ally in the empire for many ages after the conversion of Constantine to the religion of Christ. It was not indeed completely abolished even in the reign of Justinian; and in many countries which had once been provinces of the empire, it continued long after the empire itself had fallen to pieces.
Amongst the ancient Germans, it was not uncommon for an ardent gamester to lose his personal liberty by a throw of the dice. This was indeed a strong proof of savage manners; but the general condition of slaves among those barbarians seems to have been much better than among the polished Greeks and Romans. In Germany the slaves were generally attached to the soil, and only employed in tending cattle, and carrying on the business of agriculture; for the menial offices of every great man's house were performed by his wife and children. Such slaves were seldom beaten, or chained, or imprisoned. Sometimes indeed they were killed by their masters in a fit of sudden passion; but none were considered as materials of commerce, except those who had originally been freemen, and lost their freedom by play.
Such is the account which Tacitus gives of slavery amongst the ancient Germans. The Anglo-Saxons, however, after they were settled in this island, seem not to have carried on that traffic so honourably. By a statute of Alfred the Great, the purchase of a man, a horse, or an ox, without a voucher to warrant the sale, was strictly forbidden. That law was, doubtless, enacted to prevent the stealing of men and cattle; but it shows us that so late as the ninth or tenth century a man, when fairly purchased, was, in England, as much the property of the buyer as the horse on which he rode, or the ox which dragged his plough. In the same country, now so nobly tenacious of freedom and the rights of man, a species of slavery similar to that which prevailed amongst the ancient Germans, subsisted even to the end of the sixteenth century. This appears from a commission issued by Queen Elizabeth in 1574, for inquiring into the lands and goods of all her bond-men, and bond-women, in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Gloucester, in order to compound with them for their manumission, that they might enjoy their lands and goods as freemen. In Scotland there certainly existed an order of slaves, or bond-men, who tilled the ground, were attached to the soil, and with it were transferable from one proprietor to another, at a period so late as the thirteenth century; but when or how those villeins, as they were usually called, obtained their freedom, is a question not yet completely solved. Colliers and salters were, in the same country, in a state little removed from slavery, till near the end of the eighteenth century, when they were manumitted by the British legislature, and restored to the rights of freemen and citizens. Before that period the sons of colliers could follow no business but that of their fathers; nor were they at liberty to seek employment in any other mines than those to which they were attached by birth, without the consent of the lord of the manor, who, if he had no use for their services himself, transferred them by a written deed to some neighbouring proprietor.
That the savage nations of Africa were at any period of history exempted from this opprobrium of our nature, which spread over all the rest of the world, the enlightened reader will not suppose. It is indeed in that vast country that slavery has in every age appeared in its ugliest form. We have already observed, that about the era of the Trojan war, a commerce in slaves was carried on between Phoenicia and Libya; and the Carthaginians, who were a colony of Phoenicians, and revered the customs, manners, and religion of their parent state, undoubtedly continued
With the ancient state of the other African nations we are but very little acquainted. The Numidians, Mauritians, Getulians, and Garamantes, are indeed mentioned by the Roman historians, who give us ample details of the battles which they fought in attempting to preserve their national independence; but we have no particular account of their different manners and customs in that age when Rome was disputing with Carthage the sovereignty of the world. All the African states of which we know any thing, were in alliance with one or the other of those rival republics; and as the people of those states appear to have been less enlightened than either the Romans or the Carthaginians, we cannot suppose that they had purer morals, or a greater regard for the sacred rights of man, than the powerful nations by whom they were either protected or oppressed. They would, indeed, insensibly adopt their customs; and the ready market which Marius found for the prisoners taken in the town of Capsa, although Sallust acknowledges that the sale was contrary to the laws of war, shows that slavery was then no strange thing to the Numidians. It seems indeed to have prevailed through all Africa from the very first peopling of that unexplored country; and we doubt if in any age of the world the unhappy negro was absolutely secure of his personal freedom, or even of not being sold to a foreign trader.
It has been often said, that the practice of making slaves of the negroes is of a very modern date; that it owes its origin to the incursions of the Portuguese on the western coast of Africa; and that, but for the cunning or cruelty of Europeans, it would not now exist, and would never have existed. It is quite certain, however, that the negroes themselves, like all other savage tribes, have from ancient times enslaved their prisoners; and the establishment of a trade by foreigners in African slaves, may at an early period have tempted them, in some quarters, to make captives expressly for the purpose of selling them. But Christians were not the first tempters. It has been proved, that from the coast of Guinea a great trade in slaves was carried on by the Arabs some hundreds of years before the Portuguese embarked in that traffic. Even the wandering Arabs of the desert, who never had any friendly correspondence with the Christians of Europe, have from time immemorial been served by negro slaves. In all probability, indeed, these tribes have, without interruption, continued the practice of slavery from the days of their great ancestor Ishmael; and it seems evident, that none of the European nations had ever seen a woolly-headed negro till the year 1100, when the crusaders fell in with a small party of them near the town of Hebron in Judea, and were so struck with the novelty of their appearance, that the army burst into a general fit of laughter.
