neither such as are known among the nations of Africa *CANNOT co-exist. They are principles inevitably destructive of each other. If the whole volume of Revelation teach one practical truth more distinctly and repeatedly than another, it is the very one which is most familiarized, and, in the present relation, most forgotten-namely, this: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.' So taught the Mosaic rule of life; and so taught all its faithful interpreters, till the advent of Him who came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, and to equalize the spiritual privileges of mankind by preaching the Gospel to the poor-and none so poor as the heathen exiles in our Christian colonies! But slavery is no longer what it was.' This is the argument, meant to be conclusive, which has led and sustained the guilty attempt of the Quarterly Review to reconcile the British nation to the practices of the sugar islands. We select this journal, as the most powerful and reputable organ of the colonists. Now, against its influence we require no auxiliaries more efficient than what are liberally furnished-when we ascertain the chronology of the war t-either by authors * Stephen, i. 70; and his Appendix, No. II. The state of slavery among these wild, barbarous people, as we esteem them, is much milder than in our colonies. No man is permitted to draw blood, even from a slave. If he does, he is liable to a strict inquisition. A man may sell his slave, if he pleases; but he may not wantonly abuse him.' Newton's Works, vi. 535.A gentleman, employed by the Royal African Company, in 1726, expressly says, "The discerning natives account it their greatest unhappiness, that they were ever visited by the Europeans. They say that....before our coming, they lived in peace; but.... that wheresoever Christianity cometh, there come with it a sword and gun, powder and ball."-Gisborne's Principles of Mor. Phil. 1798. 208. + The following is a chronological list of some of the authorities cited in this volume. Those distinguished by an asterisk are avowedly on the colonial side-certain of the rest partially. The Parliamentary returns, as proceeding from colonial agents, may be regarded as favourable to the planters; although they afford independent of all insular prejudices; or by the planters themselves, whether in the persons of their official agents in Parliamentary Papers, or of writers who have volunteered in their service. In the 58th number of the Review, published in December 1823, we find (485) the following evidence deliberately published :-"In regard to temporal comforts," observes a clergyman (writing from Jamaica, in October 1821), "the situation of the Negroes may be viewed with complete satisfaction."-" As to the treatment of the Negroes," writes another clergyman (from the same island), "I am happy to declare, from ocular testimony, that it generally is humane; and every temporal comfort which their situation demands, is willingly afforded them; indeed, a great proportion of our poor at home might envy their situation."-To this anonymous statement, in an anonymous review, it will be perfectly satisfactory, according to the rules an incredible mass of evidence condemnatory of the practice they describe: 樓 Ramsay ..... 1784 Parliamentary Returns. ...1818-1826 It is melancholy to observe the coincidence between the accusations alleged by the first of these witnesses, in 1784, and the concessions appearing in the most recent author, in 1826; a period embracing forty-two years! Mr. Coleridge has disclosed such opinions and facts, as his new friends will scarcely deem a grateful remembrance of their hospitalities.-The dates in the above list are generally those of publication. of a British court of justice, to oppose testimony from witnesses who give their names. What, then, will be the verdict of the national jury, when we call, first, another clergyman, who adduces évidence directly contrary to his brethren in the Quarterly? Such, however, is the Rev. Richard Bickell, who resided also in the West Indies, and chiefly in Jamaica, from 1819 to 1824—and, of course, during October 1821,when 'the situation of the Negroes might be viewed with complete satisfaction' yet publishing, on his return to England, in his own name, a volume of evidence utterly subversive of the entire fabric of Negro happiness, constructed by the Reviewer and his assistants! Our next witness is Mr. Stewart, a colonist, and upholder of colonists. This gentleman directly and indirectly acknowledges, and in some instances execrates, the oppression exercised over the slaves; and this up to the date of the Reviewer's annus mirabilis, 1821, and after a long residence in our principal sugar island. After these appear the unimpeachable authorities of Coleridge, Cooper, Meabry, the Berbice Fiscal, and of the colonial correspondents who furnished the more recent materials contained in the elephantine body of evidence printed by successive orders of the House of Commons: and-be it well observed all these are subsequently to the clerical communications in the Reviewer's article. The testimony of Stewart, Coleridge, the Berbice Fiscal, and the Parliamentary Returns, is also the more decisive, as coming under the class of cireumstantial evidence; delivered by witnesses pre-engaged by another party, and constrained, by a kind of cross-examination, to expose the culprit's shame. But the authority of the Quarterly Review, even if it could repel the onset of the first line of its opponents, would be thrown into the wildest disorder by the advance of the second; -by the very measures of reform proposed by his Majesty's Government to be introduced into the slave colonies, pursuant to Mr. Canning's Resolutions of 1823; that is, after no such reform was wanted, because the slaves, about seventeen months before, had celebrated their year of release!-However, the resolutions were 1. To provide the means of religious instruction and Christian education for the slave population. 2. To put an end to markets and to labour on the Sunday, and to appropriate that day entirely to rest and recreation, and to religious worship and instruction; and, instead of Sunday, which had hitherto been the day on which, in most of the colonies, the slaves had cultivated their provisiongrounds, to allow them equivalent time on other days for that purpose. 3. To admit the testimony of slaves in courts of justice. 4. To legalize the marriages of slaves, and to protect them in the enjoyment of their connubial rights. 5. To protect the slaves by law in the acquisition and possession of property, and its transmission by bequest, or otherwise. 6. To remove all the existing obstructions to manumission, and to grant to the slave the power of redeeming himself, and his wife and children, at a fair appraisement. 7. To prevent the separation of families by sale, or otherwise. 8. To prevent the seizure and sale of slaves detached from the estate or plantation to which they belong. 9. To restrain generally the power, and to prevent the abuse, of arbitrary punishment at the will of the master. 10. To abolish the degrading corporal punishment of females. 11. To abolish the use of the driving-whip in the field, either as an emblem of authority, or as a stimulus to labour. 12. To establish savings' banks for the use of slaves. Now, all these twelve proposals of 1823 were quite nugatory, if, in 1821, the situation of the Negroes might be viewed with complete satisfaction,' and if 'a great proportion of our poor at home might envy their situation.' There is not a single boon to be offered to the Black population in the West Indies, through the operation of these measures, but what is already possessed by the paupers of Great Britain. The Reviewer, with equal consistency, might have asserted the luxurious happiness of the Lancashire weavers, when the clergy, under authority of the King's Letter (January, 1827), were imploring their congregations to save our manufacturers from starvation. Any further remarks on the character and value of the most powerful and reputable organ of the colonists, would be a waste of ammunition. The whole of its voluminous articles, from the 58th Number to the present date, admit of as easy a refutation as the clerical evidence of October 1821*. Dispassionate readers of such details must consider them as little better than a series of insulting experiments, to ascertain how much will be borne by the common sense and humane feelings of the public ;-published, too, by journalists who affect to be devoted to a Church which beseeches the Father of all mankind to shew pity upon all prisoners and captives, and to defend and provide for all that are desolate and oppressed! is The Reviewer's conduct will increase the just suspicion of many, that the Abolitionists have stated the case of their clients with almost culpable moderation. Of this the succeeding Memoir is, in a great degree, an illustration. Having myself collated nearly all its citations with original works, it my decided opinion that the writer might have deepened the shades of his picture; and, indeed, was bound to have done so, had I not also observed, that additional and darker details, from colonial and parliamentary authorities, would have rendered his account utterly unfit for indiscriminate perusal. As it is, he will scarcely be justified by sensitive and delicate readers for having told such a plain tale. Will he not, however, be acquitted of all blame, by those persons who give him credit for exposing sin, not to diffuse * See Note E. |