In the subsequent remarks, M. Humboldt points out the inefficiency of any attempt on the part of the European Governments to mend the condition of the slaves, if the colonial legislatures shall fail to enter into the same views, and to adopt, bonâ fide, a plan of which the ultimate object shall be, the cessation of slavery.

Till then, it will be in vain to register the strokes of the whip, to diminish the number that may be inflicted at one time, to require the presence of witnesses, or to name protectors of the slaves. All such regulations, dictated by the most benevolent intentions, are easily eluded. The loneliness of the plantations renders their execution impracticable. They suppose a system of domestic inquisition, incompatible with what is termed in the colonies, acquired rights... In order to meliorate without commotion, new institutions must be grafted upon those which have been rendered sacred by the barbarism of centuries. It will be difficult hereafter to believe, that up to 1826, there existed no law in the Great Antilles, to prevent selling infants, and separating them from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading practice of branding the negroes with a hot iron, merely that the human cattle might be more easily recognized. Enact laws that may preclude the possibility of any barbarous outrage ;-fix, in every sugarplantation, the relative proportion between the lowest number of negresses and that of the field negroes;-let every slave have his freedom granted to him, who has served fifteen years, and every negress be made free, who has reared four or five children ;-set them free on the condition of working a certain number of days for the profit of the plantation ;-give the slaves a certain portion of the neat produce, to interest them in the augmentation of agricultural wealth;-charge the budget of the public expenditure with a sum destined for the redemption of slaves and the melioration of their condition;-such are the most pressing objects of colonial legislation...

I have

Wherever slavery has long been established, the mere progress of civilization has less influence on the treatment of slaves, than many persons are disposed to admit. The civilization of a nation seldom extends to a great number of individuals, and does not reach those who, in the plantations, are in immediate contact with the negroes. known very humane proprietors shrink from the difficulties that arise in the great plantations; they hesitate to disturb the established order, —to make innovations which, if not simultaneous, not sustained by the Legislature, or (which would be a more powerful means) by the general will, would fail of their object, and perhaps aggravate the wretchedness of those whose condition they were intended to alleviate. These timid considerations prevent the good that might be effected by men actuated by the most benevolent intentions, and who deplore the barbarous institutions of which they have acceded to the sad inheritance. Acquainted with the local circumstances, they know, that to produce an essential change in the state of the slaves, to lead them progressively to the enjoyment of liberty, requires a firm resolution in the local authorities, the concurrence of wealthy and enlightened citizens, and a general plan, in which all the chances of disorder and the means

of repressing it shall be calculated. Without this consentaneous movement and effort, Slavery, with its evils and atrocities, will perpetuate itself, as it did in ancient Rome*, in the midst of elegance of manners, the boasted progress of knowledge, and all the amenities of civilization, on which its existence reflects disgrace, and which it threatens to overwhelm when the hour of vengeance arrives.... In slave-countries, where long habit tends to legitimate institutions the most contrary to justice, we must calculate upon the influence of knowledge, intellectual improvement, and softened manners, only so far as they may accelerate the impulse given by Governments, and facilitate the execution of measures once adopted. Without this directing action of governments and legislatures, a peaceable change is not to be hoped for. pp. 265-284.

But whence can this directing impulse emanate? From a West India legislative assembly? Impossible. They with one voice deny that any improvement in the system is called for; and to any plans embracing the abolition of slavery as their ultimate object, they are obstinately opposed. We are therefore reduced to this alternative. Either slavery must be permitted to exist with immaterial modifications in its present state, till the Blacks shall take their cause into their own hands, and exterminate the band of White tyrants who hold them in bondage, —or nothing must be left to the wisdom or tender mercies of the colonial assemblies. Let them meet and settle as they please their own petty financial matters; but by what right, natural, moral, or political, do they claim the prerogative of legislating for seven hundred thousand subjects of the British Crown, who have never delegated any such powers to their irresponsible masters? Parish vestries may legislate respecting matters within their province, but they are not allowed to set the Government at defiance. Why should Jamaica, with its 25,000 Whites, be suffered to mimic, in its assemblies, the powers of a constitutional Legislature? The slaves may be their property they are not their subjects, but the subjects of Great Britain. To legislate for them, therefore, belongs to this country, not to the colonies. The troops are not theirs, by which the internal security of the islands is guaranteed and preserved.