Long before the crusades, however, we know with certainty that the natives of Guinea had been exposed to sale in foreign countries. In 651 the Mohammedan Arabs of Egypt so harassed the king of Nubia or Ethiopia, who was a Christian, that he agreed to send them annually, by way of tribute, a vast number of Nubian or Ethiopian slaves into Egypt. Such a tribute as this at that time, we are told, was more agreeable to the khalif than any other, as the Arabs then made no small account of these slaves.
On the beginning of this commerce, or the dreadful cruelty with which it has been carried on to the present day, it is impossible to reflect without horror; but there is some consolation, however small, in knowing that its original authors were not Europeans. The purchase of Guinea blacks for slaves by foreign nations, commenced ages before the Portuguese had laid that country open to the intercourse of Europe. Even after they had made many incursions into it, the inhabitants were as regularly purchased for slaves by some of the adjoining states, as they were afterwards by the maritime Europeans.
Without prosecuting farther the history of slavery, we pass to the consideration of its present state in the world, and, in particular, the revolutions which have taken place in that worst department of the system which we have been last occupied in examining.
Before describing the altered position now held by negro slavery, it must be remarked that the slavery of white men is by no means yet extinct. Details on this subject will be found in the articles devoted to those countries in which, under various modifications, bondage still prevails; and here a sentence or two must suffice for summing up the result. The nature of that slavery which still prevails among most Asiatic nations, modified in the Mohammedan states by some precepts of their religion, but nowhere entirely extirpated, is familiarly known to most readers, and information regarding it is sufficiently easy of access. The branch of it in which Europeans are most nearly interested, is that atrocious system of piracy which, carried on for centuries by Algiers and the other Barbary states, filled the cities of Northern Africa with Christian prisoners, but has in the present generation been nearly destroyed by the exertions of our own government, aided by the subsequent expeditions of the French. But the snake is scotched only, not killed; and European captives are still said to pine in Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In a preceding paragraph we have considered the villeinage of the dark and middle ages as being a species of slavery. There is no sound reason for regarding it in any other light; and, however far the serf's condition may be superior to that of the slave who belonged to a Roman patrician or a West Indian planter, his servitude is still so utterly repugnant both to humanity and religion, as to make us ashamed of the fact that, in a shape not much improved, it exists still in Christian provinces of northern Europe. The article Russia has described the status of the boors or unfree peasants in that empire; and in more than one kingdom bordering on it, villeinage has never been completely abolished till our own times.
But slavery in its most horrible shape, long averted by the spirit of Christianity from those whom Christians were compelled to consider as their fellow-men, has, in regard to the unfortunate people of Africa, been maintained with unrelenting severity by men and nations professing to be disciples of the gospel. The present age has seen the truth mightily triumph in reference to this dark blot of the civilized world; but the evil is not yet entirely eradicated, even where its atrocities have been most decisively condemned; and in several extensive regions of the globe, no acknowledgment of error has yet been extorted.
Slavery is still lawful over a large part of the American continent. It extends throughout the empire of Brazil, and is general in the southern provinces of the United States. On the declaration of independence, however, seven of the thirteen British provinces which then formed the confederation, abolished slavery absolutely; and the example was followed by two or three of the rest, as well as by several of those afterwards added to the Union. On the whole, including the remnants of bondage in some of the Spanish republics, it has been calculated that the continent of America now contains 4,000,000 of black and coloured slaves. Of these the United States possess about 2,000,000, making about a sixth part of their whole population; but, as the slaves are unequally distributed, they amount in several provinces to half the number of the free whites, and in some places make up a much larger proportion. The French and Spanish colonies in the West Indies, in which likewise slavery remains unabolished, have a slave population amounting to at least 400,000 souls.
For the British colonies, the exertions of benevolent and enlightened men during the last fifty years, have at length effected a mighty change, the history of which can here be but too briefly told.
1. The Slave Trade. If the merit of originating the great scheme of abolition is to be shared by every one who, either through word or writing, has expressed convictions of the inhuman injustice involved in the slave-trade, or suggested means for its destruction, our list of emancipationists would both be long, and would commence at an early date. But the honour of having planned that systematic co-operation, which alone could effect the end, does clearly belong to the Society of Friends; and in the series of efforts by which that religious body heralded the exertions of our eminent statesmen, the leading part was acted by Anthony Benezet, a French protestant, who, educated in England, became a Quaker and a citizen of Philadelphia; and to William Dillwyn, an American, and a member of the same sect. The former, besides unwearied personal exertions, published, in 1762, the work which first attracted in this country general notice to the slave-trade; the other, visiting England in 1774, opened communications between the American philanthropists and those of our own countrymen who had already engaged in the same cause. Among these latter, the foremost place belongs to the honoured name of Granville Sharp.
This able and excellent man had been induced to interest himself in a class of questions, which arose about the middle of the eighteenth century. West Indian planters, after having brought negro slaves to England, were accustomed to carry them back to the colonies, or even to sell them to others for that destination; and the opinion of eminent lawyers had sanctioned the practice as legal. Instances of crying hardship aroused the sympathy of individuals: Granville Sharp rescued several victims; and, in the year 1772, he obtained a decision of the English judges in the famous case of the negro Somerset, that, as soon as a slave sets his foot on English ground, he becomes free.
