often branded; their being excepted out of the system of decency, and a thousand other disgraceful and humiliating particulars. Surely I must believe, when all these things are considered, that the gentlemen of the West Indies themselves will eagerly join with us in endeavouring to do away these grievances, and put an end to miseries so complicated and intolerable. I will do them the justice to believe that they have looked after a remedy, but they have looked in vain. They have not found it; nor will they ever find it but in the proposition which I bring forward. I deliver it as my decided'opinion, the result of a careful investigation of the whole of this great subject, that the only practicable remedy is stopping the further importation of slaves from Africa. What other remedy has been suggested? Colonial regulations! Into this subject I went at large when the question of abolition was last before the house, and I could now only repeat the arguments I urged on that occasion. The hinge on which it all turned was the inadmissibility of negro evidence; the effects of which, have been frankly avowed by many of our opponents themselves, and are indeed so obvious as to render it superfluous to insist on them. What would be the situation of the bulk of the people in this country if gentlemen of five hundred pounds per annum were alone admitted as witnesses? But the case in the West Indies is much worse. For, where two or three white men being on a plantation, it might be hoped one would come forward against the other, but they are kept back by a thousand considerations of mutual connivance, of similarity of situation, of intimate connexion. They are fellow managers, brother overseers, whom even the esprit du corps would prevent from undertaking so invidious an office, as that of criminating each other. But colonial regulations, if futile and ineffectual for the protection of the slave, would, if carried into execution, be abundantly operative in another direction. If you were to give them the protection of laws, not nominally but really, not the shadow but the sub. It stance of civil rights, you would awaken in their minds a consciousness of freedom which would only turn alike to their ruin and that of their masters. is in vain to attempt to reconcile impossibilities. Freedom and slavery cannot be made to coalesce. Instead of being satisfied with what ought to be granted, they would only feel more the want of what should be withheld. The privileges which should be extended to them would only serve to render the galling and ignominious distinctions under which they must still be kept more irritating and vexatious: insurrections would soon follow, and the whole result in one scene of slaughter and confusion. Look to the history of past insurrections, and you will find these assertions confirmed by actual experience. Let gentle. men recollect the immense disproportion of the blacks and whites in our islands, and consider it in conjunction with the positions I have been laying down, and it is impossible we can differ in the conclusion: but if such is the present wretched and degraded state of the slaves, surely there is no man who must not long for that happy moment when they can be rescued from it without danger; a danger which I grant subsists, and renders their state of degradation almost as necessary for their own, as for their master's comfort and security. But whence does this arise? From the constant influx of slaves from Africa; who, torn from their homes for ever; resenting the wrongs they have suffered; looking on their masters and on all around them not as friends and protectors, but as enemies and tyrants, are ever ready to rise and wreak their vengeance on their injurious oppressors. This was acknowledged long before I brought forward the question of abolition. Mr. Long has argued at great length on the danger of importing such numbers of Africans. "Twenty-seven thousand slaves imported in two years, and our importations are now still greater, are alone sufficient, he says, to account for mutinies, insurrections, &c." The rebellions in seventeen hundred and five and six, he further states, to have been occasioned by the imported natives of the Gold Coast. This is not only Mr. Long's doctrine, but that of every reasonable and observing man. I met with a curious proof of it the other day in a pamphlet, lately published in Carolina by a planter, who was endeavouring, not apparently actuated by motives of justice and humanity, but of policy, to continue the prohibition of African slaves, which had already subsisted for some years. He urges various arguments, but that on which he chiefly insists is the danger of an insurrection. He reminds his countrymen of a former rebellion in South Carolina, occasioned by the rising of the Angola slaves, thence vulgarly called the Gulla war; he points to the island of St. Domingo, where, he says, you have a striking exemplification of the truth of my position. And this leads me, sir, to say a few words on the late unhappy transactions in that unfortunate island. I shall not, however, go at large into them at present, but must reserve to myself the right of doing so, if it should