Government. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our
fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in
the institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such
a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequences
from which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which would
throw the whole commercial and political system of the world into
confusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial
legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say more
especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourable
Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.
Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral
obligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against
moral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked but
a shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great and
prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin what
they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: I
will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble them
away to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standards
of right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest
at the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish
the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two
weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and
loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as
much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their
own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute
Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they
profess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existing
laws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not
say of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Take
the article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the United
States which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco of
Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently
imported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourer
of the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in your
Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and
authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except a
few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanical
gardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland.
The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivation
spread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish
freeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and
Havannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation.
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of the
gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to exclude
the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco the
monopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer of
the United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on any
terms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident that
the three right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the
Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of
the Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No." And why not?
"Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is," they will
say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and by
slaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic in
defiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. True
it is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then
on the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty
of six hundred per cent., sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent.:
and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise
duty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of
revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and
make it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly." You may be
right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moral
obligation of which you talk so much be one which may with propriety
yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it be
paramount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British
snuff and cigars.
The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors of
the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain
and Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws in
existence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrine
that many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, when
they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But what
will the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new
budget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already
existing in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowd
of new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with a
proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation of
raw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict
accordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that
it will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend
to vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown by
slaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common
sense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a
paragraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists, which was
to the following effect:--"Thus has this eminent statesman given to the
English labourer a large supply of a most important raw material, and
has manfully withstood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate our
country with sugar dyed in negro blood." With what I should like to
know, is the right honourable Baronet's cotton dyed?
Formerly, indeed, an attempt was made to distinguish between the
cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of sugar. The cultivation of
sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the health and life of
the slave. But that plea, whatever it may have been worth, must now be
abandoned; for the right honourable Baronet now proposes to reduce, to
a very great extent, the duty on slave grown sugar imported from the
United States.
Then a new distinction is set up. The United States, it is said, have
slavery; but they have no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say that
the sugar and cotton of the United States are the fruits, not only of
slavery, but of the slave trade. And I say further that, if there be on
the surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is more
accountable than any other for the misery and degradation of the
African race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which the right
honourable Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce of
which he proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever. I have
no pleasure in going into an argument of this nature. I do not conceive
that it is the duty of a member of the English Parliament to discuss
abuses which exist in other societies. Such discussion seldom tends to
produce any reform of such abuses, and has a direct tendency to wound
national pride, and to inflame national animosities. I would willingly
avoid this subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me no
choice. He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose
of criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States. He
tells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding the
justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for punishing
the barbarity of others. He binds up the dearest interests of my
constituents with questions with which otherwise I should, as a Member
of Parliament, have nothing to do. I would gladly keep silence on such
questions. But it cannot be. The tradesmen and the professional men
whom I represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for some
years, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it to
be grievous, unequal, inquisitorial? Why are we to be loaded in time of
peace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war?" The
paper manufacturer, the soap manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Tax
is to be continued, are our important and suffering branches of industry
to have no relief?" And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behave
so well as the United States towards the negro race." Can I then avoid
instituting a comparison? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truth
of an assertion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those who
have sent me hither? I must speak out; and, if what I say gives offence
and produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that inconvenience
the Government is responsible.
I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave trade,
not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe,
more odious and more demoralising than that which is carried on between
Africa and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana and
Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of the Union are
divided into two classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts of
burden increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugar
and cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be worked
to death. To what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we may
learn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. North
Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States. During
the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of North Carolina
was almost stationary. The slave population of Virginia positively
decreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and Virginia propagation was,
during those ten years, going on fast. The number of births among the
slaves in those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number of
the deaths. What then became of the surplus? Look to the returns from
the Southern States, from the States whose produce the right honourable
Baronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all; and
you will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding States
was barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming States. In
Louisiana, for example, where we know that the negro population is
worn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to itself, keep up its
numbers, there were, in 1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in
1840, one hundred and seventy thousand. In Alabama, the slave population
during those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundred
and seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand. In
Mississippi it actually tripled. It rose from sixty-five thousand to one
hundred and ninety-five thousand. So much for the extent of this slave
trade. And as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelled
in the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plantation
looking out for proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances,
and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is picked up here; a black
girl there. The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn asunder
as rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave captain on the
coast of Guinea. A gang of three or four hundred negroes is made up;
and then these wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men,
are driven southward, as you would drive,--or rather as you would not
drive,--a herd of oxen to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadly
labour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A very
few years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutest
African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast
sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as
fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in
Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave
trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it
that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world
where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should
carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! But that a
civilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free
state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves for
exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even
beget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his own
children, gambolling around him from infancy, should watch their growth,
should become familiar with their faces, and should then sell them for
four or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remote
country a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the best
thing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own,
excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade
which is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of
any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of
a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or
as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames.
There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish to
apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, that
slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me a
much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States.
In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget one
most important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as
it was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting
to slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the
antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it is
difficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers can
ever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts of
the Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy is
notoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils.