At length, in May 1787, there was instituted in London Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Besides Dillwyn and Sharp, its most distinguished member was Thomas Clarkson, a young graduate of Cambridge, who, led to study the subject as the theme of an academic essay, had solemnly devoted his life to the cause of negro emancipation. But the Society immediately numbered among its supporters several men of rank and influence; and, among other converts, its founders had gained, even before their organization, William Wilberforce, then member of Parliament for Hull, and afterwards for Yorkshire.
Although our own days have witnessed a sharp contest in the last stages of those measures, it is not very easy for us to conceive the magnitude of the obstacles which then opposed themselves, even to the most cautious approach towards the subject. Fear of exposure felt by individuals who knew themselves guilty of malpractices, was aided by fear of pecuniary ruin, felt by many who had no other reason for dreading inquiry; and, among the public men of the nation, the corrupt influence of private interests biased many, while others were influenced by more honest fears for the effects which change might have on the prosperity of the colonies. The Society determined, from the first, to keep the question of slave emancipation studiously in the background. They proclaimed their aim to be, simply, the abolition of the trade in slaves; maintaining, and endeavouring to convince the public, that the slave population of the colonies could be
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1 It must be noticed, however, that, a very few years ago, it was decided by Lord Stowell, that slaves who had gained freedom in this way did, on their return to the colonies, become slaves anew. effectually kept up without new importations; and that, indeed, such importation was in itself not only injurious to the real interests of the planters, but eventually pregnant with ruin to the West India Islands as British dependencies. These topics, with others appealing more directly to moral principle and humane feeling, had already been treated in various publications, and they were now anxiously disseminated through the whole of Britain in pamphlets, newspaper articles, and personal communications; while the indefatigable Clarkson travelled everywhere collecting information as to the state of the slave trade.
An excitement was produced which enforced the attention of the government; and its results were still farther aided by the circumstance that Mr. Pitt, who was the intimate friend and political chief of Wilberforce, had already examined the question, and privately declared himself favourable to the views of the society. In February 1788, an order of the crown directed that a committee of the Privy Council should inquire into the state of the slave trade, and its consequences both to Africa, to the colonies, and to the general trade of the kingdom. Before the end of that season, there lay on the table of the House of Commons one hundred and three numerously signed petitions, praying for the abolition of the traffic in human life.
Mr. Wilberforce's ill health detaining him in the country, Mr. Pitt, on the 9th of May 1788, declining to state his own opinion, moved a resolution that the House would, early in the next Session, take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade complained of in the petitions. This, excepting a motion made by David Hartley some years before, against slavery in the abstract, was the first time the subject had ever been mentioned in the British Legislature. The prayer of the petitions was warmly supported, and delay opposed by Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, and others. In the meantime, a bill was introduced by Sir William Dolben, and carried through both Houses after violent opposition, for regulating the burden of the slave-ships, and otherwise diminishing the horrors of the Middle Passage, as it was called, between Africa and the West Indian islands.
On the 12th of May 1789, Wilberforce made his first speech in the House upon the subject, introducing twelve resolutions deduced from the evidence which had been taken before the Privy Council. The propositions, all condemnatory of the trade, were supported by Burke, by Fox, by Granville, and by Pitt, who now declared his opinion unalterable; but the opponents gained their end of delay, by obtaining an order for hearing evidence. It was not till the spring of 1791, that Wilberforce was able to move for leave to bring in a bill, for preventing the further importation of slaves into the colonies in the West Indies. After a stormy debate, the motion was lost by 88 to 163. The enthusiasm of the people, and the favourable dispositions of the legislature, had alike cooled; insurrections of the negroes had broken out in Dominica, the leaders of the French revolution had corresponded with some members of the society, Clarkson had not only visited France, but was the friend of Brissot; and every means had been used for possessing the public against the abolitionists.
But the defeated party bated "no jot of hope;" and the public mind became calmer. In April 1792 the House of Commons received from England 330 petitions, and from Scotland 187; and Wilberforce moved an opinion of the House that the slave trade ought to be abolished. He was met by one of the most dangerous enemies of the measure, Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, under whose dexterous management an amendment for gradual abolition was carried by a large majority; and a few days afterwards the House passed a resolution for abolishing the trade in 1796; but in the House of Lords even this tardy justice was frustrated by a resolution to hear further evidence.
In 1793 the House of Commons refused to repeat their resolution of the previous year: in 1795, and each of the four following years, the motion for abolition was made and lost; and the abolitionists then resolved to wait for better times. And thus a measure, calculated to wipe off in part a foul disgrace from the nation,—a measure supported by men of all parties and of all sects,—a measure openly and encouragingly advocated, not only by all the men of highest talent in the country, but by the minister of the day himself, was defeated, after a struggle which, at the time, was aptly called the battle of the piggies against the giants. Of the sincerity of the other great promoters of the scheme, no doubt has been expressed; but on Mr. Pitt's sincerity there have been thrown very grave suspicions, which it is not possible entirely to dispel. For, although the charge of absolute duplicity is sufficiently rebutted, both by his unbending character and by his admirable speeches on the question, it is unaccountable how he, the most imperious of all rulers, should not, if he pleased, have forced to silence those subalterns, who trembled to oppose him in any plan but this. The proud son of Chatham loved truth and justice not a little; but he loved power and place greatly more; and he was resolved that negro emancipation should not lose him either a shred of political influence, or a beam of royal favour.
