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be compelled to relinquish his slave upon receiving either the original purchase-money, or the present market price. Even where he is willing to bestow liberty he is not always able. The disgraceful codes of the islands abound

manumission.

Fines on with provisions intended to obstruct emancipation. In Barbadoes and St. Kitt's immense fines, amounting, in fact, to a prohibitary duty, have been imposed on manumissions. In other islands fines are established, smaller, indeed, in amount, but still most pernicious in their effect. In the Bermudas no slave can ever receive his liberty.

Servitude and liberty.

Lastly, every inhabitant of our West India Islands, in whose complexion the slightest traces of the negro can be dis covered, is pronounced to be a slave unless he can produce evidence of his freedom. The law considers servitude as the natural portion of the African, and liberty as the exception. To that exception he must work out his claim. And, in the arduous task of proving a negative, the law throws every possible difficulty in his path. He cannot adduce the testimony of a slave. In some colonies, he cannot even adduce that of a freeman of colour. He may have been manumitted. He may have been born free. He may have passed all his life in England. No person claims him. No person pretends to know or to believe that he is a slave. The West India code, with characteristic wisdom and liberality, lays the whole burden of the proof on the unhappy being whose dearest interests are staked on the result. And, unless he can demonstrate that which must often be, in its own nature, unsusceptible of demonstration, he is put up to public auction, and sold into perpetual and hereditary bondage.

People of England! These are the West Indian institutions. And these institutions, replete with

West Indian

institutions. misery and guilt; these institutions, condemned by the whole spirit of the religion which you profess, and of the laws in which you glory-these institutions you encourage by your whole commercial policy; -these institutions you defend with your fleets and armies. Over those colonies you have a just and irresistible authority. Most dearly have you purchased the right -most fully do you possess the powerto control them. To enrich them your

gold has been scattered like dust, to defend them your blood has been poured forth like water. Even now you are sacrificing to your cupidity every other interest in the empire. Even now your arms alone protect the masters from the vengeance of the slave, and avert that day of deliverance and retribution, which other wise would soon bury the accursed agents beneath the ruins of the accursed system.

"Beware of provoking the colonists," is the cry of the timid and the ignorant. "Remember the American war. Remember all our defeats and humiliations. Remember the capitulation of Saratoga, and the treaty of Versailles. What will you do if they resist?" What, indeed! Woe to England, when Nevis shall pour forth its two hundred invincible warriors to annihilate the legions of Waterloo ! Woe to England, above all, when Jamaica shall arise in her wrath! That Island, when all its white inhabitants, capable of bearing arms, are called into the field, will probably furnish not much less than three thousand heroes to defend her independence against a nation, which cannot conveniently send against her much more than thirty thousand disciplined soldiers. Some second Washington will doubtless arise to defend the privileges of the cart-whip. Hodge is needed no more. The cruelty of England has snatched from the slave islands their brightest ornament. The resentment of the colonists could not save, nor, alas! will their sorrow restore him. Huggins, we believe, still survives. He will, doubtless, like Cincinnatus, obey the call of his country, quit his plantation, exchange the scourge for the sword, and tear the laurels from the head of Wellington. But, seriously, who can refrain from laughter at the thought of this resistance -this combat between Tom Thumb and the Queen of the Giants? Is it not the fact, that the whole white population of the West Indies would fly like sheep before two British Regiments? Is it not the fact that, without our assistance, they would be unable to defend themselves from their domestic enemies? Could they sleep in security without the protection of those bayonets which they have madly affected to defy? And these men have dared to mutter about resistance, and to dispute the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament over their assemblies. How long will the mother country, in all the plenitude of

But

An unequal combat.

her parental authority, bear to be defied, disobeyed, and buffeted by the spoiled child whom she could beggar in an instant. "But," cry the West Indians, "though your policy may not alienate, it may ruin us.

Rights and obligations.

indeed, compel the negro to make a certain number of movements; but neither that, nor any other instrument of cruelty, can compel him, with his languid body, his gloomy temper, and his degraded

a competition

intellect, to maintain Will you be so unjust as to withdraw your support from establishments which you founded, and which you so long encouraged? Will you interfere with rights which every obligation of public faith binds you to respect?" Rights! and bave no men rights but yourselves? Obligations! and is justice no obligation! Is mercy no obligation? Or are all obligations voidable, except those which bind us to participate in the guilt and infamy of your accursed dominion? Faith! and is no faith to be kept with human nature? Are we to sit down contented with recommending the improvements which we have full power to enforce, while to every request the West Indian answers, like the merciless Jew in Shakspeare,

against the active, cheerful, and intelligent workman, who knows that his comforts will be proportioned to his exertions. The unnatural situation in which the slave is placed, renders it bis interest to produce as little, and to consume as much as possible. Diligence and idleness, parsimony and profusion, alike leave him where they found him. He has no motive, but the fear of punishment, to augment the wealth of which he is never to partake. His labour is, of all kinds of labour, the least productive.

