detriment of his property and the consequent ruin of the owner, it is impossible for such owner not to have a claim for compensation under Mr. Canning's resolutions.' He goes on to say, that the question is very simply-will the manumitted slave be disposed to work for wages which can be afforded by the master without such diminution of profit as will entitle him to a claim of compensation? Now, in regard to Demerara, where not onethousandth part of the most fertile soil is occupied, and where a population a thousand times as great as its actual population is, could be with ease sustained from the produce of the land, and where, moreover, the emancipated black, if he wished to leave the colony entirely, would find himself separated by a narrow creek only from Columbia, (where slavery does not exist,) this question assumes a very different character from that which it might bear in some other of our colonies. In Jamaica, however, the difficulties are very nearly, if not altogether, as great as in Demerara. In these great colonies, most undoubtedly, the colonist could not proceed with his cultivation at all, if the rate of wages necessary to bribe the free black to do the same work which he had done when a bondsman, materially exceeded the amount gained by the price of the manumission, and his exemp tion from future expense in the support of the negro. For it is sufficiently obvious that other countries, where the slave system was in full vigour, or where density of population, encroaching on the means of subsistence, compelled the labourer either to work or to starve, would undersell him in the market of the world.

The author of the pamphlet to which we have referred handles this part of the subject in a manner which we venture to pronounce unanswerable.

Undoubtedly (says he) slaves employed in any mechanical trades, not in themselves severely laborious, or in the discharge of domestic duties as servants, or in any sort of labour which does not involve the necessity of constant, steady exertion, under a tropical sun, may be found, when free, to work for such wages as the master can fairly afford. But the greatest loss which the planter could sustain, would be that of his best agricultural slave; that is, of a slave by whose labour his sugar cultivation is mainly carried on, and who is, by the terms of the proposition, a strong, able-bodied, free-working man. If the planter could, by means of wages, induce such a slave, when made free, to continue the same steady supply of labour which he received from him before his emancipation, and if those wages did not exceed the expense which is entailed upon the master under the slave system, of maintaining the slave and his family from infancy to death, in that case, so far from suffering an injury in the event of compulsory manumission, even without price, he would receive a benefit; as he would be able to employ his capital without the insecurity inseparable from slave-property; and the same

beneficial

beneficial change which took place in Europe, and especially in England, and which matured the feudal villein into a free man, would take place with equal advantage in the West Indies. The extreme abolitionist would not hesitate to assert, that it would so take place, and that there was no doubt but that the operation of the principle of bettering his condition would induce the manumitted slave to work steadily and faithfully from day to day, and with physical powers rather increased than diminished, in his new state as a free man, having emerged from the degrading and depressing state of servitude. The West Indian would, on the other hand, entirely assent, in the abstract, to the effect of that stimulus which the desire of bettering his condition is calculated to produce on the physical exertions of the labourer; but he would contend that the labourer himself must be, in all cases, left to judge as to what really is "a bettering of his condition;" and that, in the torrid zone, sugarlabour is so repugnant to the physical instinct of the black (while at the same time it is impossible to the white,) that no sense of the advantages to be derived from the acquisition of property will ever induce the negro to undergo that labour, and thereby to abandon the luxury of repose; and he will refer to the very arguments of the individual who is going to make a motion upon the subject in the course of the present session, in confirmation of this unchangeable principle. Mr. Brougham, in his "Colonial Policy," borrowing most of his opinions from M. Malouet, Minister of Marine and Colonies under the French government, has enforced this part of the argument in detail, and with a force of illustration which would make it utterly impossible for him ever to contradict such opinions, however he may qualify them. The West Indian will then proceed to assert, that sugar labour demands a regular unintermitting exertion from day to day, during the course of the cultivation and crop; and that, as the interests of the majority of the West India body are involved in the cultivation of sugar, and of sugar only, ruin must ensue if that cultivation cannot be carried on under a system of wages, as well as under a system of slavery. He will also explain that the transmutation of a sugar estate, with all its machinery and buildings, into an estate upon which it is intended to cultivate other produce yielding equal profit to the proprietor, is neither more nor less than impracticable."

The author of this pamphlet then proceeds to express his conviction, that in colonies in this situation a fair claim of compensation would, under a variety of circumstances which he enumerates, arise in favour of the manumitting colonist. But he asks, 'whether the principle of such compensation is not already sufficiently admitted and provided for under Mr. Canning's regulations? He shows that under these regulations, the appraisers will always be not only entitled, but, if they do their duty, compelled to strike the price to be paid for the slave, after considering all the circumstances of the individual case.

If, for example, (says he) a price which can command a slave equally good be given to the planter, he is precisely in the same condition as before. Under that supposition, he receives in fact no money; since the

the money paid by the manumitted slave is immediately laid out in the purchase of another slave. If such a slave be not forthcoming, and he can only procure an inferior slave, he will have the services of that inferior slave, and a money price representing the difference. If no slave whatever can be bought, he will have a money price calculated with reference to his being able, by means of wages, to obtain from a freeman, that labour which he had previously received from the slave; and if the slave so manumitted, or any other free labourer, will work for those wages, no injury will be sustained by the master; but if the master can neither purchase a slave nor obtain free-labour, his compensation for the loss of the manumitted slave ought to be, a definite proportion of the value of the estate as a sugar plantation, deducting its value for any other available purpose of cultivation.'

The author of Six Months in the West Indies' reasons much in the same manner, and to the reasoning we have no objection. Nothing can be more fair than it is so far as it goes--but the question certainly does remain, whether it goes far enough, and we, in the present state of our information, are inclined, with all submission, to answer this question in the negative.