But the triumph was already at hand. The excitement of the war, indeed, still for a time diverted public attention; and, though the principles which had been so convincingly promulgated were silently making converts everywhere, nothing of importance took place for some years, except the appearance of a new and most able advocate in the person of Mr. Stephen, Wilberforce's friend and brother-in-law. In 1804, however, the annual motion of Wilberforce was renewed. The first reading of his Bill for immediate abolition was carried by 124 to 49, the majority containing all the Irish members; and the votes for the third reading were 99 to 33. On the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, it was adjourned, without a division, till the following session. In that session, (the spring of 1805,) a new Abolition Bill was thrown out by the House of Commons on the second reading; but, in the same year, a measure of Pitt's for abolishing, by an Order in Council, the slave trade in the newly conquered colonies, which had no charters, was carried into effect without the smallest resistance.
The next two years were to witness the final victory. The abolitionists were formed. In June 1806, resolutions proposed by the new ministers, pledging the House of Commons to abolish the slave trade "with all practicable expedition," were carried by more than 100 to 41; and an address to the king, for obtaining the co-operation of foreign powers, was adopted without a division. A bill, founded on the resolutions, was successful in both Houses, and received the royal assent on the 25th of March 1807.
The great measure of the British legislature was imitated, in the first instance, by the United States, who were next followed successively by the new South American republics of Venezuela, Chili, and Buenos Ayres, by Sweden and Denmark, Holland and France. But Spain was brought no farther than to promise in 1814 that she would abolish the slave trade in eight years; while Portugal in 1815 abolished to the north of the equator, promising to abolish finally eight years afterwards, and receiving a sum of money as the price of her acquiescence.
In the meantime, the abolitionists in England soon had the disappointment to discover, that the law had no sanction sufficient for enforcing its provisions; whilst the fact, that the horrible trade must now, if conducted at all, be carried on as an act of smuggling, augmented all its miseries, and introduced atrocities not less shocking than those Slavery, which had prevailed before the passing of Sir William Dolben's carrying act. An energetic remedy was necessary, and such an one was suggested by Mr. Brougham, who, in 1811, introduced a bill, (carried unanimously through both Houses,) declaring the trade in slaves to be felony, and punishable with fourteen years' transportation, or five years' imprisonment. After a time, even this decided measure seemed not decided enough; an act of 1824 made slave-trading a capital offence, by the name of piracy; and the recent acts of 1837, for mitigating the criminal law, have left it punishable with transportation for life.
"There is every reason to think," says Lord Brougham, "that no British subjects are now, or have for many years been, directly engaged in this execrable traffic, with the exception of those belonging to the Mauritius. In that island it is certain, that, with the connivance, if not under the direct encouragement, of the higher authorities of the colony, slave-trading to an enormous extent was for some years openly carried on."
The treaties with foreign powers, crippled by national jealousies, were found equally insufficient with our own law. The king of Spain, one of the two great offenders, after having had the meanness to accept, by a treaty of 1817, a large sum from our treasury, as the price of his promise to abolish his slave-trade on the north of the equator immediately, and to put a final stop to the traffic in 1820, had next the effrontery to refuse all performance of the engagement for which he had thus received the consideration; and a vote of abolition, passed by the Cortes in 1822, remained of course inoperative. The great difficulty,—the right of one nation's cruisers to search vessels under the flag of another power, when suspected of slaving,—was however mutually conceded in 1817, between Great Britain on the one hand, and Portugal and Spain (within the limits embraced in the subsisting treaties) on the other; and a similar treaty was effected with Holland in the succeeding year.
But, besides other faults, there were, in our treaties of this sort, two main defects, which, of themselves, rendered the whole system of checks quite inoperative. First, the cruisers, except under our treaty with the Netherlands, had no power to capture vessels not having slaves on board, although it might be fully proved that they were slaving-ships, or even that they had just delivered a cargo. In consequence of this, not only were notorious slavers frequently dismissed after examination, but, in several instances, which have been fully authenticated, the wreaches in command were known to throw their slaves overboard on a chase, in the hope of thus removing the only ground on which their detention could be legally justified. Secondly, condemned vessels, instead of being broken up, were sold, and, being fitted for no trade but their own, fell again almost invariably into the hands of the slave-dealers.
In neither of these particulars was any improvement effected till after the late revolution in France, whose subjects, since the restoration, had begun to rank amongst the most active of the contraband slave merchants. In 1833 a treaty was concluded between our government and that of France, by which the breaking up of the vessels was agreed to; and it was also declared, that all vessels ascertained by certain equipments to be intended for the slave trade, might be lawfully detained and confiscated, even though slaves had not been found on board, nor even embarked. France and England have since taken the lead in urging all other Christian powers to accede to these conventions; but as yet their success has been far from general. The five powers with which this country previously had conventions on the subject have come very reluctantly into the additional measures; and one of them, namely, Portugal, has shown a most disgraceful want of faith in fulfilling her engagements. The protection of the Portuguese flag was and is sold by the authorities of that government on the African coast; and miscreants, thus furnished with papers apparently regular, and not having yet received their slave-cargoes, insolently defy our cruisers, or even prosecute our captains for damages, on account of illegal detention. Our government, however, have recently shown a determined front; and we may perhaps hope that the feeble and faithless power which insults us and outrages humanity, will at length suffer condign punishment. As to Spain, between 1823 and 1832, her slavers imported into Cuba 100,000 slaves at least. The equipment clause was always refused by the cabinet at Madrid; and it was not till 1835, after the death of Ferdinand, that our minister at that court was able to extort the accession of the Spanish government to that essential article. The effects of this new treaty have been exceedingly encouraging; within six months after its execution, as many Spanish slavers lay waiting the sentence of our Confiscation Court at Sierra Leone, as had been taken during any three years under the previous conventions. The Brazilian government, although professedly anxious to discourage the importation of new slaves, on account of the danger the whites already incur from an increasing black population, have pleaded, with some plausibility, their want of power to check the trade effectually, so long as the Portuguese flag shall be allowed to protect the slavers. Sweden and the Netherlands were not prevailed on to accede to the French conventions till the year 1838.
