LITERARY SPECTATOR.
THE DEATH WARRANT OF NEGRO SLAVERY.*
WE have read this pamphlet with some attention ; but have not been fortunate enough to meet with the "Death Warrant of Slavery" anywhere but in the title-page. We are made auditors, indeed, of a Te Deum, which the Saints, the Edinburgh, and the Westminster Reviewers, conspire to chant in chorus; but they offer no other proof that they have gained a victory. We shall confine our remarks to the article copied 'from the last number of the JP.stminster Review ; for the reprint from the Edinburgh is five years old—it is merely an epitome of Mr. STEPHEN'S book, the character of which we have several times explained. The writer in the Westminster Review commences with a tirade against the folly and credulity of the British public. John Bull's gullibility, we are told, has no parallel, but in that of the man " who believed that he had travelled for seven years, when he had only dipped his head in a basin of water and taken it out again ? " For our own parts, we can admit the man in question to have been mad, but we cannot perceive how he should be deemed gullible. The instance has of course no value, but as a specimen of the Reviewer's power of tracing parallelism. Then again we are told, that John Bull has store-room in his brain for not more than one or two ideas. But how may this consist with the Reviewer's previous charge ? People, gullible par excellence, are distinguished by quickness of fancy ; they have a rapid enough succession of ideas, could they but distinguish the relations that connect these together. Your men of one idea are safe in their stupidity * The Death Warrant of Negro Slavery throughout the British Dominions. London, 1829. Hatchard and Son. Leaving his:metaphors, however, we shall find that the Reviewer has two assumptions in point of fact, and that these yield him one logical deduction.
His first assumption is, that Negro Slavery in the West Indies is the worst condition of humanity, and that the Colonists there are the worst of criminals. His second, that the Colonists are kept in existence solely by our bounties on their sugar,—that, in short, they stand in relation to this country as paupers do to the parish that supports them. His inference is, that this country may at any time, by withholding the bounty to which he refers, compel the Colonists to emancipate their slaves.
The Reviewer has not proved, nor can he prove, that the slaves in our Colonies are wretched when compared with labourers in other quarters of the world. But the evil, he says, consists in their being slaves. Then the evil resolves itself into one of the peculiarities of social infancy ; and has attached to every nation at a certain point of its progress. Slavery has always existed at the &Ailing of civilization, and has declined gradually as civilization advanced. In discussing, too the necessity for its abolition, we are apt measure the state of the Negro by our ow 7:14.;t:wano errors,—k to o the written law of slavery as describing an -i,u. ting his actual condition. The happiness of the inhabitants o o _ n might seem, by the same test, liable to be affected by unrepealed statutes ; but it is not by consult ingour obsolete laws that an intelligent inquirer would attempt to estimate our actual enjoyments ; nor is it fair to follow such a course in pronouncing on the condition of the Negroes in the West Indies. No testimony worthy of credit has ever been adduced to show that the condition of the slaves is an unhappy one. On the contrary, those best informed on the subject concur in describing them as a contented, cheerful race. It is in vain that the Reviewer dwells on a few cases of cruelty. Such cases occur everywhere, and under all systems. Wherever there are rich and poor, there must exist the power of exercising cruelty ; but that power seems, a priori, less liable to be abused, in a state of society where the rich are a commercial class, and the poor are their property. The Reviewer's second assumption is that the Colonists are supported by bounties ; and that these bounties reduce them to the rank of paupers, dependent on our generosity for existence. The Reviewer here alludes to the duty of 37s. per cwt, levied in our markets on East India sugars, the duty on West India sugars being only 27s. But he has never had the honesty to inquire whether that protection may not have been dearly purchased by the West Indians. Such an inquiry would have shown him, that the preference which they enjoy in our markets is more than balanced by the restrictions which have been forced on them as its equivalent—by the necessity to which they have been subjected, of purchasing from us all the necessaries of life—by the heavy duties that they pay on beef, pork, and timber, on linen, cotton, woollen, and silk goods.
The Reviewer proceeds to infer, that by merely removing the duty on East India sugar, we may procure the abolition of slavery in the West. Now, were it even true that the West Indians had not purchased this protecting duty. his plan, if acted on, would tend to increase the evil which,he professes such anxiety to abate. For though slavery does not exist to any great extent in British India, not only slavery, but the slave-trade flourishes in Cochin China, and other countries that send what goes by the name of East Indian sugar to our market. In Brazil, too, the slave-trade is tolerated, and actively carried on. So that by robbing our Colonists of their dearly-bought rights, we should not merely perpetuate slavery in other quarters of the world, but give a fearful impulse to the traffic in slaves. The Reviewer, among other absurdities, is fond of stating that the loss of our Colonies would be of positive advantage to us,—though he has not shown how we should be more benefited by the loss of our West Indian possessions than by the loss of an equal amount of property at home. But the Reviewer, we suppose, would congratulate his countrymen on the conversion of Kent and Sussex into sand-banks. As he can see no loss to the nation in the losses of its Colonists, he decides in a very summary way the question of compensation to these individuals, not for the sacrifice of the bounty alluded to, but for their property in their slaves. "The Colonists," he observes, "are in the habit of blustering about their property' and their vested rights.' God knows what term of possession may give these men a right to a sanguinary wrong. But in his mercy he has made a nearer way ; he has not left us to be troubled with the question. Do the West Indians set up any claim to oar property ? Do they advance any right to make us subscribe for the flogging of women in Jamaica ? Is the House of Commons bound to impose such taxes for the support of slavery as the planters will sanction ?' If not, then the West Indians have overshot the mark. They have bullied and insulted an honest and a generous people, where their only chance for existence lay in conciliation and submission.