Both of these writers, in a word, seem to take it for granted, that perfect justice will in every case be done, provided the master called on to manumit his slave receives, by the verdict of the legal appraisers, a just compensation for the value of that slave, such as he is at the moment when he comes into court and claims his freedom; and the author of the pamphlet appears to us to have laid down the principles upon which such appraisement ought to be conducted in a manner perfectly unanswerable-but is this sufficient? Is there no fallacy behind? We think there is, and shall express the difficulty that still, according to our view, embarrasses the matter, as shortly as possible.

It is the planter who is to make the claim for compensation. What may the planter say? May he not ask whether it is the usual custom with an English jockey, when he wishes to purchase his neighbour's horse, to cry up the value of that horse--or to cry it down? May he not ask whether the negro, who knows that the law entitles him to his freedom provided he can pay for the value of his personal exertions, is more likely to do his best, in order to raise or to sink, even in the eyes of the master himself, the value of these exertions? May he not put the simple case, that a negro has honestly and fairly paid the price of his own freedom-settled himself away from sugar plantations altogether-obtained a piece of land on which fruit and pulse sufficient for the maintenance of a family can be raised with very little trouble-and that having done all this, his next object comes to be the acquisition of the freedom of a son, whom he has left behind him in the service of his ancient master. He cannot make this acquisition otherwise VOL. XXXIII. NO. 66.-Q.R. 65

than

than by paying money to the master--he and his son will of course understand each other perfectly;-will it be the interest of either parent or child that the latter should be esteemed on the plantation to which he is attached, a faithful, diligent, hardworking, intelligent, and therefore a very valuable-or a sluggish, idle, stupid, and therefore, comparatively speaking, a worthless slave? And if this question be answered, as, taking human nature for what all experience proves it in general to be, it must -will the master, who receives by the verdict of the appraisers a just and fair price for the exertions of this slave, calculated, as it must be, upon the average usefulness of the slave during a certain number of months or years-will this master have no reason to go home with the money in his pocket, and yet say to himself:all this is very well so far as it goes; nevertheless my property is at this moment less than it would have been had no regulation ever come from England to make it possible for a slave to procure his freedom invito domino.*

The truth is, that, whatever may be said or dreamt to the contrary, all who have ever seen any thing of the West Indies, or taken the trouble to gather authentic information about these colonies, are quite convinced that, whether compulsory manumission be or be not the law, the absolute emancipation of the negro race, if brought about without violence, without bloodshed, must be a work of time-not of three years, nor of ten years, nor of any such period as the ladies and gentlemen of the African Institution are pleased to consider as an age--but, in all probability, of real bona fide human generations. The planters, more especially those of the more extensive and thinly peopled colonies, understand this thoroughly; and they object to the regulations in general-but above all to that which we have been considering, chiefly because they are apprehensive of the relations between master and slave -relations which they all know must terminate one day, and which they all believe cannot terminate soon-being, in the intervening space, unnecessarily embittered. They foresee a long course of heartburnings and jealousies between slaves tempted to desire the ill opinion of their superiors on the one hand--and, on the other, masters tempted to see deliberate fraud in every momentary indulgence of that idle mood to which the climate is eternally

We had written the above before Earl Bathurst's dispatches to Demerara were made public. From them we learn, that in contemplation of these difficulties, it has been proposed that the slave demanding manumission shall, if he has not procured the means of purchase by his own personal exertions, produce a five years' certificate of industry. But, we confess, even this precaution does not appear to exhaust the case; for is it impossible that obstinate ill conduct should induce the master himself to desire the departure of the slave, and even to facilitate that issue by a certificate-although he well knew all the while, that the slave might have been a most useful one?

prompting

prompting all beneath its influence. They dread the termination of those kindly feelings of mutual interest and mutual care which, according to their statements, characterize at this moment the relations between the immense majority of colonial proprietors and colonial labourers. You talk, say they, of compensation: who will compensate us for unhappy days and sleepless nights? who will compensate us for the pain of being surrounded for years and years by cold eyes and unwilling hands-who will compensate to us and to our slaves, for the interruption of charities which, whatever strangers may say or fancy, have been, and are, dear and valuable both to us and to them? who will compensate for the pride of kind protection taken away-the gratitude of humble hearts congealed-the daily habits of confidential intercourse broken-the sense of mutual dependence and good will extinguished? If it be answered that points of feeling can never be estimated in money, it is true; but in all this catalogue of outrages, (assuming such a prospective enumeration of them to be correct,) there is not one injury to feeling, which is not directly or indirectly attended by injury gross and tangible to the purse of the colonial proprietor.

We have not thrown out these suggestions as if they were things that could not be answered; very far from it: we only desire to see it admitted that there are preliminaries connected with this great experiment which still deserve consideration. That they will meet with every consideration in the quarter from which the ultimate decision must come, we have no sort of doubt. His Majesty's ministers are not so ignorant of human nature as to suppose that, cæteris paribus, a West Indian proprietor prefers to have his sugar-field laboured by a slave rather than by a freeman. They are well aware that with the colonists this is a question of property-that all the real difficulties originate in the belief that their pecuniary interests are in danger. Convince them that they are mistaken in this-that the proposed regulations do not necessarily involve any pecuniary loss on their part-and as certainly as they have eyes to see, and ears to hear, their opposition to the suggestions of the British parliament will be forever at an end.

There is, indeed, one circumstance external to the real merits. of the case, which we can easily believe to have some influence-and that, to whatever it may amount, most unpropitious-on the minds of our colonists. We allude to the manner in which their characters are suffered to be assailed, too often without even an attempt at any answer, in the House of Commons. It is from that house that they consider the Regulations in question as emanating; can it possibly dispose them the more willingly to accept of such suggestions, to read in the newspapers that such a lawyer

and