Of those powers with which we had previously no agreement, Denmark and the Sardinian States both acceded in 1834. Prussia has shewn a reluctance, for which it is not easy to account. The display of the same spirit by Russia was not so much matter of surprise. Austria, though the emperor has imitated our laws, declaring any slave free who touches Austrian ground, and also making the slave-trade heavily punishable, has acted with its accustomed jealousy, in refusing co-operation with other states. Tuscany and the Two Sicilies joined the league in 1838. With the republics of the New World our negociations have been exceedingly unsuccessful. The United States have imperceptibly refused to combine with any foreign power for the suppression of the slave-trade; and, amongst the Spanish commonwealths, Venezuela is the only one which has come cheerfully forward, although the objections started by some of the rest do not seem to be insuperable.
Altogether, those efforts which philanthropists have so long continued for removing this blot from the name of Christianity, have not yet by any means produced such results as can allow us to believe that the struggle is nearly at an end. Partly through defects in the machinery of the laws and treaties,—partly through dishonesty or lukewarmness in the contracting powers or their officials,—partly through causes which can never be removed while the foul shape of slavery itself darkens any corner of the earth,—the traffic in human blood still goes on with an activity that is incredible to all but those who have studied the subject. The proofs of this lamentable fact are nowhere so convincingly stated as in a work on *The African Slave Trade*, published in 1839, by Mr. Fowell Buxton, from which we can afford to abstract but a very few statements, observing, at the same time, that there is not one of them but is below the truth. According to the highest of those estimates which have been founded on assured data, the Christian slave trade still robs Africa every year of 250,000 human beings. According to the very lowest computation, it absorbs 150,000. To this number must be added that of the Mohammedan trade, which exports at least 50,000 annually; so that we are much below the mark when we assert, that, in the course of every year, 200,000 negroes, at least, are carried off into hopeless slavery. But this is not all. It may be safely asserted, that, for every slave who is exported, there is Mr. Buxton's calculation is the following: First, the slaughter of the wars which supply the slaves, the ill-usage of the captives on their march, and their sufferings while detained on the coast, cause together a mortality of 100 per cent. Secondly, the disease and cruelty of the voyage, now worse than ever it was, carries off, at the very least, 25 per cent. Thirdly, the loss after landing in the colonies, and during what planters used to call the "seasoning," amounts to at least 20 per cent. Upon these assumptions, "for every 1000 negroes alive at the end of a year after their deportation, and available to the planter, we have a sacrifice of 1450. Of 150,000 negroes, landed annually in Cuba, Brazil, &c., 30,000 die in the seasoning, leaving 120,000 available to the planter. If 150,000 were landed, there must have been embarked 37,500 more, who perish in the passage; and if 187,500 were embarked, 187,500 more must have been sacrificed in the seizure, march, and detention. It is impossible for any one to reach this result, without suspecting, as well as hoping, that it must be an exaggeration; and yet there are those who think that this is too low an estimate." Putting these facts in another shape, we find, that the slave trade between Africa and America subjects annually to the miseries of permanent bondage, no fewer than 120,000 negroes; whilst, during the same period, it destroys the lives of 255,000 more.
II. Slavery. But, leaving here the consideration of the slave trade, we pass to the history of those measures which, following up its abolition in our own colonies, have destroyed it effectually as to them, by eradicating slavery itself.
Immediately on the passing of the act 1807, there was formed by the abolitionists a new association, which they called "The African Institution." Besides objects connected with the recent measure, and embracing the tasks of watching its execution, of prevailing on foreign powers to imitate our policy, and of aiding in the civilization of Africa, this body gradually began to bestow great attention on the state of slavery in our own colonies, having an especial view to its ultimate abolition, which was afterwards taken up by the Anti-Slavery Society; for their hopes soon waxed very low as to that progressive amelioration in the treatment and even the enlightenment of the slaves, to which some among them had looked forward as one consequence to flow from the stoppage of the foreign supply. The abolitionists were speedily united in the great aim of emancipation; Clarkson renewed his agitation in the provinces; local societies were formed everywhere, and tracts and larger works were circulated; while in Parliament, Wilberforce, the apostle of the cause, was now seconded by Messrs. Brougham, Mackintosh, Buxton, Lushington, William Smith, and others, in pressing vainly on the House of Commons the adoption of measures tending to prepare the slave for eventually obtaining freedom.