*

‹ The argument drawn from the civilization of Rome and Greece, in favour of slavery, is much in vogue in the West Indies, where we sometimes find it adorned with all the elegance of philological erudition. Thus, in speeches delivered in 1795, in the legislative assembly of Jamaica, it was proved from the example of elephants having been employed in the wars of Pyrrhus and Hannibal, that it could not be criminal to bring a hundred dogs and forty hunters from the Island of Cuba, to hunt the maroon negroes. Bryan Edwards. Vol. i. p. 570.

VOL. IV.-N.S.

D

The protecting duties under which the planters continue to carry on their slave-cultivation, they have no power to originate or to enforce. Why then should it be regarded as within their province, to exercise the higher powers of legislation, extending to questions of life or death, and to suspend at will the British constitution and the common law of morality and religion? Theirs are the mere rights of property: rights of government they cannot have, nor any representative rights, for whom do they represent? What are they but a body of farmers and drovers legislating for their cattle? The Legislature of a Jamaica Smithfield!

There is but one course left for the British Legislature to pursue, and it is one in which, we rejoice to believe, the irresistible feeling of the country will soon bear them on,-namely, to fix the day, and that no very distant one, after which every child born in the British dominions shall be free. Let that day be unalterably fixed,-the sooner the better. Were it to be the 1st of next January, it would inflict on slavery a death slow enough to satisfy any rational advocate of gradual emancipation. It would still leave a generation to expire in bondage. It would still defer for some twenty years, the abolition of what ought not to be suffered to exist for an hour, did the enormous evil admit of being remedied by prompter measures. But, if there be any strong reasons for appointing a later day, we earnestly hope that a definite time will at all events be speedily fixed, and that the execution of the decree will be devolved, not upon the colonial Legislatures, but upon the colonial Government. If the British Parliament was competent to put down and abolish the trade in slaves, in which the interests of the Colonies were alleged to be so deeply implicated, how absurd is it to raise the question, whether the same authority be competent to abolish slavery itself! But, in point of fact, the slavetrade has not been abolished; it has hitherto only been regulated. The slave-importation trade has been prohibited: the internal slave-trade of the Islands still exists, and must continue, so long as slaves are considered as mere chattels. The only question is, therefore, whether, one part of the slave-trade having been abolished by Act of Parliament, the other part shall be allowed to continue in defiance of the Legislature, to which is denied the right to complete its own measures. Slaves are now bred for the market, instead of being kidnapped from Africa; but, although now confined as it were to the home produce, (at least as regards our own islands,) the trade is going on; nor will it cease, until there shall not remain a slave to be bought or sold throughout the British colonies.

Too long has Slavery been treated as an evil which requires to be palliated and amended, rather than as a crime which ought

to be suppressed. The West Indians complain of being slandered. They accuse the artful antagonists of the West India 'Colonies in the Mother Country,' of employing agents to traduce their character as a body, by deliberate frauds and wilful fabrications*. Now let them be henceforward deemed in courtesy, the most humane, tender-hearted, religious, honourable body of slave-masters in the world; let their sensitive jealousy for their reputation be duly respected; but only let these excellent persons understand, that they are not to be allowed to breed any more slaves. It is not out of the least disrespect to the much injured Jamaica planters, that we in Great Britain seek to relieve ourselves as a nation from the guilt and ignominy of the system. They now admit, that, 'upon the question of Slavery in the abstract, there cannot be two opinions :'-we are rejoiced to hear this, for certainly two very different opinions have been heretofore maintained. It is henceforth with Slavery only, not indeed in the abstract, but in the concrete, that we shall have to deal. One simple measure shall terminate the controversy; the measure proposed by Mr. Dundas nearly forty years ago, (in 1792,) that every negro child henceforth born within his Majesty's dominions, shall, like every slave that touches the British shores, be to all intents and purposes free.

