and it was
very truly affirmed, that “very few changes ever take place in the
political arrangements of the state, or in its measures of commercial
œconomy, which are not attended with a much greater shifting of capital,
than the abolition of the Slave Trade, however sudden, could have
effected in the periods of its greatest prosperity.”
The assertion, that we should be injured by suddenly throwing out of
occupation the ships and seamen employed in the African Trade, was shewn
to stand on still weaker grounds. When at its very highest amount, an
amount far higher than it will ever again reach, unless we even replace
the branches which we have actually lopped off, it employed not
one-sixtieth part of our whole tonnage; not one twenty-third part of our
seamen. But so far as our seamen are in consideration, it will scarcely
be disputed by any Naval Officer, that we should gain by the extinction
of the Slave Trade.
With respect to the West Indian part of the price, as calculated by our
opponents, which Great Britain must pay for obeying the dictates of
justice and humanity, by abolishing the Slave Trade; we must remark,
that they forget that the revenue at least, derived from the taxes
raised on West Indian productions, is paid by the subjects of this
country. Other objections of detail might be made to their calculations.
But, passing by these, let me observe, that, above all, they utterly
forget, that in this reasoning they take for granted the whole question
in dispute; for the Abolitionists maintain, that, while the abolition
would produce a gradual increase of our exports to the West Indies, from
the improving condition of the bulk of their population; our revenue,
our imports, and our marine, dependent on them, would be fixed on a
basis far more safe and durable than that on which they now rest. But in
considering the question on the grounds of policy, it is ever to be kept
in mind, that the alternative is not, whether or not we shall take a
step which is affirmed, on one side, to be big with mischief, while the
opponents only maintain, on the other, that it will be productive of no
injury. It is, whether we shall take a step, which may perhaps produce
some slight inconveniencies, or whether we shall subject ourselves, by
refusing to take it, to great and inevitable calamities. The West Indian
proprietors who are friends of the Slave Trade cannot be more positive
that its termination will be injurious to their interests, than the
Abolitionists are, that its continuance is every moment threatening them
with ruin.
But when the Colonists tell us that the system which we recommend to
them, would be injurious to their own and the national welfare, in
opposition to the repeatedly avowed opinions of those great statesmen,
in the sense of national interest entertained by the one or by the other
of whom they have all, in every other instance, concurred; are we not
also entitled to say, that their system has at least had a full and fair
trial, and that the issue of this experiment has been to bring our old
colonies in general into such an extremity of distress and
embarrassment, as even the realizing of the utmost apprehensions which
our opponents have entertained from the abolition could scarcely exceed?
[Sidenote: Present West Indian System ruinous.]
Here again an immense field opens to our view. But I must take a most
hasty survey of it; otherwise it would be no difficult task to prove,
that the Slave Trade, and the system of management with which it is
intimately associated, has, in various ways, tended to this unprosperous
issue. The eyes of the public have been dazzled by the sight of some
splendid fortunes, which, it is understood, have been rapidly acquired;
while the liberal, not to say profuse, tempers and habits of the West
Indian gentlemen, tempers and habits naturally generated by a system of
slavery, as well as by a tropical climate, and which are powerfully
promoted by the prodigious variations in the annual returns of their
estates, tend to keep up the delusion.
But West Indian speculations, which have often been called a lottery,
are, like the lottery, on the whole a very losing game. This will be the
more readily assented to, when it is stated, that in Jamaica, by far the
largest of our colonies, taking the whole island together, the planters
capital, as was stated in 1789 to the Privy Council, by a Committee of
the Council of the island, does not yield more than about 4 per cent.;
and this, it is to be observed, is not obtained by all adventurers in
about an equal proportion; but as some derive great gains, others are
proportionably losers. In some few of the smaller islands, the profit on
the capital was stated to be somewhat, but only a little more.
The facility of purchasing labourers afforded by the Slave Trade has
tempted multitudes to their ruin. Sometimes a great number of Slaves,
for which no adequate preparations were made, have been put to the most
unhealthy and laborious of all employments, the clearing of new land,
and forming of new settlements. Accordingly, it has followed for the
most part but too naturally, that the Slaves have perished, and the
estate has been either thrown up, or sold for the benefit of the
creditors.