At length the trenches were opened in Parliament; and in this new attack, as in the former, the van was led by the Quakers, whose petition for the extinction of slavery was presented by Mr. Wilberforce to the House of Commons in March 1823. Soon afterwards, a motion by Mr. Buxton, for a resolution declaring slavery repugnant both to Christianity and to the British constitution, was defeated by Mr. Canning on counter resolutions, recommending certain necessary reforms. These and other improvements, it was asserted, might be safely left to the colonial legislatures; and the ministry at the same time intimated, that, if the West Indian Assemblies refused to do their duty, it would become necessary for the British Parliament determinedly to interfere.
That no effectual reforms could proceed from the planters themselves, the abolitionists had been long convinced. The government and their supporters, said they, had forgotten two of the prominent features of society in the West Indies; the management of estates by agents for absentee proprietors, and that spirit of reckless adventure which was at once a cause and an effect of West Indian embarrassments. It might have been added, and some had the firmness to add it, that the planters, supposing them ever so well disposed, dared not to introduce any such mitigation or rigour as would afford sufficient protection against individual oppression. The slavery of multitudes was never in any country maintained but by the reign of terror; and, when an enslaved population has reached a certain limit in strength and intelligence, society must inevitably undergo one or another of three changes:—inhumanly increased severity, or universal emancipation, or universal revolution.
In 1824, Mr. Canning, who, though he had been a zealous Case of the abolitionist, acted in regard to the new question a part to Missionary Smith. Mr. Brougham's very guarded motion of censure on the authorities of Demerara for the infamous and cruel injustice which destroyed the missionary Smith. But the publicity which the debates in Parliament, in this case, gave to the atrocities which, although certainly not common in the colonies or anywhere upon earth, the colonial laws allowed, when they did occur, to pass with perfect impunity, did more than anything ever yet had done to excite the indignation of the British people.
The question, in fact, was surprisingly narrowed. When, New state in 1788, the abolitionists attacked the outworks which flanked of public its defenders to be absolutely impregnable. The good of the empire, the good of the slave, the principles of all governments, the very Bible itself, were appealed to as authorising the property in human flesh. But now, for many years, no man had breathed any argument of the sort. It was plain that emancipation must come, and that speedily; the parties were only at issue as to the time and the manner. Even the more intelligent among the planters, who saw the negroes swarming around them in hundreds of thousands, and already beginning to think dangerously, (that is, justly,) seem scarcely to have extended their hopes farther than to obtaining liberal compensation for all their losses, present or prospective, certain or conjectural. But the attitude which they chose, almost universally, to assume, was that of defiance towards the mother-country; and, accordingly, the right of the Colonial Assemblies to legislate for their own islands, and the danger which would be incurred by irritating them, were urged alternately with those other topics, of the risk of revolution through hasty changes, the unfitness of the uninstructed negroes to act as freemen, and such other grounds, which now became the arguments of those who wished the British Parliament to decline interfering.
Down to the year 1830, how much had been done, either in Review of the chartered colonies, or in those governed immediately by reforms ef the crown, for carrying into effect the reforms embodied in the resolutions of 1823, and in the subsequent recommendations of the government?—1. For providing the means of education and religious instruction for the slaves, no one effectual measure had been taken in the colonies of either class. The consolidated slave law for the crown colonies, contained in an Order in Council, dated 8th February 1830, was held out as an improvement on the Trinidad Order in Council of 1824, and was proposed to the chartered colonies as a model for their adoption. It contained no provision for this purpose. 2. The Sunday markets were abolished in the crown colonies by the order of 1830, and they were also abolished by Grenada and Tobago, two of the chartered islands. The other colonies of this class had expressly legalised them. 3. Even this partial abolition was rendered useless, by the total omission of any allowance of equivalent time to the negroes in lieu of Sunday, for marketing or for cultivating their provision grounds. 4. The new order wisely made the evidence of slaves admissible in the crown colonies to the same extent as that of free persons, subject on- ly to remark on the slave's status as affecting credibility. Grenada and Tobago had adopted a similar law; while, in the other colonies of their class, the admission of slave evidence was hampered and restricted so much as to make the grant perfectly useless. In the crown colonies the marriages of slaves were legalized under certain restrictions; in all others such marriages were everywhere exposed to harassing impediments. In the crown colonies the separation of families had been peremptorily provided against, the order, however, being somewhat vague as to the description of persons whom it should embrace. In the chartered colonies the provisions of this kind were universally insufficient. The right of acquiring property was conferred on the slaves in the crown colonies; on those in the others it was also conferred, but under limitations which made the privilege quite illusory. The order in council gave the slaves the right of redeeming themselves and their families, at a fair appraisement, even against the will of the owners; but it imposed, in reference to this grant, several very harsh conditions. The chartered colonies refused unanimously to introduce any such compulsory manumission. The new order most unfortunately omitted that provision in the Trinidad code, which forbade the master to punish the slave corporally more than once in twenty-four hours; but it limited him to twenty-five lashes at a time. This latter enactment was imitated in two or three of the chartered colonies; and in all the rest the old law remained, which allowed the master to inflict thirty-nine lashes at once on any slave, of any age, or of either sex, for any offence, or for none; and the same law allowed him to imprison in the stocks or workhouse as long as he pleased. In the crown colonies there was required a return, as well as a record, of arbitrary punishments inflicted on the slaves on the plantations; but no such check was imposed as to any other classes, such as mechanics or domestics. In the other colonies there was no return, and no adequate record.
