question of time. And if we should give our hand to the South, the North will probably hesitate no more about a servile insurrection. Then, England allied with the slavers, and the United States with the slaves, the former fighting for the rights of neutrals, the latter for those of belligerents, the world may see the Negro race lifting up its head over seas of blood wherein the Anglo-Saxon race is drowning its ascendency. We could not protest that did Providence work out at the same time the rescue of the African race and the decline of our own, we have merited a better lot; but mercy rejoices over judgment, and we will firmly hope that theirs may be raised, and ours yet reserved for ages of peace, growth, and Christian usefulness. : ART. IX.-1. The British Colonies. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY MARTIN, ESQ. 2. The West Indies and the Spanish Main. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 3. The Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies. By WILLIAM G. SEWELL. 4. Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies. By CHARLES BUXTON, M.A., M.P. 5. Emancipation in the West Indies. Two Addresses. By E. B. UNDERHILL, Esq., and the REV. J. T. BROWN, the Deputation from the Baptist Missionary Society to the West Indies. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. WHAT is morally right cannot be politically wrong. Results are making it manifest that Great Britain committed no mistake when, resolving to do right to more than 800,000 down-trodden bondsmen in her colonies, she paid twenty millions sterling as compensation to the colonists; and, breaking asunder the bonds of oppression, transformed her slaves into free labourers, and rid herself of the shame of sustaining a system which is equally an outrage against humanity and a sin against God. Slavery, as it now exists in the Southern States of America, and as it formerly existed in our own colonies, is essentially the same,American slavery exhibiting some darker shades of evil and atrocity: but while Britain, yielding to the claims of rectitude, made an effort and a sacrifice unparalleled amongst the nations of the earth, to proclaim liberty through her widely-extended empire; America resolved to cherish and perpetuate the injustice, and turned a deaf ear to all the appeals which proceeded from thousands within her own shores, who have been alive Contrast between Britain and America. 541 to the inconsistency and wickedness of slavery, as well as to the remonstrances of surrounding nations. The results in both cases are instructive and admonitory. While the British colonies, blessed with peace, and free from fears of insurrection, are advancing in intelligence and civilization, and enjoying a degree of commercial and financial prosperity based upon a solid foundation, beyond what they ever enjoyed before, America is torn by rebellion and civil discord, and threatened with the horrors of servile war. "The oppressing Union is broken in pieces; adding to those with which history already abounds, another illustration of the immutable truth, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.' She has sown the wind, and is reaping the whirlwind. It was, to borrow the idea of that astute diplomatist, Talleyrand, 'worse than a crime, it was a blunder,' on the part of the great men who founded the American republic, that, while professing to regard all men as free and equal, possessing certain inalienable rights, amongst which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they, with singular inconsistency, ignored the humanity of the Negro, and bound up in their constitution the hateful element of weakness, exposing the Union to the reproach and scorn of other nations. And now we behold it working out its legitimate results,-shattering the great republic to atoms with an explosion that has astonished the world, filling the land with intestine strife, arraying members of the same families in inveterate hostility, and staining the soil with the blood of her best and bravest sons. This first great blunder might have been corrected, and all these calamities averted, if America had followed the noble example of British justice, and provided for the emancipation of her slaves as the public conscience became awakened to the essential evils and enormities of the system ; but instead of acting thus wisely, the Federal government, yielding to the dictates of a low and selfish expediency, has drawn the bonds of oppression tighter and tighter, given increased power to the slaveholder, laid heavier burthens upon the coloured race, outraged the first principles of justice and humanity, and perverted and set at nought the teaching of the Bible, until the Almighty Hater of oppression and wrong has been provoked to arise up out of His place in controversy with a guilty people, and the blast of His displeasure has fallen upon the land. Not to recognise a providence of retribution in the events which are now occurring on the American continent, or to acknowledge God in the tempest which has broken in desolating fury over the proud republic, might well lay us open to the charge of not regarding the work of the Lord, or considering the operation of His hands. The world may look upon the two pictures now held up before it, and receive instruction:-America, covered with hostile armies, filled with strife and bloodshed, and all the evils of a war growing out of the maintenance of slavery, and dreading the greater terrors of slave insurrections; and the British colonies, freed from the curse of human bondage, in smiling fruitfulness and beauty, covered with a happy and contented peasantry, and enjoying the blessings of peace and a steadily advancing prosperity. Surely with nations, as with individuals, honesty is the best policy, and it is wise and safe to do always that which is right. Britain acted both justly and wisely in abolishing colonial slavery, and thus wiping off the darkest stain which dishonoured her name. It would not have changed the righteous character of the act itself, had the cultivation of sugar and coffee been affected to a greater extent than has actually been the case. It was right that a great religious nation like Britain should cease from the meanness, wickedness, and cruelty of seizing upon every child born of a slave-mother, at the moment of its birth, and, before it was possible for the infant to commit any offence, or even announce by its feeble wail that another item had been added to the sum of humanity, crush it down into a chattel and a thing, plunder it of all human rights, and doom it to a life of ignorance, degradation, suffering, and unrequited