these regulations turn out to be prin cipally composed of limitations of the master's power to liberate his slaves. In some of the States slaves can be emancipated only by special act of the legislature. In others by the courts for meritorious services, and in one of them almost all the modes required in others must concur to render an emancipation complete. DIED-Lately, at Mitford, (Eng.) aged 22 years, Mr. HENRY WALKER, a native of Jamaica. He has by his will, left 21. and freedom to every slave on his estate there.-English paper. SLAVE TRADE.-A POEM. (Continued from page 224.) And thou, white savage, whether lust of gold Thou plead thy impious claim to wealth or fame; bound; All Cortez murdered, all Columbus found; Had those advent'rous spirits who explore Through ocean's trackless wastes, the far sought shore; Whether of wealth insatiate or of power, bands; No slaughtered natives drenched the fair earned soil, Thy followers only have effaced the shame Shall Britain, where the soul of freedom reigns, Forge chains for others she herself disdains? What page of human annals can record And see, the cherub Mercy from above, From soul to soul the spreading influence steals, Glory to God on high, and peace on Earth! She cheers the mourner, and with soothing hands bands; Restores the lustre of the christain name, fame. As the mild Spirit hovers o'er the coast, A fresher hue their withered landscapes boast; Her healing smiles the ruined scenes repair, And blasted Nature wears a joyous air, While she proclaims through all their spicy groves, "Henceforth your fruits, your labours, and your loves, "All that your sires possessed, or you have sown, "Sacred from plunder, all is now your own." And now, her high commission from above And, Liberty, thy shining standard rears! Astonished echo tells the vocal shore hands. And thou great source of nature and of grace, Who of one blood did'st form the human race, Look down in mercy in thy chosen time With equal eye on Afric's suffering clime: Disperse her shades of intellectual night Repeat thy high behest, Let there be light! Bring each benighted soul, great God, to thee, And with thy wide salvation make them free! HANNAH MORE. THE African Observer. TWELFTH MONTH, 1827. SISMONDI'S REVIEW OF J. COMPTE'S TREATISE ON (Continued from page 232.) M. Compte afterwards passes in review the colonies of the moderns, to show that slavery has produced, in all of them, the same effects: intemperance, lewdness and ferocity. We shall not recite in this place, the most offensive parts of these descriptions. It would be too painful an employment to review the afflictions of so many millions of human beings, who still groan under the galling yoke. We shall confine ourselves to a few particulars, taken from divers chapters, which we shall continue to extract in the words of the author. When children are born of female slaves, we may ascertain by their colour the race of men to which the fathers belong. As marriages seldom take place between the blacks and whites, the children of mixed blood are the product of an immoral union, and generally of violence on the part of the master. Upon arriving at the Cape of Good Hope, says Vaillant, we are surprised at the multitude of slaves, whom we see there as white as the Europeans. Yet the whites have never been reduced to slavery in this country; the slaves there, on the contrary, have always been of Ethiopian origin. From the masters and the Ethiopian slaves, have sprung a race, which, whitening further and further in each generation, have finally become exactly similar to those who hold them in slavery. But in this change of the race, a phenomenon occurs, which it is important to observe, because it is common to nearly all the colonies. The colonists do not enfranchise their own children born of female slaves. They require of them the same labours and submission as of their other slaves; they sell, exchange, or transmit them to their heirs as they judge convenient. If they fall by inheritance to a legitimate child, no difference is known between them and the other slaves-a brother becomes, in this way, the owner of his brothers and sisters; and he exercises over them *In the former number, this name was erroneously printed, and the error strangely overlooked until the sheet was worked off. The name as given above, is the true one. VOL. I.-33. the same authority, exacts from them the same labours, lacerates them with the same scourge, and compels them to minister to the same passions with his other slaves. This multitude of white slaves which astonish the European observer, are therefore almost all the fruit of adultery and incest. A traveller observes, that there exists so little affection between the relatives in this colony, that we rarely see two brothers conversing together. How can one brother possibly entertain any regard for another, when he has perhaps ten or twelve brothers and sisters, whom he considers as property of the lowest grade, and whom he employs for the meanest purpose? At the Cape of Good Hope, the soil is poor; it is occupied in raising flocks, and in the production of the same kinds of grain as those cultivated in Europe. None of these productions require painful or continual labour. The articles most essential to life, are obtained with the least labour, and are sold at the lowest price. Thus, in general, at the Cape, the labour of the slave is not excessive; and his supplies of food are abundant. In Dutch Guiana, on the contrary, the soil is exceedingly fertile; suited to the production of sugar, and the various fruits of the torrid zone-these productions, obtained by long and painful labours, are generally designed for exportation. The sale being easy, the masters are interested in requiring of their slaves, the greatest and most continued exertion. On the other hand, the provisions required by the slaves being scarce and dear, the masters allow them no more than what is absolutely necessary for their support this contrast is not peculiar to the Cape and Guianà. Slavery, every where degrading, is notwithstanding softened in pastoral countries, by long intervals from labour, and by ample supplies of food; in those where grain is cultivated, the labour is harder and less intermitted; it is not however sufficient to prevent the increase of numbers among the servile class. In countries where they cultivate coffee, cotton, tobacco, and above all sugar, the labour is excessive, the nourishment quite insufficient, and the deaths more numerous than the births. She The handsome female slaves have to encounter, not only the desires of their masters or overseers, upon whom they are dependent, but the severe chastisements by which they frequently endeavour to overcome or punish resistance, but likewise the jealousy of the whites of their own sex. A woman who caused one of her slaves to be punished, sought principally to disfigure and render her hideous. caused her bosom to be lacerated by the scourge, and even by a poignard. Stedman relates, that a female creole, discovering on her plantation a handsome young slave, immediately caused a hot iron to be applied to her forehead and cheeks, and ordered that the tendon of Achilles (the sinew which supports the heel) should be cut. A fine person was thus suddenly transformed into a monster of deformity.