to interfere between them and their | Africans are more than maintained by otherwise certain destruction; and de- their own increase. Nor is the arguspite their fears, despite their passions, despite their prejudices, rescue them from impending ruin. This trade is the most criminal that any country can be engaged in. When it is recollected what guilt has been incurred in tearing the Africans, by thousands and tens of thousands, from their families, their friends, their social ties, their country, and dooming them to a life of slavery and misery; when it is considered also that the continuance of this atrocious traffic must inevitably terminate in the ruin of the planters engaged in it, surely no doubt can remain that its instant abolition is called for by every motive of justice and expedience. ment that the importation of negroes is requisite to cultivate the waste lands in the interior of the islands better founded. If the numbers of the Africans increase, it is altogether incredible that their labours should not be adequate to clear the wastes of those diminutive islands. According to the most moderate computation, it would require the slave trade to be continued for two centuries to cultivate the whole interior of Jamaica and Trinidad; and can it be endured that so frightful a traffic as this, fraught as it must be with the tearing of above two millions of Africans from their families and country, should be continued for such a period, for an object which, in onefourth of the time, might, by the native increase of their numbers in those islands, be attained? + 24. "Much is said of the impossibility of maintaining the supply of negroes in the West Indies, if the slave trade is abolished. Are we, then, to believe that the Divine precept, 'Increase and multiply,' does not extend to those islands that the fires of youth, adequate to the maintenance and growth of the human species in all other countries and ages of the world, are there alone, in the midst of plenty, unequal to their destined end? But the fact is adverse to this monstrous supposition; and it is now distinctly proved that the slave colonies are perfectly adequate to maintain their own numbers.* The excess of deaths above births in Jamaica is now only 1-25th per cent; and when it is recollected that the registers of mortality include the deaths among the negroes who are newly arrived and set to work, which always amounts, between those who perish in the harbours and shortly after being set to work, to at least 10 per cent, it is evident that the numbers of settled * Excess of deaths above births in Jamaica from -Parl. Deb. viii. 658. 25. "Let us, then, instantly abolish this infamous traffic; and we may then with confidence look forward to the period when the slaves, become in a great degree the natives of the islands, will feel the benefits of the protection afforded them: and they may gradually be prepared for that character, when the blessings of freedom may be securely extended to them. Throughout all history we shall find that slavery has been eradicated by means of the captives being first transformed into predial labourers, attached to the soil, and from that gradually ascending to real freedom. We look forward to the period when the negroes of the West India Islands, become labourers rather than slaves, will feel an interest in the welfare and prosperity of the country which has extended to them these be nefits, and when they may be securely It is now completely demonstrated, by an experiment on the greatest scale, that the African race, even when in a state of slavery, is not only able to maintain its own numbers, but rapidly to increase them. In the slave states of America there are 2,200,000 negroes; and from 1790 to 1830, the whites have augmented in the proportion of 80 to a 100; but the blacks in that of 112 to 100. The proportion since that time has been rather, though but little, in favour of the increase of the white race.-TOCQUEVILLE's Democracy in America, ii. 345, 346, note; and Census 1841, America. called on to share largely in the defence of those islands, in which at present they are only a source of weakness. The grand, the decisive advantage which recommends the abolition of the slave trade is, that by closing that supply of foreign negroes to which the planters have hitherto been accustomed to trust for all their undertakings, we shall compel them to promote the multiplication of the slaves on their own estates; and it is obvious that this cannot be done without improving their physical and moral condition. Thus, not only will the inhuman traffic itself be prevented, in so far at least as the inhabitants of this country are concerned, but a provision will be made for the progressive amelioration of the black population in the West Indies, and that, too, on the securest of all foundations-the interests and selfish desires of the masters in whose hands they are placed. and rapacity in the powerful, of misery and degradation in the poor. The argument that, if we do not carry on the slave trade, some other nations will, possibly with less commiseration for the sufferings of the captives, if admitted, would shake to their foundation every principle of public and private morality. At that rate every band of robbers might plead in their justification, that if they did not knock down and plunder travellers, other banditti might do the same, and possibly superadd murder to their other atrocities, and therefore the lucrative rapine should not be discontinued. This argument, however, bad as it is, has not even the merit of being founded on fact. If we abolish the slave trade, who is to take it up? The Americans have already preceded us in the race of humanity, and fixed a period in 1808 when the traffic is immediately to cease; and a bill is at present in progress through their legislature, to affix the penalty of death to a violation of this enactment. How are France and Spain to carry it on, when they