THE ANTI-SLAVERY MEETING..
IT is not a little singular to find the Chamber of Deputies in Paris and the people in London employed at the smile moment in discussing the best means of putting an end to West India Slavery. The debate in the Chamber of Deputies arose out of thakfruitffil source of speech- making the presentation of a petition.. A M. de FORMONT, adopting the argument= ad invidiam, which we 'sometimes hear in England, described the condition of the slaves as preferable to that of the pea- santry of France. CHARLES DUPIN and BENJAMIN CONSTANT strongly recommended a registry act, principally with a view to put an end to the traffic in slaves; the fresh imports, in the opinion of the former, tending to corrupt the negroes, and render measures for their amelioration abortive.
The principal speakers at the Freemason's Tavern were Mr. Pow- NALL, a gentleman who was but the other day among the strenuous opponents of the Catholic claims, Mr. ISAACSON, a clergyman of Demerara, also a redonbted AntisCatholic, Dr. EDWARDS, CO:OIlel JONES, and. Mr. SINCLAIR.C, ULLEN. • - Mr. Powlva.u..; in support of the resolutions which he moved,*.cited tho cases of New York,. Ceylon, Bencoolen, and St. Helena ! where the measure he recommended had been adopted with perfect success ; but lie omitted to state one little fact of extreme importance, namely, that in all these cases the free population at the period of the experiment bore a very different ratio to the slave population from what it does in the British West Indies. In America the example of slave emancipa- tion was set by the members of the Society of Friends; a denomination of religionists whose quiet, unostentatious, and ever-active benevolence, it is impossible for the coldest to contemplate without feelings of kindly reverence. But neither. the workings of Christianity, nor the more palpable argument derived from the success of the measure, has yet prevailed ou the Southern provinces to follow the lead of their Northern neighbours. In Mr. POWNALL'S speech we were sorry to observe the repetition of a paltry clap-trap. "Our fellow subjects," said he, " on account of the colour of their shin, are treated as the bear that paws the ground !" It is almost needless to say that the colour of the Negro has no more to do with his bondage than the colour of Mr. POWNALL.- with his profession as a solicitor. The following assertion of the same gentleman is yet more reprehensible :— " Those who remembered the period from 17,,3, when Granville Sharp, Mr. Clarkson, and other indefatigable men laboured with Mr. Wilberforce, to 1806, when the accursed Slave Trade was abolished, would not be surprised to find themselves, in 1829 (thirty years after the abolition of the trade), witnessing the system of Slavery still sanctioned in the Wellies—that cat system of Slavery which they so much deprecated."
The condition of the slave in the West Indies has been altering for the better ever since 1806. Several laws and regulations have been passed with that view ; and what is of far more importance, many laws and regulations which were then in force have fallen into disuse. And here we; cannot help adverting.to the error of those who would argue from the non-repeal of a. law that it must. be in daily operation. How many absurd enactments are there in our own statute-book, which have never been abrogated by any other legislators, than time and common sense ? This error is mt:the bottom of all STEPHEN'S eloquent argumentation, and is the source of all the difference between him and his matter-of-fact opponent Mr. RaucLAv. "The Negro's nui.vd,he miserable— there is a la v that makes it so,"- say:: Mr. STEPHEN : " audition is not miserable—there is a
custom that controls Mr. -BARCLAY. Here is hypo-
thetical possibility on the one side, and plain matter-of-fact on the other : which is most worthy of acceptance ?1, Colonel JONES'S reasonings are of a kind that is very acceptable to an indolent opponent ; they answer themselves. He admits, as a truth not to be doubted, that remuneration must be given to the . planters but as the public debt is so very great,: that grown-up slaves .cannot be purchased, thernfore slave children must be taken without purchase. In the same strain, he exhorts his friends not to confound the question of compensation with emancipation, because " the former rests entirely with Parliament :" as if, truly, the latter were not in the same predicament. The gallant Colonel does not consider the turbu- lence that might arise out of emancipation as of much importance, for Parliament could enact laws to put it down ! Colonel JONES noticed one fact, which, if true, ought to break the