Petitions founded on this view of the subject are already on their way to the British Parliament; and we confidently anticipate from the strenuous and combined exertions which are being put in action, the happiest results. We cannot forbear to call the particular attention of our readers to the last Number (No. 61, June,) of the Anti-Slavery Reporter, containing a full

* A statement has just been sent us, which appears to be a circular, addressed to the Officiating Clergy' of this country, by the West India Body, in which their attention is earnestly invited to a particular case of alleged calumnious fabrication, as a specimen of the slanderous propensities of a party in this country. It appears, however, that the Author of this alleged fabrication, instead of being one of any such party, is a resident in Jamaica; that the statements which he transmitted to this country, were contained in a private letter to his brother, a clergyman, and could have no sinister or party object; and that his partial disavowal and retraction of the contents of his letter, after it had found its way to the newspapers, and he found it seriously taken up by the House of Assembly, were made under circumstances which must very materially affect the value of his evidence. After all, the correctness or incorrectness of Mr. Smith's original statement, as the opinion or allegation of an individual, is a matter of such extreme insignificance, that the West India Party have put themselves to a very needless expense, in parading this Statement and Confession before our Officiating Clergy.'

account of the proceedings at the recent General Meeting of the friends of the cause ;-one of the most splendid meetings, as regards the numbers and respectability of the persons assembled, and the eloquence which was elicited, that was ever held in the metropolis. We had the happiness to be present; and while we can bear our testimony to the meritorious fidelity of the printed report of the speeches, we must confess that the reader can receive from it a very imperfect idea of the intense interest which was awaked and sustained throughout the meeting. For once, Brougham was outshone in eloquence, and outrun in zeal, in the cause which he has so nobly and perseveringly advocated; and an advanced ground was occupied by a spontaneous movement, in despite of all formal tactics, which we trust will never be receded from. We shall only insert one single paragraph from the speech of Dr. Lushington, because the Number will speedily be in the hands of all our readers.

Now he (Dr. Lushington) entreated the meeting to mark him. The present hour was not to be lost. The time of a general election was fast approaching. That was the hour when the people could effectually aid us. If they went with us heart and hand-if in their very souls they were convinced of the necessity that existed for abolishing the degrading system which prevailed in the slave colonies—now was the time by their exertions to aid its extinction and abolition. Let every man who had a vote either in any single town which had the p:ivilege of sending a representative to Parliament, or in any county; let every such man remember that it was his sacred duty to see, that neither his influence nor his vote should be given to any one who would not pledge himself to the cause of abolition. And let the meeting again mark this one word of further advice. Let them give their vote to no lukewarm friend—to no stickler about indemnities—to no putter-off of the question to a day that was never to come-to no advocate for vested interests as paramount to the claims of justice and humanity ; but to one who would pledge himself to say-" This iniquity has been committed by those who have legislated before me, here and in the West: my soul sinks under that sin, and with the blessing of God, every effort shall be made by me to remove the load from my country and my conscience”—to one who would rise early and go to bed late to carry his point—to one who had the firmness to disregard the sneers of the interested, and who would not mind the disgrace of being named a “Philanthropist.” He was persuaded that if once this spirit could be roused into activity—if those possessed of it were to exert their influence honestly and fearlessly, not giving their vote or influence out of friendship to any one, or from regard to any other object; were we thus to go straight forward to the end in view, then would our efforts be crowned with success, and that guilt which had stained this country more deeply than any other upon the face of the globe, would be removed from us; and not merely guilt, but all the consequences of guilt that certainly follow it-misery and suffering to all.' p. 264.

We cannot now advert to the remaining contents of the