any apprehension of risk very chimerical. The Negro is far less likely if liberated to be rebellious, because the change has not come quickly upon him; and his demeanour for so long a time in such circumstances, is a proof that his nature is far less prone to insurrection than had been supposed; although it was always maintained by the friends of the Africans, that the danger of revolt would be found in a uniform proportion to the maltreatment of the Negroes, and the number of newly imported slaves in any West Indian community. These considerations are of the greatest moment in the discussion of the questions now before us; and we are the more anxious to press them upon the reader, because we frankly profess ourselves to be of the number of those whose alarms at the prospect of Negro insurrection have been wholly, allayed by an attentive examination of the conduct of the West Indian slaves, and still more of the Free Blacks and Mulattoes, since the eventful period when St Domingo threw off the yoke, and successfully resisted the attempts at a reconquest. The excellent work before us states many important particulars well worthy of being seriously weighed, in the further prosecution of these observations.

Mr Clarkson, in order to show how chimerical are the fears of rebellion from emancipating the slaves, examines seven different cases in which the experiment has been tried more or less. fully, and on a scale more or less extended-during the last forty years. The first is that of two thousand slaves, freed during the American War, and at the peace carried to Nova Scotia and there settled, until the climate made it necessary that they should be removed to Sierra Leone. The next is the settlement in Trinidad of some hundreds of Negroes whom we most unjustifiably invited to revolt and desert during the disgraceful expedition of 1814 against the United States. In both these instances, the greatest apprehensions were entertained by the White inhabitants of the new neighbours thus suddenly brought among them; in both, the uniformly peaceful and orderly demeanour of the poor Blacks has put all such fears to flight. The disbanded soldiers of the West India regiments, and negroes captured at sea since the abolition, and carried to Sierra Leone, form the third and fourth cases. The latter is the most important; and Mr Clarkson thus states it.

They were taken out of slave-ships, captured at different times, from the commencement of the abolition of the slave trade to the present moment, and on being landed were made free. After having recruited their health, they were taught to form villages and to cultivate land for themselves. They were made free as they were landed from the vessels, in bodies of from fifty to three or four hundred at a

T

time. They occupy at present twelve towns, in which there are both churches and schools. Regent's Town having been one of the first established, containing about thirteen hundred souls, stands foremost in improvement, and has become a pattern for industry and good example. The people there have now fallen into the habits of civilized society. They are decently and respectably dressed. They attend divine worship regularly. They exhibit an orderly and moral conduct. In their town little shops begin to make their appearance; and their lands show the marks of industrious cultivation. Many of them, after having supplied their wants for the year, employ a surplus produce in the purchase of superfluities or comforts. The whole number of these persons is about 14,000. pp. 16, 17.

We add with great satisfaction our author's valuable remarks upon those four cases; noting, as we pass, the singular calmness of the tone, and persuasive simplicity of the expression.

'Here then are four cases of Slaves, either Africans or descendants of Africans, emancipated in considerable bodies at a time. I have kept them by themselves, because they differ from those which follow; and I shall now reason upon them. Let me premise, however, that I shall consider the first three of the cases as one, so that the same reasoning will do for all. They are alike indeed in their main features, and we must consider this as sufficient; for to attend minutely to every shade of difference, * which may occur in every case, seems unnecessary.

'It will be said then, that the first three cases are not strictly analogous to that of the West Indian Slaves. It will be contended, that the Slaves in our West Indian Colonies having been constantly in an abject and degraded state, their faculties are benumbed; they have contracted all the vices of slavery; and their bosoms burn with revenge against the Whites. How, then, can persons in such a state be fit to receive their freedom? The Slaves, on the other hand, who are comprehended in the above three cases, found in the British army a school as it were, which fitted them by degrees for making a good use of their liberty. While they were there, they were never out of the reach of discipline, and yet were left in some measure to act as free men. They obtained in this preparatory school some knowledge of the customs of civilized life. They were in the habit also of mixing familiarly with the white soldiers. Hence, it will be said, they were in a state much more favourable for undergoing a change in their condi tion than the West Indian slaves. I admit all this. But I never stated, that our West Indian slaves were to be emancipated suddenly, but by degrees. I always took it for granted, that they were to have

* A part of the Black regiments were procured in Africa as recruits, were not transported in slave-ships, and were never under West Indian masters: but it was only a small part compared with the whole number in the three cases.'

their preparatory school also. Nor must it be forgotten, as a comparison has been instituted, that if there was less danger in emancipating the other Slaves, because they had received something like a preparatory education for the change, there was far more in another point of view, because they were all acquainted with the use of arms. Would our West Indian Planters be as much at their ease, as they now are, if their Slaves had acquired a knowledge of the use of arms, or would they think them on this account more or less fit for Emancipation?

"It will be said again, that the fourth case, consisting of the Sierra Leone captured Negroes, is not strictly analogous to the one in point. These may have been slaves but for a short time previous to their capture upon the ocean, so that they had scarcely been slaves when they were returned to the rank of free men. Little or no change could have been effected in so short an interval, în their disposition and their character; and, as they were never carried to the West Indies, so they could not have contracted the bad habits, or the degradation, or the vices of the slavery there. It will be contended, therefore, that they were better, or less hazardous, subjects for Emancipation, than the Slaves in our Colonies. Giving to this objection its full weight, the case of the Sierra Leone captured Negroes will nevertheless be found to be a very strong one. They were all Africans. They were all slaves. They must have contracted as mortal a hatred of the Whites from their sufferings on board ship by fetters, whips, and suffocation in the hold, as the West Indian slaves from those severities which are attached to their bondage on shore. Under these circumstances, we find them made free; not after any preparatory discipline, but almost suddenly; and not singly, but in bodies at a time. We find them also settled, or made to live under the unnatural government of the Whites; and, what is more extraordinary, we find their present number, as compared with that of the Whites in the same Colony, nearly as one hundred and fifty to one; notwithstanding which superiority, fresh emancipations are constantly taking place, as fresh cargoes of captured contrabandists arrive in port.