heart of poor Mr. SADLER of Leeds : Hayti has doubled its population within the last twenty years. We should like to see this account properly authenticated. Such were the principal arguments for Mr. CAVE'S proposition that were offered at the Freemason's Tavern on Tuesday. The Rev. Mr. ISAACSON, who on this subject has the authority of experience, made a proposal to the meeting, in the shape of an amendment on Mr. POWNALL'S resolutions, which has at least the merit of novelty. He proposed, that in Tortola, or some one of the smaller islands, the whole of the slaves should be purchased, and thus the practicability of raising \Vest India produce by means of free labour be put to the test of ex- * We have given the resolutions in our summary of the Week's News. The horror of the whip is anather exemplification of the vulgar error of drawing conclusions from the form rather than the essence of things. We use a whip in England to control horses, and it Is a terrible thing to use the same instrument to control men and women! A very little antiquarianism would show the whip-abhorrers' that the little instrument of six inches in length, with a brass crown at the end of it, that is new so much venerated by Englishmen, is nothing less than the representative of that cudgel with which the English slave-overseer was in the habit of driving lilt villeins to their task ; and tied master constable himself, at whose potent voice all men tremble, is no more than that slave-overseer under a different guise. The whip has long since dwin- dled into a mere symbol of authority, in the same way as the staff has; and if it do on rare occasions alight on a brawler's shoulders, it ought to be recollected that the staff can break a free head as effectually as in days of yore it used to break a villein's.
t Every argument now-a-days begins and ends with the debt. Our political orators may say of it as poor Burns does of whisky, " Leeze me ou the:, thou gic s us mair than
either school or college."
pertinent. Mr., Is4Acsorr .estirnates the value of the slave population of Tortola at 600,0001. There is an error in the calculation ; or rather, the ,proposal does not meet the case. For the purpose of testing the soundness§bf MY. CAVE'S proposed measure, it is not necessary to pur- chase the parents—the purchase of the future offspring would be suf- fiCient. The experiment is, however,• quite too narrow; and its results, whatever they happened to be, would only lead to endless dis- pute,* Mr. ISAACSON . put an awkward question, which the sub- sequent speakers very imperfectly answered,—" Suppose the children emancipated, who is to rear and elothei.them ?" Common decency would not permit us to burden the master with the supporting of a progeny from which he was to reap no benefit. Nothing, as we'have observed when treating of the slave question before—and we are happy to find our philosophical contemporary the Chronicle concurs with us ill this view—nothing will ever bring down the wages of free labour to the level of the planter's means, and nothing will ever induce the Negro to labour freely,. but a mighty in- crease of the population of the West Indies, and the goading of neces- sity- arising out of that increase. We may add, that nothing short of such a necessity can be depended on for the sharpening of the wits and stimulating of the activity of the Negroes, and thus raising them to that moral and intellectual station which their friends are desirous to see them occupy; The grand object of Colonists and Abolitionists therefore ought to be, to encourage population in the,West Indies ; and the grand means of effecting this—we cannot repeat it too often— is not emancipation of children, nos any similar process, but that which history and experience have apprOved in all countries; not excepting our own,—namely, the attachment of the slaves to the soil. They are at present purely erratic, with this distinction, that they move not when caprice or satiety prompts them, but when the poverty or whim of a master bids. Men never increase under such circumstances.
In the mean time, it is incredible what serious damage the declaimers at taverns produce to property on which the comforts and existence of
thousands depend, So much has West India property suffered by the supposed uncertainty of the tenure under which- it is held, that we believe at present it is not worth much more than five or six years' purchase ;—it was once worth sixteen ! People talk of the miserable
•
condition of, the slaves, bur if the condition of both parties he truly considered, we really think the that of the planters will be found to be the more miserable of the two. C.
Previous page