toil. It was fitting and proper that such a nation should recognise the right of the black man, born under her own flag, or carried to her colonies against his consent, to call his soul, his limbs, his labour, and his wife and children, his own. It was right to give him the Sabbath of which he was systematically robbed, and open to him the Bible which an unscrupulous cupidity had sealed up against him. All this was done, and could only be done, by abolishing slavery. If sugar, rum, and coffee cultivation had ceased from every one of the colonies, still it would have been just and equitable that Britain should break up this system of iniquity with which her hands were defiled, and remove the fetters of the thousands held by her in unjust and cruel bondage. And as it was a righteous act, it could not be done too soon. The population returns from the colonies, required by the British Parliament, showed that, under a harsh and murderous system, the West India Islands were rapidly becoming depopulated. In twelve years a decrease had taken place in the slave population of eleven of the islands, of more than sixty thousand. Had returns been obtained from the other seven, it is probable that the total decrease would not have been less than a hundred thousand; so that in less than a Canning's Anti-Slavery Resolutions in 1823. 543 century, with the same ratio of decrease, no slaves would have been left in our colonies to emancipate. Who can doubt that it was the duty of a Christian government to interpose and put an end to a system of frightful wrong; especially as the planters steadily refused to adopt,—or, if the adoption were forced upon them, to carry out, any measures which really ameliorated the condition of their slaves? A fatal blow was dealt to British colonial slavery when, in May, 1823, Mr. Canning's resolutions were agreed to by the House of Commons, expressive of the desire entertained by Parliament for the adoption of effectual and decided measures for improving the condition of the slaves, and for their emancipation at the earliest period compatible with their own wellbeing, and with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private persons.' Although these resolutions, and certain recommendations based upon them, and sent out by the government to the several colonies, were received there with indignation, and unanimously rejected by the several colonial legislatures; yet, from the day when they were recorded on the journals of the House of Comm ons, the abolition of slavery in the British dominions became only a question of time; the doom of the system was virtually sealed. It was not, however, until after a severe conflict of ten years' duration, between the philanthropy and the religion of the nation, on the one hand, and the powerful interests involved in the perpetuation of the system, on the other, that, on the 28th of August, 1833, the Act, passed by both Houses of Parliament, received the royal assent, which decreed that slavery should terminate throughout the British empire; and that men and women, gifted with faculties capable of illimitable development, should no longer, under the sanction of British rule, be degraded to the condition of beasts of burthen, and bought and sold as goods and chattels. The adoption of this measure by the British Parliament had become, at that time, a political necessity. A recent servile insurrection in Jamaica, accompanied by a fearful sacrifice of property and life, had vividly demonstrated the peril with which the further continuance of the system was fraught; and that the planters were living as on the crater of a seething volcano, which might, at any moment, burst forth, spreading ruin and desolation around. The exposure of the inherent evils and horrors of the system to which that insurrection led, had produce d such a profound impression on the public mind, and so aroused the conscience of the nation, that nothing less could satisfy the people than the adoption of immediate and effectual measures for the abolition of what was felt to be a national crime; and few were found to object to the proposal, that a reasonable amount should be awarded, from the national exchequer, as compensation to those who were interested in slave property. Looking beyond the abstract truth, that no moral right can ever be acquired in that which was at first obtained by injustice and fraud, the intelligent and religious portion of the British people felt that it was a national sin, in the guilt of which all had participated, and that it would be not only generous, but just, for the nation to share with the slaveholder the pecuniary loss which it was suppoaed would be involved in the emancipation of the slaves. Hence, with few dissentients in either House, it was resolved by the legislature to give twenty millions sterling as a compensation, to be distributed, in just proportions, amongst the owners of slaves in those colonies which agreed, through their respective legislatures, to give effect to the principles and provisions of the imperial Abolition Act. It is well known that the new law did not provide for the extinction of slavery all at once, but substituted a probationary term, denominated an apprenticeship,' of six years for the prædial, and four years for the non-prædial slaves, to commence August 1st, 1834, all under six years of age being declared entirely free on that day. The time of labour for the prædial apprentices was limited to forty-five hours per week to be given to their masters, who were bound to provide them with food, lodging, clothing, medicine, and medical attendance. The masters were empowered at any time to sell out or otherwise dispose of the remainder of their apprentices' term of service, but were forbidden to separate families, or sell them out of the colony; while the labourers, with, or without, the consent of the masters, were entitled to buy out their entire freedom, on a fair valuation, for which a court of arbitration was provided. To prevent the abuse of the law by local authorities, a hundred stipendiary magistrates, chiefly sent out from England, were appointed to superintend the practical working of this important measure, with salaries not exceeding £300 per annum. In adopting this method of gradual emancipation, there is no reason to doubt that the British government acted on the honest conviction, that a modified system of coerced labour for a limited period, substituted for unmitigated slavery, would, on the whole, be safer and better for the Negroes than immediate and unqualified liberty from the yoke of their owners, and would prepare them gradually for the boon of freedom. But it was not |