• It will be said, lastly, that all the four cases put together prove nothing. They can give us nothing like a positive assurance, that the Negro slaves in our colonies would pass through the ordeal of emancipation without danger to their masters or the community at large. Certainly not. Nor, if these instances had been far more numerous than they are, could they, in this world of accidents, have given us a moral certainty of this. They afford us, however, a hope, that emancipation is practicable without danger: for will any one pretend to say, that we should have had as much reason for entertaining such a hope, if no such instances had occurred; or that we should not have had reason to despair, if four such experiments had been made, and if they had all failed? They afford us, again, ground for believing, that there is a peculiar softness, and plasticity, and pliablity in the African character. This softness may be collected alVOL. XXXIX. No. 77.

most every where from the Travels of Mr Mungo Park, and has been noticed by other writers, who have contrasted it with the unbending ferocity of the North American Indians and other tribes. But if this be a feature in the African character, we may account for the uniformity of the conduct of those Africans, who were liberated on the several occasions above mentioned, and for their yielding so uniformly to the impressions, which had been given them by their superiors, after they had been made free; and, if this be so, why should not our colonial slaves, if emancipated, conduct themselves in the same manner? Besides, I am not sure whether the good conduct of the liberated slaves in these cases was not to be attributed in part to a sense of interest, when they came to know that their condition was to be improved. Self-interest is a leading principle with all who are born into the world; and why is the Negro slave in our colonies to be denied this common feeling of our nature?-why is he to rise against his master, when he is informed that his condition is to be bettered? On the contrary, is he not likely rather to rejoice and feel grateful, when he is made to experience better laws and better treatment? pp. 17-19.

The fifth case is one on a much more ample scale-the emancipation of St Domingo. Mr Clarkson first gives a succinct and clear account of this great passage in the annals of the African race; showing how much of the insurrection there was owing to the Whites and Free Mulattoes; and proving, that after the first dreadful explosion was over, the Negroes who obtained their freedom by virtue of the proclamations issued by Santhonax in the south, and Polverel, the other commissioner, in the west, with the almost unanimous consent of the planters, did nothing to show they were incapable of enjoying this boon; and then tracing the behaviour of the whole Negro population, after the decree of the Convention in 1794 had confirmed the absolute emancipation of the whole colony. After giving the details of this subject on the respectable authority of Colonel Malenfant, an eyewitness, he having been resident in the Island at the time, our author justly observes, that it is most gratifying to find the demeanour and habits of the slaves thus suddenly liberated, so quiet and so industrious. For the first nine months after this great, and, we may say, violent change had been effected in their condition, during a season, too, of unexampled convulsion both in the colony and mother country, we find them continuing to work as peaceably as before, upon ⚫ their old plantations and for their old masters, both in the • South and the West of the Island.' The revolt and consequent massacres which desolated that fair and fruitful territory in 1791, were wilfully occasioned by the Whites and Mulattoes, who engaged in a fierce civil war themselves, excited the slaves

to take a part, and made them rise against their masters, in order to increase the fury of their own destructive strife. The enormities then committed by the Negroes, were during the reign of slavery over them, and of a bloodthirsty contest for dominion, among their masters. When the slave became free, he was quiet and industrious; the direct evidence of Colonel Malenfant, which reaches to 1795, is aided by Mr Clarkson's 'diligent search among all the French writers on St Domingo during that and following year, without being able to find any traces of outrage or misconduct.' Ample testimony to their situation during Toussaint's reign, from 1796 to 1802, is then adduced. We give a part only-moulding into one extract the substances of several pages.

Let us appeal first to Malenfant. "The colony," says he, was flourishing under Toussaint. The Whites lived happily and in peace upon their estates, and the Negroes continued to work for them. -I may appeal next to General Lacroix, who published his " Memoirs for a History of St Domingo," at Paris, in 1819. He informs us, that when Santhonax, who had been recalled to France by the Government, returned to the colony in 1796, "he was astonished at the state in which he found it on his return.' This, says Lacroix, was owing to Toussaint, who, while he had succeeded in establishing perfect order and discipline among the Black troops, had succeeded also in making the Black labourers return to the plantations, there to resume the drudgery of cultivation."

But the same author tells us, that in the next year (1797) the most wonderful progress had been made in agriculture. He uses these remarkable words: "The colony," says he, "marched as by enchantment towards its ancient splendour; cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proofs of its progress. The city of the Cape, and the plantations of the North, rose up again visibly to the eye." Now, I am far from wishing to attribute all this wonderful improvement, this daily visible progress in agriculture, to the mere act of the emancipation of the slaves in St Domingo. I know that many other circumstances may have contributed to its growth; but I maintain, that unless the Negroes, who were then free, had done their part as labourers, both by working regularly and industriously, and by obeying the directions of their superintendants or masters, the colony could never have prospered, as relates to cultivation, in the manner described.

The next witness to whom I shall appeal, is the estimable General Vincent, who now lives at Paris, though at an advanced age. He was a colonel, and afterwards a general of brigade of artillery in St. Domingo. He was stationed there during the time both of Santhonax and Toussaint. He was also a proprietor of estates in the island. He was the man who planned the renovation of its agriculture after the abolition of slavery, and one of the great instruments in bring