now under the care of the colonial government. The question of compensation was referred by the mixed commission court to the decision of the two governments.

It now appears by a despatch of Mr. Canning's, of the 30th of December last, that the following equitable principle is in future to govern such cases; namely, "That, on the one hand, no compensation can, in equity, be due to traders for losses sustained by them in cases of traffic, carried on under circumstances which constitute an illegal trade; whilst, on the other hand, no condemnation of a vessel ought to take place, when the capture is made at a spot absolutely within the boundary prescribed for capture by the treaties."

The only practical inconvenience of this course is, that the captors receive no benefit from the capture. The slaves, however, are not the less put into possession of their liberty.

That part of the parliamentary papers which refers more immediately to Brazil, exhibits a remarkable contrast between the vigilant and persevering efforts of the British consuls in the different provinces to repress the contraband slave trade, and the subterfuges and evasions, intermixed with occasional blustering, which the Brazilian functionaries employ to counteract these efforts, and to screen the guilty contrabandists.

Remonstrances, without end, have continued to be presented, and proofs exhibited of illicit importations into Brazil from the northern line of the African coast; but they have been treated with a disregard which it seemed surprising that our government should so long tolerate. Their forbearance, however, is, perhaps, accounted for by the recent appearance of a treaty, which, at length, fixes the final period of the Brazilian slave trade" at the expiration of three years, to be reckoned from the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty, (in March, 1827,) it shall not be lawful for the subjects of the emperor of Brazil to be concerned in the carrying on the African slave trade, under any pretext, or in any manner whatsoever: and the carrying on of such trade after that period,

by any person subject to his Imperial Majesty, shall be deemed and treated as piracy."

This is another great triumph achieved by Mr. Canning in the course of the last year; and though it is im possible not to mourn over the horrors of the intervening period, yet let us not lose sight of the gratitude we owe to God, for having thus far crowned with success the efforts of this country in the cause of humanitythat the decree has at length gone forth, that before three years shall have elapsed, the African slave trade will cease to have a legal existence in any part of the civilized world.

6. United States. It is to be regretted that no arrangements have yet been entered into with the American government for the mutual suppression of the slave trade, especially as there have appeared strong indications, in the course of last year, of American interests being embarked under foreign flags in this traffic. The slave trade, however, which most deeply affects the character of America, is her internal slave trade, which, to the reproach of her free institutions, fills her southern provinces with attrocities paralleled only in the annals of Africa. We are happy to observe, that this slave trade, as well as the slavery which gives it birth, has begun widely and strongly to engage the American public, and that, after the example of England, anti-slavery societies are now forming throughout the Union, embracing not only the object of protecting free blacks and mulattoes from being kidnapped and re-inslaved, but that of the universal emancipation of the African race. It is, without doubt, a deep stain on the character of Great Britain, that any of her subjects, and especially of her public men, should subsist by the forced labour of slaves. But, in one or two of the middle states of America, some of the highest names in the annals of that nation actually derive their income from breeding slaves for the southern plantations, in the same way in which cattle and pigs are, in this country, reared for the market.

The time, it may be hoped, is fast approaching, when a better feeling will pervade every part of the world

pretending to Christian principle and to the light of civilization; and it is no slight encouragement to the cherishing of this hope, that a decree has recently appeared from the emperor of Austria, (remarkable both for the principles it asserts and the sanctions it imposes,) utterly abolishing slavery throughout the Austrian dominions."Every man," says his Imperial Majesty, by the right of nature, sanctioned by reason, must be considered as a free person. Every slave becomes free from the moment he touches the Austrian soil, or even an Austrian ship." The free governments of Great Britain, America, and France, may learn a salutary lesson of justice and bumanity from this monarch.

ARGUING IN A CIRCLE.

The bitterest reproach that can be uttered against the system of slavery, that it debases the man, that it enfeebles his powers, that it changes his character, that it expels all which is naturally good; this, its bitterest reWe proach, must be its protection. are foiled by the very wickedness of the system. We are obliged to argue in a most vicious circle. We make the man worthless; and, because he is worthless, we retain him as a slave. We make him a brute, and then allege his brutality as a valid reason for withholding his rights.-Buxton's Speech in the House of Commons, 1823.

SLAVE TRADE,—A POEM.