In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are not
excluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants,
physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted to
holy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Church
of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive the
important consequences which follow from this last circumstance. It
is by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the
spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving
absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro
dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the
House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would
excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I
do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if
I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the African
race on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should at
once answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbable
that in eighty or a hundred years the black population of Brazil may
be free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the
United States.
The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which we
have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway of
nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been the
conduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazil
has come into the system; the United States have thrown every impediment
in the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain
respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen
which has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that I
state correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earl
regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the only
efficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expresses
most serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think that
this check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit
to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive British
administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining the
concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consented
to admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusing
deprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content with
refusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right of
visit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be
in strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In every
part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of
Washington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example of
the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. You
cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated to
him its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, if
the United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have
been no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame the
French. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point
of honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think
that they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is
but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the
tricolor is to be less respected then the stars and stripes. The right
honourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend's
amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of Search.
Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right. It is already gone.
We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with France. Everybody knows
how that negotiation will end. The French flag will be exempted from
search: Spain will instantly demand, if she has not already demanded,
similar exemption; and you may as well let her have it with a good
grace, and without wrangling. For a Right of Search, from which the
flags of France and America are exempted, is not worth a dispute.
The only system, therefore, which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's
Ministers, has yet been found efficacious for the prevention of the
maritime slave trade, is in fact abandoned. And who is answerable for
this? The United States of America. The chief guilt even of the slave
trade between Africa and Brazil lies, not with the Government of Brazil,
but with that of the United States. And yet the right honourable Baronet
proposes to punish Brazil for the slave trade, and in the same breath
proposes to show favour to the United States, because the United States
are pure from the crime of slave trading. I thank the right honourable
gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, for reminding me of
Mr Calhoun's letter. I could not have wished for a better illustration
of my argument. Let anybody who has read that letter say what is the
country which, if we take on ourselves to avenge the wrongs of Africa,
ought to be the first object of our indignation. The Government of the
United States has placed itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil never
aspired, and which Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could attain.
The Government of the United States has formally declared itself the
patron, the champion of negro slavery all over the world, the evil
genius, the Arimanes of the African race, and seems to take pride in
this shameful and odious distinction. I well understand that an American
statesman may say, "Slavery is a horrible evil; but we were born to it,
we see no way at present to rid ourselves of it: and we must endure it
as we best may." Good and enlightened men may hold such language;
but such is not the language of the American Cabinet. That Cabinet is
actuated by a propagandist spirit, and labours to spread servitude and
barbarism with an ardour such as no other Government ever showed in
the cause of freedom and civilisation. Nay more; the doctrine held at
Washington is that this holy cause sanctifies the most unholy means.
These zealots of slavery think themselves justified in snatching away
provinces on the right hand and on the left, in defiance of public
faith and international law, from neighbouring countries which have
free institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of diffusing over
a wider space the greatest curse that afflicts humanity. They put
themselves at the head of the slavedriving interest throughout the
world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of the Protestant
interest; and wherever their favourite institution is in danger, are
ready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the Dutch. This, then, I hold
to be demonstrated, that of all societies now existing, the Republic of
the United States is by far the most culpable as respects slavery and
the slave trade.
Now then I come to the right honourable Baronet's Budget. He tells us,
that he will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the Brazilian Government
tolerates slavery and connives at the slave trade; and he tells us at
the same time, that he will admit the slave grown cotton and the slave
grown sugar of the United States. I am utterly at a loss to understand
how he can vindicate his consistency. He tells us that if we adopt my
noble friend's proposition, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade
between Africa and Brazil. Be it so. But is it not equally clear that,
if we adopt the right honourable Baronet's own propositions, we shall
give a stimulus to the slave trade between Virginia and Louisiana? I
have not the least doubt that, as soon as the contents of his Budget
are known on the other side of the Atlantic, the slave trade will become
more active than it is at this moment; that the jobbers in human flesh
and blood will be more busy than ever; that the droves of manacled
negroes, moving southward to their doom, will be more numerous on
every road. These will be the fruits of the right honourable Baronet's
measure. Yet he tells us that this part of his Budget is framed on sound
principles and will greatly benefit the country; and he tells us truth.
I mean to vote with him; and I can perfectly, on my own principles,
reconcile to my conscience the vote which I shall give. How the right
honourable Baronet can reconcile the course which he takes to his
conscience, I am at a loss to conceive, and am not a little curious to
know. No man is more capable than he of doing justice to any cause which
he undertakes; and it would be most presumptuous in me to anticipate the
defence which he means to set up. But I hope that the House will suffer
me, as one who feels deeply on this subject, now to explain the
reasons which convince me that I ought to vote for the right honourable
Baronet's propositions respecting the produce of the United States. In
explaining those reasons, I at the same time explain the reasons which
induce me to vote with my noble friend to-night.
I say then, Sir, that I fully admit the paramount authority of moral
obligations. But it is important that we should accurately understand
the nature and extent of those obligations. We are clearly bound
to wrong no man. Nay, more, we are bound to regard all men with
benevolence. But to every individual, and to every society, Providence
has assigned a sphere within which benevolence ought to be peculiarly
active; and if an individual or a society neglects what lies within that
sphere in order to attend to what lies without, the result is likely to
be harm and not good.