* After some observations, showing in what manner slavery corrupts the manners in the English colonies and in the United States, the author cites from the latter, a law which must appear extremely odious, when we reflect that in such acts, we see nothing but the explosion of the most shameful passions. Masters are expressly prohibited from cultivating the intellectual facul *Stedman's Travels in Surinam. convicted of teaching one of them to read, would be punished with a fine seven times as great, as if he had cut off the hands or the tongue. In the latter case, he would incur a fine of only fourteen pounds; in the former, of one hundred. It is equally forbidden, to permit slaves to trade on their own account. All society is denied to the servile class; a white person, who shall find more than seven slaves together on the public road, is required to punish them, with not more than twenty lashes to each; and the slave, who should defend himself against a white person, would be punished as guilty of a horrible crime. A negro, or person of mixed blood, is not allowed to appear in the streets after night, without special permission. Offenders, whether free or bond, are taken up by a military police, who constantly patrol the streets, and punish according to circumstances.* Slavery was legal in all the Spanish colonies, but in all those where their progress has been rapid, the number of negroes was very small. The conquered aborigines, though generally subjected to a severe regimen, were not reduced to slavery. Thus, with the exception of Cuba, and a few other places where tropical productions were raised, and where the plantation regimen was established, the labours, in Spanish America, were performed by the hands of freemen. Labour has there been deemed honourable; and this single circumstance has promoted the cause of humanity, more than it could be injured by the despotism of the government, the fear of instruction, the *Travels in Canada and the United States, by F. Hall. vigilance of the inquisition, and all the efforts which are apparently used to arrest the progress of civilization. M. Compte has proved, by a series of facts, that in the Spanish American colonies, the progress of intelligence, industry, population and morality, has always been, according to regulations in each colony, in the inverse ratio of the number of slaves and the severity of their treatment. Having shown that slavery vitiates the physical constitution of slaves, that it renders the masters averse to labour, and the slaves incapable of performing the work of freemen; that it creates in the masters a distaste for intellectual exertion, and denies that exertion to the slaves; that it prevents the formation of a class, who are neither masters nor slaves, or forces such a class to emigrate if it already exists; that it produces among the masters a shameful depravity of manners, and that by interdicting to the slaves, the choice and the direction of their own actions, it has deprived them of even the pretence to moral motives; it seems to follow as a necessary conclusion, that a more fatal institution could not possibly have been introduced into society. But this is not all: M. Compte has examined the influence which slavery has had on the security of the masters' freedom, on the increase of wealth and population, on the political freedom and independence of nations; and in each of these new relations he shows, by universal experience, that this frightful institution, wherever it has been tolerated, has been no less fatal to the masters than to the slaves. In countries where slavery is admitted, a dreadful calamity incessantly threatens those that are frec, their freedom being always liable to be ques tioned. If a person is presumed to be free, until the contrary is proved, how will the masters retain their slaves? How shall they reclaim them in case they escape? How can they discover their places of concealment? If, on the other hand, every person is presumed to be a slave, till his freedom is proved, how can those who are free avoid the danger of being treated as slaves? Among the ancients, nothing was more frequent than the stealing of children. Slaves frequently avenged themselves in this manner upon their masters; they carried off, in their flight, the children who had been confided to them, either from revenge, from avarice, or even from affection. But when they afterwards fell into distress, these children were commonly sold. The comedies of the ancients are full of allusions to these thefts. The history of Virginia, the destined victim of Appius Claudius, teaches us, that adults, and particularly females, were not secure against claims by which they might be judicially robbed of their liberty and honour. In the English colonies, every person of Ethiopian origin, or rather, every person tinged with the colour of that race, is presumed to be a slave, unless the contrary is proved. An individual of the grade of masters, provided the race is pure, may therefore seize upon any person of colour, man, woman, or child, and retain possession, till the freedom of the victim is proved, or another claimant appears. He, who, by fraud or violence, should obtain possession of the documents, which prove that a coloured person is free, may, by this act, convert him into a slave, and to appropriate him to his own use; it is sufficient that he should have him in possession. It is impossible to describe the misery and danger which press upon the coloured race, in the European colonies and the United States, by reason of this principle of legislation; we cannot paint the dreadful robberies by which free men or women are transported from the states of the north, where slavery is abolished, to be sold in those of the south; nor the shameful abuses, even where slavery is abolished, of pretended apprenticeships, in order to hold in real slavery persons who are legally free.* These evils, it is true, fall only on a race, for whom the whites have shown neither pity nor sympathy; a race, towards whom they are released from all those moral and religious duties, which bind us not to men only, but to every being that can suffer and feel. But the vices of the Europeans must avenge, at last, the negroes' wrongs: we have seen that the children who have sprung from the two races, have approached so near to the whites as to be no longer distinguished. The time has arrived, when children completely white may be stolen from their wealthy relations, and sold as the children or grand-children of mulattoes, beyond the power of recovery. Proceeding to consider the influence of slavery on the distribution of wealth, M. Compte very justly protests against the morality of the question: "Is the labour of slaves more expensive than the labour of freemen?" This is to en *These pretended apprenticeships, as our author terms them, though formerly in use in these middle states, are probably now banished from among us. Some rare instances are understood to have occurred, within a few years, of indented minors being removed by the masters to the southern states, and sold as slaves; but this avenue of oppression is now strictly guarded by legislative enactments. |