"I cannot find it. 'Tis not in the bond." No! The engagement cannot bind us. The compact is cancelled by its own iniquity. Our resolution is pronounced by the understanding of all who can reason, by the hearts of all who can feel, by the mandate of heaven, by the cry of blood from the earth; our past encouragement of this system does, indeed, lay us under an obligation;-a solemn obligation, not to assist the cruelty of our accomplice, but to redress the wrongs of our victim.

But what if it can be shown that all these dangers are chimerical;-that the pecuniary interest of the colonies will not suffer from the abolition of slavery? What if it should appear that the economist has nothing to offer in defence of institutions which the moralist must for ever condemn ? Can it be that this shame and guilt have been gratuitously incurred, and that we have sacrificed immense advantages in order to maintain what no bribe should have induced us to tolerate? Yet thus it is; and thus, by the eternal connection of effects and

Human principles.

causes, it must for ever be. The principles of human nature render it impossible that a permanent fabric of prosperity should be erected on a foundation of injustice and cruelty. Industry is the common offspring of liberty and knowledge. The lash of the driver may,

This reasoning is fully confirmed by the present state of the West Indian colonies. After all the encouragement that we have bestowed, after all the privations to which we have submitted for their sake, what is their present condition? A triple length of navigation.. and an enormous protecting duty, are found scarcely sufficient to secure to them a monopoly of the sugar trade, against the free labourers of Hindostan. They are at the present moment complaining of distress, and clamouring for relief. We have opened their trade;— we have fettered our own ;—we have sacrificed the interests of the East Indian cultivator and of the British manufacturer to their prosperity—and in vain. All this is inadequate to save them from the effects of their internal abuses. Their ruin is rapidly approaching; a ruin which Approaching nothing but the emancipation of their slaves can possibly avert. It is true that the negroes are in a great measure unable to enjoy the blessings, and unfit to exercise the rights of free men. It is true, to use an illustration which a West Indian overseer will easily comprehend, that their minds, like their bodies, have become crippled in the irons, and callous under the scourge. But these circumstances, while they enhance the difficulty, prove the necessity of manumission. They are the worst part of a state of things in which all is bad. Slavery is, indeed, altogether evil; evil unmingled, unmitigated, unredeemed; evil without any affinity to virtue; evil without any tendency to happiness. To all that alleviates the

ruin.

Unmitigated evil.

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other miseries of life, to the tenderness of affection, to the majesty of law, it imparts its own deadly nature. But the withering influence which it exercises on the hearts and faculties of its victims is its foulest disgrace and its strongest security. It resembles the tree in the Italian romance, which showered poison from its boughs in such torrents that no one durst approach to sever its trunk. It is perpetuated by its pestilential nature. Its suppression must, therefore, we fear, be gradual. Measures must be taken to improve the negroes, as the first step to their liberation. Worse than useless would be the benevolence of those, who, like the two daring brothers in "Comus," would drive away the hateful wizard before they have taken off the charm from the senses of the fascinated prisoner.

"Oh, ye mistook. Ye should have snatched his wand,

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And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the captain that sits here
In stony fetters fixed and motionless."

By what means the slave may be most completely and most speedily rendered capable of exercising the privileges of a citizen, we will not now inquire; but this we will confidently say, that unless efficacious measures be speedily adopted for the attainment of that great object, it is easy to foresee that a violent and bloody close will terminate this violent and bloody system. Jamaica may yet produce a Spartæus. But the planters have less danger to apprehend from their debased slaves than from their formidable neighbours. Amidst those islands, where all the bounties of nature have so long been counteracted by the tyranny of man ;-amidst those islands from which European rapacity swept away the whole race of original cultivators, and which it has since repeopled with equally miserable but more enduring victims ;-amidst those islands which have exhibited at once the worst evils of polished and of savage society,the strength of civilization without wisdom or mercy,-the ignorance of barbarism without energy or freedom;-amidst those islands a black republic has arisenfree-warlike-enlightened. The greatest prince and conqueror of modern times attempted to reduce Hayti to subjection. He made the attempt when an interval of peace had laid the ocean open to the

arms which had subjugated the monarchy of the earth. The largest and finest army that ever crossed the Atlantic was arrayed against the emancipated slaves. The best soldiers of France, the heroes of Arcola and Marengo, were employed against an undisciplined multitude, whose backs were still red from the whip, whose limbs were still stiff from the chain. Perfidy was exercised in aid of force. The Haytians were surprised by an unexpected invasion; beguiled by false professions; disunited by intrigues. Their ablest leader was seized by treachery, and sent to perish in an European dungeon. Enormous bribes were offered to the black leaders. All the horrors of savage, and all the tactics of disciplined warfare were united. No mercy was shown to old men, or women, or sucking children. The blood-hound completed the work of the bayonet, and the mighty pit covered the still palpitating relics of the daily massacre. It was in vain. Wasted away by famine, by pestilence, and by the sword, that mighty army perished in Independence the enterprise; and the independence of Hayti was established for ever.

of Hayti.