Perish th' illiberal thought which would debase

The native genius of the sable race!
Perish the proud philosophy, which sought
To rob them of the pow'rs of equal thought!
Does then th' immortal principle within
Change with the casual colour of a skin?
Does matter govern spirit? or is mind
Degraded by the form to which 'tis join'd?
No: they have heads to think, and hearts to
feel,

And souls to act, with firm, tho' erring zeal;
For they have keen affections, kind desires,
Love strong as death, and active patriot fires;
All the rude energy, the fervid flame,
Of high-soul'd passion, and ingenuous shame:
Strong, but luxuriant virtues boldly shoot
From the wild vigour of a savage root.

Nor weak their sense of honour's proud control,

For pride is virtue in a Pagan soul;
A sense of worth, a conscience of desert,
A high, unbroken haughtiness of heart;
That self same stuff which erst proud empires

sway'd,

Of which the conquerors of the world were made.
Capricious fate of men! that very pride
In Afrie scourg'd, in Rome was deify 'd.

Whene'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes, Horrors of derpen, deadliest guilt arise; I see, by more than fancy's mirror shown, The burning rage, and the blazing town: See the dire victim torn from social life. The sick ng babe, the agonizing wife! Ste, wretch for orn: is dragg by hostile hands, To distant tyrants sold in distant lands! Transmitted series, and successive chains, The sole sad heritage her child obtains! Een this last wretched boon their foes deny, To weep together, or together die. By frion hands, by one relentless stroke, See the fond Enks of feeling nature broke! The fibres twisting round a parent's heart. Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they

Think on the wretch whose aggravated pains
To exile misery adds, to misery chains.
If warm your heart, to British feelings true,
As dear his land to him as yours to you;
And Liberty, in you a ha low'd flame,
Burns unextinguish'd in his breast the same.
Then leave him holy Freedom's cheering smile,
The beav'n-taught fondness for the parent soil;
Revere affections mingled with our frame,
In every nature, every clime the same;
In all, these feelings equal sway maintain;
In all, the love of Home and Freedom reign:
And Tempe's vale, and parch'd Angula's sand,
One equal fondness of their sons command.
Th' unconquer'd Savage laughs at pain and toil,
Basking in Freedom's beams which gild his na

tive soil.

Does thirst of empire, does desire of fame, (For these are specious crimes,) our rage inflame? No: sordid lust of gold their fate controls, The basest appetite of basest souls;

Gold, better gain'd by what their ripening sky, Their fertile fields, their arts," and mines supply.

What wrongs, what injuries does oppression plead,

To smooth the crime and sanctify the deed? What strange offence, what aggravated sin? They stand convicted-of a darker skin! Barbarians, hold! th' opprobrious commerce

In the British West Indies, and the American slave-holding states, slaves are liable to punishment for numerous acts which are innocent in themselves, and for which white people are never punished; and for real offences, their punishments are generally more severe than those to which free whites are subjected for similar crimes.

There are few political axioms more clear and indisputable, than that allegiance and protection are the price of each other. That in proportion to the benefits conferred by the institutions of society, are our obligations to recognise and support those institutions.

privileged few, to the exclusion of the rest, is the primary object and aim of all legislation. Laws derive their proper efficiency from their intrinsic conformity to the principles of justice. Hence the acknowledged maxim of the common law, "An unjust law is no law." To extend the control beyond the protection of the civil authority, is an act of tyranny, rather than of just legislation. When the advantages of the social compact are withheld, little claim can be set up to individual obedience. If any part of the community are excluded from their proper share of legal protection, the right to punish the aggressions of these, must be proportionably diminished. Without adopting the conclusion of some politico philoso

can, whose political fabric is based on the natural equality of man, must always regard impartial justice, with her equal scales, as the presiding genius of his government. With him, the happiness of the people, not of a VOL. I.-25

* To comprehend the force of this statement, we must recollect the distinction between sins and crimes. The former being the violation of our duty to the Supreme Benefactor, are no

that they owe much less than free men to the legal institutions of their country. In the proportion wherein their natural and inherent rights are abridged, is their obligation to respect the provisions of government impair ed. And therefore if they were equally with the free man capable of comprehending the force of moral obligation, and equally competent to acquire a knowledge of the laws to which they were expected to conform, still a just and enlightened government, if it cannot break their shackles and restore them to their natural rights, might be expected to view with indulgence those deviations from rectitude, to which their condition so naturally inclines them; and that even their crimes should be visited with punishments less severe than those prescribed for their more favoured compatriots.

further punishable by human authority, than as they are directly or indirectly injurious to society. The latter, or offences against the community, may be termed violations of the social compact; and if the slaves are deprived of all the benefits of that compact, it is not easy to discover upon what principle they can be bound to observe its requirements. The slave, by his very condition, approximates to the character of an alien enemy, and may, therefore, without an outrage upon common sense, be adjudged free from the common obligations of a denizen or citizen of the state. If the slave is protected in life and limb, he may be bound, upon general principles, to respect the liyes and limbs of others. To observe the institutions of society any further than he is himself protected by it; may be his moral or religious duty; and the violation of any moral law is unquestionably a sin in the slave, as well as the free man, which both are equally bound to avoid. Crimes are not quite the same things.