These are no new speculations. Mr. Long, above thirty years ago, dilated
on the evils of this system in the strongest terms. He even went so far
as to recommend, with a view to the prevention of them, a temporary
stoppage of the importation of Slaves from Africa; and he confirmed his
reasoning by appealing to the experience of one of our North American
colonies, which, when involved in the deepest distress by the operation
of similar circumstances, had been retrieved from a state of almost
utter ruin by the adoption of a similar expedient.
We have had an opportunity of receiving but too decisive a proof of the
bad effects of suffering the opposite system to go on without restraint.
Even twenty-six years ago they had exhibited a display of ruin, which
was scarcely equalled by the effects of any regular and permanent cause
of evil, in any other age or country. It would scarcely have appeared
credible, if it were not established by the records of a public court,
that in twenty years, from 1760 to 1780, the executions on estates in
the Sheriff’s court amounted in number to above 80,000, and were to the
amount in value of £.32,500,000 currency, or about £.22,500,000
sterling. Again; of all the sugar estates in the island at the beginning
of the same period of twenty years, nearly one half were, at the end of
it, either thrown up as not worth cultivating, or were in the hands of
creditors, or mortgagees, or had been sold for their benefit.[45]
This was many years before the abolition of the Slave Trade had ever
been proposed; and one would have conceived, that the consequences of
the system which had been so long pursued, might alone have produced a
disrelish for it, and have predisposed the Colonists to adopt another
which was recommended by the highest authorities. Prejudice, however,
and party spirit, were too powerful for reason and sound policy, as well
as for humanity and justice. And what has been the result? The affairs
of the colonies have gone on from bad to worse, until the distress being
extremely aggravated by another cause, to be presently noticed, the
great island of Jamaica is represented, by its own legislature, in a
state, to use the compendious terms of a very able and experienced West
Indian proprietor, of general distress and foreclosure of property.
During all this time a debt to the mother country, before prodigious,
has been gradually accumulating; or rather, perhaps, to say the truth,
the merchants of London have for the most part become the real
proprietors of colonial estates; while the resident, and even sometimes
the absentee planters, have been little more in reality than their
stewards and agents.
You will naturally be astonished at the facts which have been here
stated; you will naturally ask, what temptations can have been
sufficiently strong to prompt men to go on in such a continued course,
with speculations which have proved in the main so unprofitable? It is
really difficult to account satisfactorily for the phœnomenon. Much is
certainly to be ascribed to the operation of that principle in our
nature, the gambling principle as it may be termed, the existence and
effects of which have been so well explained by Dr. Adam Smith; the
disposition to overrate our probable success, and to assign too little
weight to contingencies which may disappoint our expectations. However,
in the present instance, besides this general cause, we may discover
several specific causes of sure and highly powerful operation.
The West Indies are a very wide field, and some few instances of great
and rapid success attract more notice than the far more numerous cases
which terminate in ruin. The British merchant’s profit from consignments
ensures a somewhat ready disposition to assist adventurers in planting.
When also, as often happens, there is a glut of Slaves in the West
Indian market, as they are an expensive article while they remain
unsold, the planter can buy them on a proportionably longer credit. Two
and even three years are not seldom allowed; the Planter therefore is
tempted to purchase Slaves even if he does not greatly want them, in the
hope, that before the time of payment arrives, they will have more than
worked out their cost, by the sugars which their labour will have
brought to market. In like manner the British merchant trusts, that
before the bills drawn on him shall become due, the sugars in his hands
will meet them. Thus encouraged, the planter buys. Meanwhile the Slaves
must be set to work; and the inadequate funds of their master, the same
cause which curtails their food and abridges their other comforts,
causes them to be worked the harder. They sicken and drop off, and
perish in what is called the _seasoning_, a mode of death sufficiently
important and notorious to have obtained this epithet; a somewhat
singular one, considering that the climate of the West Indies and Africa
are so much the same. Yet this is a system, which, ruinous as it is, has
a natural tendency to increase; which may grow even to an indefinite
extent. The evils of it, however, though too long unacknowledged, are
now at least felt by all who are not blinded by interest or passion. An
immense mass of the national capital has thus been invested, I had
almost said has been sunk, in our Trans-Atlantic Empire. In one respect
it may be said, that, in accordance with the principles so clearly
developed by the great political Economist who has been already named,
our commercial accumulations have found their way to the land, and have
become an agricultural capital. But it is to land many thousand miles
removed from the mother country.