Pretext of aggression.

Can negro long continue to exist in the immediate vicinity of the liberated queen of the Antilles? Is there nothing in our colonial institutions which might furnish a pretext of an aggression? A black merchant, nay, a black ambassador, proceeding from Port-au-Prince to Venezuela or Mexico, might easily be compelled, by stress of weather, to land in Jamaica. The law commands, that in such a case he shall be sold for a slave. Will this be tamely borne? or will the Haytians long continue to endure their exclusion from all commercial intercourse with our colonies? Is it impossible that some able and aspiring leader may feel inclined, even without any particular provocation, to engage in so easy and so glorious an enterprise as the extinction of slavery in the surrounding islands? The present military establishment of Hayti consists of fifteen thousand excellent troops. The number might easily be doubled. Twenty-four hours would bring ten thousand black soldiers to Jamaica. Twenty-four hours more would raise upon the white inhabitants an hundred thousand infuriated slaves. This is no chimerical supposition. It is an event neither impossible nor improbable.

To what an alternative will England then be reduced? Will she submit to see possessions, however worthless, torn

England's alternative.

from her by force; to see institutions which had existed under her protection, however atrocious they might be, subverted by foreign arms? Will she, on the other hand, engage in a war against an enemy so desperate, at a distance so vast, in a climate so deadly? We know not. But thus much, at least, we will say that in such a contest we should deprecate and deplore her success. Rather let her perish, rather let her commercial opulence and her martial glory be as though they had never been, than that her history should be signalized by the triumphs of guilt, by trophies erected over the vanquished rights and broken hearts of mankind! Who would attempt to restrain the fertilizing inundation, because some ancient, perhaps some useful landmarks might be swept away by its waves? Who would execrate the light of the sun because some of those stars on which we love to gaze must disappear at his approach; or, because the mists which he blows up from the foul and pestilential marshes on which he dawns may tinge his rays with the hue of blood? The fire of London has always been considered as a blessing, because it extinguished the weeds of the plague more completely than any care of the police or any medical skill had ever been able to do. The political world, in the same manner, often derives great advantages from those fierce and destroying visitations, which lay in the dust for

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tors, with total ruin. These evils can be averted only by a series of manœuvres calculated to improve both the moral and the political condition of the slave.

Nothing can be expected from the local legislatures. They have been caressed -threatened--implored-warned,—without effect. Justice, mercy, shame, interest, fear, have had no influence upon them. They are sunk in that stupid and desperate indifference to all moral and prudential considerations, which the long possession of unlimited power never fails to generate. They have done nothing,they will do nothing.

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ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF

LITERATURE.

(KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE, JUNE, 1823.)

THIS is the age of societies. There is scarcely one Englishman in ten who has not belonged to some association for

The age of societies.

distributing books, or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich, or blankets to the poor. To be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal Society of Literature. At the first establishment of that ridiculous academy every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage and episcopal management, it would do nothing or do harm. And it will scarcely be denied that those expectations have hitherto been fulfilled.

I do not attack the founders of the association. Their characters are respectable; their motives, I am willing to believe, were laudable. Founders of the But I feel, and it is the duty of every literary man

association.

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rarely able to assign a reason for their approbation or dislike on questions of taste; and therefore they willingly submit to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most easily decried.

Fine arts ex

In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine arts; and it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of that institution which annually disfigures hibition. the walls of Somerset House with an acre of spoiled canvas. But a literary tribunal is incomparably more dangerous. Other societies, at least, have no tendency to call forth any opinions on those subjects which most agitate and inflame the minds of mer. The sceptic and the zealot, the revolu tionist and the placeman, meet on common ground in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science. They can praise or censure without reference to the differences which exist between them. In a literary body this can never be the case. Literature is, and always must be, inseparably blended with politics and theology; it is the great engine which moves the feeling of a people on the most momentous questions. It is, therefore, impossible that any society can be formed so impartial as to consider the literary character of an individual abstracted from the opinions which his writings inculcate. It is not to be hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings of the man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the academician. The consequences are evident. The honours and censures of this Star Chamber of the Muses will be awarded according to the prejudices of the particular sect or faction

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