have hardly a ship on the ocean? Sweden never engaged in it. There remains only Portugal, and where is she to get capital to carry it on? 26. "It is in vain to argue, that, ac cording to the barbarous customs of Africa, captives made in war are put to death, and that if the outlet of the slave trade is closed, the reproach to humanity arising from the sale of captives will be prevented from taking place. The most recent and intelligent travellers, on the contrary, have 27. "The dangers, so powerfully informed us, what every consideration drawn, as likely to result from this on the subject a priori would lead us measure, are really to be apprehended, to expect, that the existence of the not from it, but from another, with slave trade is itself, and ever has been, which it has no connection, viz. the the great bar to the civilisation of the immediate emancipation of the negroes. interior of Africa, by the temptation This, it is said, flows necessarily from held out to the chiefs on the coast to the step now about to be taken; if engage in the traffic of negroes, and you do not follow it up in this manthe continual encouragement thus af- ner, you stop short half-way in your forded to the princes in the interior to own principles; in fact, the ulterior carry on constant wars, from the vast measure, if the first be adopted, canprofit with which the sale of their cap- not be averted. It is to be hoped, intives is attended. It forms, in fact, deed, that this great step will, in the with a great many of these robber end, lead to the abolition of slavery in chieftains, a chief branch of revenue. all our colonies; but not in the way If we would promote, therefore, the or with the dangers which are anticigreat and truly Christian work of ci- pated. On the contrary, it is here that vilising Central Africa, we must first another of the great benefits of the commence with abolishing the slave measure under consideration is to be trade; for as long as it continues, the found. By the effects of this measure selfishness and rapacity of the native it is to be hoped slavery will gradually chiefs will never cease to chain its un- wear out without the intervention of any happy inhabitants to a life of violence | positive law, in like manner as it did in a certain degree in the states of Greece and Rome, and some parts of the states of modern Europe, where slaves have been permitted to work out and purchase their own freedom; and as has been permitted with the happiest effects in the colonies of Spain and Portugal. In America, measures for the gradual emancipation of the negroes have been adopted, and nothing could conduce more powerfully to insubordination, than if, by the continuance of the trade, similar steps were not to be induced in the West India Islands, and the slaves there were perpetually tantalised by the sight of the superior comforts of their brethren on the mainland. The dangers apprehended would indeed be real, if immediate emancipation were to be proposed, for that would produce horrors similar to those which have happened in St Domingo. But nothing of that kind is in contemplation; on the contrary, it is expressly to exclude them, and to induce that gradual emancipation which is called for, alike by justice to the planters and the interests of the slaves themselves, that the measure under discussion is proposed." perity of his country and the welfare 29. There can be no question that this great step was recommended by every consideration of justice and humanity; nevertheless its effects hitherto have been in the highest degree deplorable. Never was there a more striking example than this subject has afforded in its later stages of the important truth, that mere purity of intention is not sufficient in legislative measures, and that unless human designs are carried into execution with the requisite degree of foresight and wisdom, they often become the sources of the most heart-rending and irremediable calamities. The prophecy of Mr Hibbert and the opponents of the abolition, that the slave trade, instead of ceasing, would only change hands, and at length fall into the management of desperate wretches who would double its horrors, has been too fatally verified, and to an extent even greater than they anticipated. From the returns laid before Parliament, it appears that the slave trade is now four times as extensive as it was in 1789, when European philanthropy first interfered in St Domingo in favour of the African race, and twice as great as it was when the efforts of Mr Wilberforce procured its abolition in the British dominions. Great and deplo 28. The latter arguments, enforced with much eloquence, and supported by the great principles of Christian charity, prevailed with the legislature. By a series of enactments, passed in the course of the session of 1806, the slave trade was restrained within very narrow limits and at length, in the succeeding session, it was entirely abol-rable as were the sufferings of the capished, and the penalty of transportation affixed to every British subject engaged in it. The numbers were, in the Commons, 283 to 16-majority, 267: in the Peers, 100 to 36-majority, 64: and thus was the stain of trafficking in human flesh for ever removed from the British name. Lord Grenville -concluded his speech with these eloquent words: "I cannot conceive any -consciousness more truly gratifying than must be enjoyed by that eminent person (Mr Wilberforce), on finding a measure to which he has devoted the labour of his life carried into effect-a measure so truly benevolent, so admirably conducive to the virtuous pros tives in crossing the Atlantic, in the large and capacious Liverpool slaveships, they are as nothing compared to those which have since been, and are still endured by the negroes in the hands of the Spanish and Portuguese traders, where several hundred wretches are stowed between decks in a space not three feet high; and in addition to the anguish inseparable