By the order in council, the flogging of females was abolished; in every one of the chartered colonies it was still permitted and practised. The order forbade, though not in sufficiently explicit terms, the use of the driving-whip in the field. The legislature of the Bahamas did the same thing. The other legislatures retained the old instruments of punishment. Official protectors of the slaves, none of whom could be slave-holders, were appointed in the crown colonies. The chartered colonies all refused to appoint such functionaries; though in some of them the local magistrates (composed of slave-holders) acted in a similar capacity.
Another proposed reform was, the providing that no slave-holder should be appointed to any function connected with the administration of the slave-laws. The order in council, though it obeyed this salutary rule in respect to the protector, disregarded it as to his assistants, on whom devolved a great part of his ordinary duty. In the chartered colonies the rule was little attended to, except in the leading appointments made by the crown. It was also proposed that, in cases involving the status of individuals, the legal presumption should be for freedom and against slavery. This rule, adopted in the crown colonies, was also imitated by Tobago and Grenada, but by no other chartered island.
For purifying the administration of justice, which called most grievously for amendment, nothing was done in any colony of either class.
In July 1830, Mr. Brougham brought forward his motion, that the House should resolve, at the earliest possible period in next session, to take into consideration the state of the slaves, "in order to the mitigation and final abolition of slavery, and more especially in order to the amendment of the administration of justice." It was lost by a large majority, in a very thin House. The great changes in the ministry soon came on; and, during the eventful years 1831 and 1832, the subjects of Great Britain and Ireland had their own battalions to fight at home, instead of extending aid to foreign dependents. The only steps taken in that period were, the issuing of new orders in council by the Whig ministry in 1831, which proved as ineffectual as those of their predecessors; and the appointment of committees, both in the Lords and Commons, before both of which a large mass of evidence was taken.
At length, after the friends of emancipation had repeatedly pressed the ministry to redeem their pledge of bringing forward a government measure, the ministerial proposition was introduced in May 1833, by Mr. Stanley, then secretary for the colonies. The parts of the resolutions on which the emancipationists were most divided were two; first, the plan of an intermediate state, called an apprenticeship, into which the slave was to be received on his manumission, and which, according to the first draft of the measure, was to last for no less than twelve years; secondly, the proposal of compensation to the slave-owners, which, brought forward at first hesitatingly, at last developed itself into a grant of twenty millions sterling. On the principle of compensation most men were agreed; there was guilt, it is true, in the very act upon which the claim was grounded, but the nation was a thousand times guiltier than the planters, and it would have ill become us to make the minor offenders the only sufferers. The amount and application of the grant were matters less certain. On the question of the apprenticeship there was much more room for doubt; and the most consistent opponents of slavery were decidedly against it. Lord Howick, the under secretary for the colonies, threw up his place rather than advocate it; and it was strenuously resisted in the House by him, Mr. Buxton, and Mr. O'Connell, whose opposition, however, was defeated by an overwhelming majority. Among those who advocated the great principle of the resolutions, the most prominent were, besides the members already named, Mr. Buckingham, Dr. Lushington, Admiral Fleming, and Mr. T.B. Macaulay. The opposition, which scarcely amounted to more than exhortations to caution, with insinuations of insurmountable difficulties, was headed temperately and skilfully by Sir Robert Peel, whose most decided supporters were, Sir Richard Vyvyan, Mr. Godson, Mr. W.E. Gladstone, and Mr. Hume. No division was attempted on any question involving the principle.
The resolutions, on being communicated to the House of Lords, where they were carried without a vote, were supported by the Earl of Ripon, Lord Suffolk, Earl Grey, and Lord Chancellor Brougham, and cautiously opposed by the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Harewood, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Wynford.
A bill was next brought forward, founded on the resolutions. In the discussion on this bill in the Commons, the most important change effected was, the limitation of the apprenticeship to the term of six years for the plantation-negroes, and four for all others. In the House of Lords, the amendments unsuccessfully proposed by the Duke of Wellington were moderate in themselves, and candidly advocated. On the 28th of August 1833, William the Fourth, giving his royal assent to the act, attoned in some measure for the opposition which, in his early days, he, in common with his whole family, except the Duke of Gloucester, had offered to the abolition of the slave trade. William Wilberforce died while the resolutions preparatory to the bill were at their last stage in the House of Commons.
The leading provisions of the great measure for the abolition of slavery were the following.