"The Colonists have tried to frighten the Government and the country, by holding out the necessity that in the event of the emancipation of their slaves, they should be paid for them ; and some of the friends of emancipation have been weak enough to show an inclination to admit the principle. Suppose now, that an Irish pauper, in the days when Irishmen worked their horses by the tails, had been interfered with by the parish-officers, with a view to put an end to this barbarous practice, and had answered, 'If your honours stop my allowance, till I give over working my horse by the tail,. I hope you mean to pay me what I gave for him, and allow me to work him in harness besides.' fhis is a fair statement of the West Indian proposition. Every body knows that what they demand to be paid for, is the mere pleasure of working by the tail."
The argument about parish allowances has been disposed of already ; and for the rest, the Colonists have no wish to work their horse in harness, nor to work him at all, provided their purchase-money be returned. When that is done, the Reviewer may turn the horse into the fields, or make a free labourer of him, if he can; though Colonists will not consent that these experiments be made at their expense—will not consent, after having purchased the fee simple of a labourer's strength, to pay for its use in detail. The illustration in question is only another proof of the Reviewer's talent for blundering ; but it may puzzle any one to explain why the same man should, in a " Catechism on the Corn-laws," preach up the purity of the national faith when the Fundholder is its object, and urge its violation when the Colonists are concerned.* If the Parliament of England sanctioned the contraction of the Debt, the Parliament of England sanctioned the institution of Slavery. What have the Colonists of the present day gained by slavery ; or how are they responsible for its institution? And what does the stickler for the rights of the Fundholders reply to these questions ? He replies, by urging. Parliament to rob the West billions, and the slaves to murder them. " The universal British peo
," he alleges, " would stand by, and cheer on their dusky brethren to the assault, if it was not for the solitary hope that the end may be obtained more effectually by other means." These other means are legislative robbery.
Suppose, however, the Reviewer's wishes realized-suppose the Negroes emancirehteod b an act of fraud on the part of Parliament, and the ColonisV: •: ed for the sake of retributive justice-what
would follow ? edom, certainly ; for the experiment has failed in Mexico, as s in St. Domingo ; and failed in these in
stances, from a want on the part of the Negroes of all the lee :its of civilized life. But let us suppose this obstacle overcome too ; let us suppose the Negroes in our Colonies possessed of qualities which acme of their fellows have yet exhibited; let us suppose them endowed with temperance, foresight, and industry, at the period of the revolution which the Reviewer recommends,-where are these virtues to find Teise? Who shall furnish the capital to set them in motion? The ea.ital of the Colonists is swallowed up in Emancipation. Who shall be found, among our most desperate speculators, hardy enough to intrust his property to men who have just violated the first principles of property ? In fact, the Reviewer's plan of abolition would, by converting the Negroes into savages, deprive them for ever of their only chance of becoming free.
We are not, however, less sincere friends to the ultimate abolition of slavery tham the Reviewer is. This we should be, even if we Were proprietors of West Indian estates. In truth, no class of men has so much reason to be sick of slavery as the Colonists themselves ; and none have expressed themselves more anxious to mitigate its rigour.;. But the Negroes, as we have said, are only in the first stage of civilization; and we can only make use of palliatives and appliances suitable to their condition. We have put an end to the foreign slave trade -kit us put an end to the home trade in slaves. Impart to the Negroes the most valuable right which slaves can enjoy-grant them the privileges which the ascripti gleben in other countries, have Heyed ; and time will raise them to a higher rank in the social P. They are now the absolute property of their master ; let his eels be rated for their support, and let him be declared incapable of • elling them but with his lands-let him, in short, take them for better 1m. worse. Finally, let them be educated ; and under these circum
e micas, the principle of population, by continually lessening, the value of their labour, while it increases the expense of supporting them, will at length procure them emancipation of the most unqualified kind.
From the puffs which have preceded the republication of this article in the ll'olmietsb.i., we learn that the writer is the author of the " Catechism." t That we are warranted in stating this to be the case, we can prove from the work of Mr.:UM:DONNELL, Wht. tately held an official situation in one of our Colonies, and whose work on Negro Slavery is distinguished not merely by the amount of information which it contains, but by the most comprehensive views, and hy it spirit of philanthropy which the Saints may envy. This gentleman has submitted to the public a plan, ein ready well fitted to procure for the Negroes in the course of comparatively a few years, all that their warmest friends can desire them to enjoy ;-a plan which provides, at once, 6,r the security of property, and for the improvement of the Negroes themselves-which for its object, their education, and their acquisition of the highest civil rights. After 1g old certain changes through which they are destined to pass, he says" In ill,: last state, the slaves cease to be chattels ; they become attached alai vendible only with the soil. Here various new privileges are granted ; legal rights bestowed ; a trecater facility to enfranchisement held out ; inure expensive wants are introduced ; the icinptal ions to idleness decrease, as a new stimulus is given ; the former irksoine occupations of industry are now considered light and agreeable ; the bles,ings, likewise of a pure religion become better appreciated, cheering and elevating th,. itiipes to a prospect of eternal bliss. Knowledge adds its invigorating influence, ;Lod sheds its no liant beams ever the former uncultivated waste ; the bondsman sees civilization ornamented with many additional charms; ardour is given to his iindication, bouyancy to his spirits ; he ffies with the lark, and is unremitting in his exertions to procure enfranchisement, when he becomes not a turbulent savage, living wild in a state of nature, lint a free citizen, knowing the value of laws, order, and civil government."-Cousiderations on Nrgre, Ii. 207.
Let the Westminster Reviewer read Mr. IllAcnoxxEld.'s book, and blush for the gross ignorance of the subject which he hits encouraged in himself and others.
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