[Sidenote: Excessive accumulation of capital in the West Indies.]
I admit all the advantages, to their utmost extent, which we derive,
considered as a maritime nation, from these distant possessions. But
there are peculiar circumstances in their situation, which must make
every considerate politician acknowledge how much more it would have
been for the benefit of this country if a part of that capital had been
employed at home. What is expended in the improvement of our own soil is
so much permanently added to the wealth, resources, and population of
Great Britain. It is well digested, and well assimilated nutriment; and
it adds proportionably to our muscular strength. It is inseparably a
part of ourselves; it must share our fortunes; and in all times and
circumstances contribute to our benefit. Even the wealth which is
acquired by British subjects in the East Indies is brought home to be
spent in our own country. It improves our land, or it increases the
funds to be employed in commercial or manufacturing enterprizes.
How differently circumstanced is that part of our national capital,
which is invested in the West Indies. It is in a situation where it is
peculiarly open to seizure; and where, in consequence, it often invites
the attack of an enemy, while at the same time it is defended at an
immense expence of the lives of our fellow subjects. From a fatal
principle of internal weakness, it may at once be dissipated by the
explosion of an insurrection, or it may be separated from us by other
events which no one can call impossible. Not only would our gain, from a
large part at least of this capital, have been greater in amount, if it
had been invested within our own island; but still more, the gain,
whatever it might have been, would have been held by a less precarious
tenure. Of West Indian, even more truly than of any other riches, it may
be affirmed, that they are apt to make themselves wings and fly away.
But notwithstanding the decisive proofs which have been adduced, of the
ruinous consequences of the existing system; notwithstanding the tried
efficiency, and salutary operation, of those great principles, to which,
in the event of the abolition, we look for the advancing safety,
happiness, and greatness of our Western Colonies; notwithstanding, still
more, the acknowledged authority of that great man, whose opinion of the
tendency of the abolition to promote the solid and permanent prosperity,
as well as security, of the West Indies, was so repeatedly declared—I am
yet aware that the statement of the contrary opinion by the Colonists
themselves, and by their agents and correspondents in this country,
greatly biasses the judgment of many considerate and respectable men.
[Sidenote: Probable causes of the opposition to abolition.]
Allow me therefore to make a few observations on this head, and to
consider a little whether there may not be other causes besides reason
and argument, from which the continued opposition of what is termed the
West Indian body may probably be owing in no inconsiderable degree.
It is not surprising that a great effect has been produced by the
declaration of so numerous and respectable a class of the community as
that of the West Indian body, that the abolition would be ruinous to
their interests; especially, considering that there has been full scope
for the operation of party spirit, we should not be surprized to find
this opinion held somewhat strongly and generally by the colonial world,
and their numerous connections. Yet surely we have been too much
accustomed to hear men predicting the most fatal consequences from
incidents and measures, which have been depending, when the event has
afterwards proved that their fears, if not utterly groundless, have been
at least excessively magnified, to conclude that the mere circumstance
of such apprehensions being entertained, is a sufficient proof of their
having a sound foundation. We have already stated a striking instance of
this kind, in the progress of this very contest—that of the violent
opposition which was made by all the parties concerned, to the passing
of the Slave-carrying Bill; a measure which a very few years after was
acknowledged, as it is still universally confessed, to have been
beneficial to them all. One of the most efficient of the opponents of
abolition, in 1792, frankly acknowledged this common delusion; and even
declared, that he anticipated the period when the question of abolition
itself would afford another instance of its having occurred. He stated a
particular fact in confirmation of his opinion; which, as the story is
not long, it may be worth while to relate.