But when, to these considerations we subjoin the ignorance, unavoidably resulting from their condition, not only of the higher motives of morality and religion, but of nearly all the requisitions of law, the injustice of subjecting them to the same punishment, for similar crimes, with their more enlightened superiors, appears too obvious for illustration. Among free men, laws are always published, and thence presumed to be known, before their violation is punished. The tyrant who hung his laws too high to be read, and then punished their infraction, was hardly chargeable with greater injustice than those legisla tures, however enlightened and humane in other respects, that punish their poor degraded slaves for the breach of laws, with which they are not, and cannot be, acquainted. In adopting a course of legislation for the government of slaves, in direct opposition to these general and self-evident principles, policy, rather than justice, has probably been consulted. The policy, however, may be reasonably doubted, if justice does not sanction the measure.

Though few can reason, all mankind can feel.

A few of the colonial laws bearing on this branch of the subject will be noticed. In the late act of Grenada, passed in 1825, swearing, committing any indecent act in any place, getting drunk, quarrelling, wilfully galloping, cantering, or trotting a horse, in the town of St. George, may be punished in a slave, with twenty-five lashes.* In the same act, as well as in the laws of Jamaica, compassing or imagining

38.

Progress of Colonial Reform, page

the death of a white person, is punishable with death. In the latter island, the expression is indeed added, and declare the same by some overt act.* What overt act shall be construed as declaratory of a murderous design is apparently left to the judgment of the court.†

*

Stephen, p. 307.

† An instructive, though revolting comment, on the species of overt acts by which the design to effect the death of the whites, should be legally declared, is furnished by the report of the trial and execution of a number of slaves in the island of Jamaica, charged with a design to rise and murder the whites. This plot was brought to light near the end of 1823, a few months after the attention of the British parliament had been called, by Buxton's motion, to the subject of colonial reform. It is to be remembered that all interference, on the part of the mother country, with the question of West Indian slavery, is. uniformly deprecated by predictions of insurrections, massacres, and conflagrations in the islands. An extensive plot among the slaves was, therefore, absolutely necessary at that particular period. To call for things that are not, and they come, though belonging exclusively to creative energy, may at least be attempted, and to a bewildered imagination, apparently effected by human agency. Just at the critical season, information was received from a boy, a negro slave, that the negroes were going to rise and murder the whites. Immediately the alarm was spread, all the suspected negroes were arrested, several of their houses were searched, but as no arms of any kind were found, it was sagely concluded that the negroes had taken the alarm, and that it would, therefore, be harrassing themselves to no purpose to continue the search. The trials were hurried through, and eight negro slaves, condemned and executed in the parish of St. Mary's, upon the most loose and contradictory testimony of a few other slaves. The witnesses were rewarded for their im

In the island of Jamaica the crime of perjury, or perhaps, of giving false testimony without oath, in the trial of a slave, is punished in a slave, with the same inflictions as the accused, if convicted, would be liable to suffer, and this by the terms of the act is not confined to evidence against the accused; but false testimony, if given in favour of the prisoner, subjects the witness to similar penalties.* Hence it would appear, that a slave might suffer death for giving exculpatory evidence in a capital case, provided his anxiety to save the life of a fellow slave should betray him beyond the limits of veracity. The slaves in Jamaica are liable to be punished with thirty-nine lashes on the naked body, for the crime of preaching to, or teaching other slaves, as anabaptists or otherwise, and attending nightly or other private meetings. In some of the islands, stealing "any quick or dead thing" of the value of twelve pence, current money; killing or destroying horses, cattle, sheep, or other things of the value of six shillings; or

portant disclosures, by their freedom. Whether this was promised before the testimony was given is not quite clear. As a sequel to this transaction, one or two other plots were manufactured out of some idle rumours of the day; one of which cost the lives of three of the slaves; though the witnesses upon whose unsupported testimony they were condemned, were almost immediately sent off the island as desperadoes, who could not be safely per-. mitted to go at large. Vide the picture of negro slavery, drawn by the colonists themselves, London, 1825.

* Ed. Hist. West Indies, Vol. 2, p. 177.

† Stephen, 303. The object of this provision appears to have been to obstruct the progress of the missionaries. The act bears date in 1816.