The act was to take effect on the first day of August 1834, on which day slavery was to cease throughout the British colonies. And, in the first place, all registered slaves, who should at that date be within any of our colonies, and should appear to be six years old and upwards, were to become "apprenticed labourers" to those who had been their owners in slavery; while slaves who had been Slavery already brought, or apprenticed labourers who hereafter might be brought, into the United Kingdom, with the consent of their possessors, were to be absolutely free from the date of the act. The apprentices were divided into three classes. The first two classes, called "pre-arrival apprenticed labourers," comprised all slaves "usually employed in agriculture, or in the manufacture of colonial produce," upon the lands in the colonies; the first class being slaves of this sort, who were usually employed on lands belonging to their owners, and who were declared to be "attached to the soil;" the second class, declared to be "not attached to the soil," being such slaves as were similarly employed on lands not belonging to their owners. The third class, called "non-pre-arrival apprenticed labourers," embraced all slaves not included in either of the two other classes. The apprenticeship of the first and second classes was not to continue beyond the first day of August 1840; and such apprentices were not to be liable, in virtue of their apprenticeship, to labour for their employers for more than forty-five hours in any one week. The apprenticeship of the third class was not to continue beyond the first day of August 1838. Voluntary discharges by the employers, before the expiration of these periods, were allowed, under provisions to secure old and infirm apprentices against destitution; and the apprentice was to be entitled to claim his discharge, even against his employer's consent, on payment of the appraised value of his services. No apprentices were to be removed from the colony to which they belonged; and those of the first class were not to be removable even from their own plantation, except that they might be removed to other plantations of the same owner in the same colony, on a certificate of justices of the peace that the removal would not injure their health or welfare, nor separate members of the same family. Under similar restrictions and conditions, the services of the apprentices during their term were to be transferable property. It was conditioned that the employers were to furnish the apprentices with food, clothing, lodging, and other necessaries, according to the existing laws of the several colonies, and to allow them sufficient provision-ground, and time for cultivating it, in cases where that mode of maintenance was adopted. Children born upon or after the first of August 1834, as also all those under six years of age at that date, although they became at once free, might, if proved destitute to the satisfaction of a magistrate, be bound out by the magistrate as apprentice to the employer of the mother, by indenture, to continue in force till the child had completed its twenty-first year. For giving effect to the act, the crown was declared entitled to name, or to authorise governors of colonies to name, justices of the peace by special commission, and to give salaries not exceeding £300 a-year, to such justices, not exceeding one hundred in all.
The act limited itself to general principles, such as those now specified, declaring that, for carrying the principles into effect, enactments by the several local authorities were the most proper means; and it therefore provided for having such regulations made by the local legislatures for the colonies which had charters, and by the king in council for the crown colonies. It was provided, however, that no such local acts were to authorise the employers, or any one but the special justices, to punish the apprentices by whipping, beating, imprisonment, or addition to the hours of labour; and that they were not to authorise corporal punishment of females on any account, or by sentence of any court. The special justices were made exclusive judges, in the first instance, in all questions between the employer and the apprentices; and no sentence was to impose as punishment extra-work for more than fifteen hours in any week, nor prolongation of apprenticeship, except in the case of runaways, whose prolonged service should not be compellable after the termination of seven years from the end of the apprenticeship. No apprentice was, whether under the act, or by way of punishment, or otherwise, to be compelled to labour on Sundays, except for certain necessary purposes; and none was to be prevented from attending anywhere on Sundays for worship at pleasure.
The remaining sections of the act provided for the raising and application of the twenty millions of compensation-money. The sum might be raised by loans, under the usual restrictions on the government; and commissioners, not fewer than five, were to be appointed by the crown for distributing it, while assistant commissioners were to act for the same purpose in the colonies. No money was to be payable to any slaveholder in any colony, until it should have been declared by an order in council, that satisfactory provision had been made by law in such colony, for giving effect to the act by special or supplementary regulations. The whole money was to be divided into nineteen shares, one for each of the colonies, each share being proportional to the number of registered slaves in the colony, taken in connection with the market-price of slaves in each colony, on an average of eight years ending with 1830.
In virtue of this act, upon the first of August 1834, nearly 800,000 negroes became nominally free; but bothings taken the friends and the opponents of emancipation watched under the much anxiety what would be their conduct during the probationary state which it had been deemed proper for them to pass through,—a state which, by the very removal of some evils, opened the way for certain others, and which, while it gave increased protection against some kinds of oppression, left the negroes more helpless against severities and neglect of other kinds. Two subsequent acts of Parliament provided as far as possible against abuse; and, although many conflicting accounts have reached this country, there does seem to be no sufficient reason for believing that the treatment of the apprentices was really in any material respect worse than it had been during their slavery; while there appears to be as little reason for doubting, that the slaves in general conducted themselves with thankfulness and decency on their change of condition.
But in different islands the policy of the local legislature was very various. Many of the colonists were as well satisfied of the as the most zealous members of the Anti-Slavery Society, that the apprenticeship was wrong and dangerous. Bermuda followed the example, which was next imitated by the small isles, and afterwards by the great island of Barbadoes. Still some colonies held out, with Jamaica at their head; and, particularly from this island, there reached us not only threatening resolutions of the Assembly, but reports of extreme severities towards the slaves, and of decided hostility to the stipendiary magistrates; while one or two of the colonies would not even condescend, for several years, to take such steps as the act declared to be necessary for entitling their landholders to payment of the compensation-money.
In the spring of 1838, the question of immediate abolition of the apprenticeship was stirred, on those and other grounds, in both Houses of Parliament. Lord Brougham's motion to this effect, supported by Lord Lyndhurst and others, was met by the previous question. Sir George Strickland's, in the House of Commons, was also negatived; and, although a similar resolution was afterwards carried in the Commons, the ministry intimated that they would throw every obstacle in the way of any measure founded on it, and the attempt was therefore given up.
But the colonists were warned in time, by the spirit which reigned here, and by that which appears to have been rising among the negroes. They proceeded forthwith to abolish...