be rendered necessary by any thing urged' in the course of the debate. I felt it my duty to investigate the causes of the disturbances in question, and I do declare myself decidedly convinced, and will enter, if required, into proofs of the assertion, that they did not arise from any attempts to abolish the slave trade, or from the efforts of societies established in France for that purpose. The case was simply this. The free people of colour, though the privileges of citizens were bestowed on them by law a century ago, had never in fact been admitted to the enjoyment of them, but had been treated, though many of them men of property and of education, as beings of an inferiour order. The animosities had almost grown to their height, and had nearly broken out into actual hostilities before the period of the French revolution. What passed then and since, the violence with which the white inhabitants of the island asserted their own rights, whilst with equal warmth they were denying them to the men of colour; agreements in the island made and broken, as convenience suggested; the contradictory decrees of the national assembly, sometimes granting the desired immunities, sometimes retracting the grants, and thus trifling with their feelings, and working them up into a rage too big to be suppressed, will sufficiently explain. What wonder if the ferment occasioned by all these circumstances, and the favourable opportunity afforded by these divisions in which their masters were occupied, produced a general rising of the slaves, who had rebelled before in conjunctures less suited to their purpose? They did rise, and dreadful was the consequence. No man, I am sure, deplores more than myself those cruel and humiliating transactions, and I make this very motion because I deplore them, and would in our own islands prevent the repetition. Consider the immense disproportion of numbers. There are now in Jamaica near three hundred thousand slaves, and but about twenty thousand whites of all ages and descriptions. We are every year importing into that island a greater strength of blacks than there is of whites to be opposed to them. Where is this to stop? Do you seriously mean to continue this system? I should really have thought the West India gentlemen would themselves have implored us, if we had entertained no such design, to arrest the further progress of this growing and pernicious malady. Thus, sir, were the safety of the islands only in question, you could not but agree to my proposi tion. But I must recur to what I before laid down, that these importations do not tend more to produce confusion and disorder, than to retain the unhappy slaves themselves in their actual state of wretchedness and degradation. It is this that would even render it unsafe to punish white men for the ill treatment of their slaves, except very rarely, and in the most atrocious instances. But surely, sir, we cannot bear to leave these poor creatures thus sunk below the level of their species; and I am persuaded the West India gentlemen themselves would be glad to afford them relief. They would be glad, I trust, to put them under the protection of laws, but this must be done rationally and soberly. After what I have said, I am not afraid of being told I design to emancipate the slaves: I will not indeed deny that I wish to impart to them the blessings of freedom. Who is there that knows its value, but must join with me in this desire? But the freedom I mean is that of which, at present, they, alas! are not capable. True liberty is the child of reason and of order. It is indeed a plant of celestial growth; but the soil must be prepared for its reception. He that would see it flourish, and bring forth its proper fruits, must not think it sufficient to let it shoot as it will in unrestrained licentiousness: Luxuriantia compescet, nimis aspera sano Would you then impart to them these inestimable benefits? take away that cause which at present obstructs their introduction. Nor would the good effects of stopping the importations be confined to the slaves, or the safety of the islands only be thereby promoted. It would tend to the planter's benefit in another respect. By the facility of purchasing African slaves he is often drawn into fresh expenses; he is ultimately plunged into inextricable embarrassments, and wishes at length that this channel of supply had been shut up from him. This evil also was insisted on by Mr. Long, the historian of Jamaica, who actually proposed a temporary prohibition of the importation of African slaves with a view to its prevention. I hope it will not be deemed invidious that I so often quote the work of this gentleman; but rather a proof the respect I pay to its authority, and I appeal to it the more willingly, because it was written long before the abolition of the slave trade had become the subject of publick discussion. But I frankly acknowledge that the consideration of the planter's benefit, from stopping the importations, does not interest me in any degree so much as that to be thence derived by the unhappy slaves. Losing by degrees the painful recollection of their native and early connexions; conceiving new attach |