from a state of captivity, they are made to endure, for weeks together, horrors like those of the Black-hole of Calcutta. Nearly two hundred thousand captives, chained together in this frightful manner, now annually cross the Atlantic; and they are brought, not to the comparatively easy life of the British West India | tion, and that here alone in human Islands, but to the desperate servitude affairs it is lawful to do evil that good of Cuba or Brazil; in the latter of may come of it. The observation, that which several hundred negroes are it was our duty to clear our hands of worked, like animals, in droves toge- the iniquity, leaving it to Providence ther, without a single female among to eradicate the evil in others at the them; and without any attempt to appointed time, was decisive of the perpetuate their race, they are worn justice of the measure; the evident down by their cruel taskmasters to the necessity which it imposed on the grave by a lingering process, which on planters of attending, for their own an average terminates their existence sakes, to the comforts of the negroes, in seven years !* and providing means for the multiplication of their numbers, was conclusive as to its expedience. It is not the abolition of the slave trade, but the subsequent continuance of ruinous fiscal exactions, and at last the irretrievable step of unqualified emancipation, which have given this deplorable activity to the foreign slave trade. The increase in the foreign slave colonies for the last twenty years, at a time when the British West India Islands were comparatively stationary, has been so rapid, that it is evident some powerful and lasting causes have been at work to occasion it. These causes are to be found, in a great measure, in the heavy duties on British colonial produce, 30. This lamentable and heart-rending result of such persevering and enlightened benevolence, however, must not lead us to doubt the soundness or humanity of the principles which Mr Wilberforce so eloquently advocated, or to imagine that the general rules of morality are inapplicable to this ques * The number of slaves annually imported into the slave countries of the New World from Africa in 1789, was somewhat under 50,000, of whom about 15,000 crossed in English vessels-now the number is at least 200,000. It appears from the Consular Returns to parliament, that in 1829, 74,653 slaves were embarked for Brazil alone from the African coast, of whom 4579 died in the short passage of one month; and in the first half of 1830 the numbers were no less than 47,258, of whom 8 per cent died on the passage. At the same period 13,000 were annually imported into the Havannah, and at least an equal number into the other slave colonies, making in the year 1830 about 130,000. But these numbers, great as they are, have now received a vast increase from the effects of the British slave emancipation act, passed in 1833. In fifteen months, ending January 1835, there sailed from the single port of Havaunah 170 slave ships, each capable of containing, on an average, at least 400 persons; the importation of slaves into Cuba is now above 55,000 a-year, while the numbers imported into Brazil, from the stimulus given to slave labour by the anticipated decline of produce in the British Islands consequent on that measure, have increased in nearly the same proportion. Nor is it surprising that, in spite of all the efforts of the British government, and all the vigilance of the British cruisers, this infernal traffic should now advance at this accelerated pace; for such is the demand for slaves, occasioned by the continual decline in the cultivation of sugar in the British West India Islands, under the combined influence of heavy taxation and the emancipation act, that the profit on a single cargo of slaves imported into the Havannah is 180 per cent, and the adventurers cannot be considered as losers if one vessel arrives safe out of three despatched from the coast of Africa.-Parl. Pap. 1830, A. 115, 116. Twelve years ago, the only exports of Puerto-Rico were cattle and coffee, and the only sugar she received was from importation. In 1833 she exported 33,750 tonsmore than a sixth of the whole British consumption. The export of the sugar from Cuba was, on an average of 1814, 1815, and 1816, 51,000 tons; in 1833 it had risen to 120,000 tons. In 1814, 1815, and 1816, the average exports of sugar from Brazil were 26,250 tons; in 1833, though a bad year, the exports were 70,970 tons. The increase, since the Emancipation Act passed, has been still greater; but no official accounts of these years have yet been made public.-See Parl. Report "On the Commercial State of the West Indies," p. 286. On the other hand, the produce of the British West India Islands, during the same period, has been comparatively stationary. The colonial produce exported from those islands to Great Britain in the year 1812, was 154,200 tons of sugar, and 6,290,000 gallons of rum; in 1830, 185,000; and in 1833, 205,000 tons of sugar, and 7,892,000 gallons of rum; the shipping in the first period was 180,000; in the last, 263,330 tons. The total value of the produce of the islands in the first period was £18,516,000; in the last, including all the colonies gained by the peace of Paris in 1814, only £22,496,000.-PEBRER, 399; COLQUHOUN, 378-381; PORTER's Parl. Tables, 124-126. "Inani sapiens nomen ferat, æquus uniqui, Ultra quam satis est, virtutem qui petat ipsam." amounting at first to 30s., then to 278., | mass of human wretchedness, so far as and latterly to 24s., on each hundred- the slave trade itself is concerned, is weight of sugar, from which the foreign not only not diminished, but auggrowers were exempted in the supply mented, in its amount, and frightof foreign markets. This enormous fully aggravated in its degree and chaburden, which, on an average of prices racter.' since 1820, has been very nearly seventy-five per cent on that species of produce, has, notwithstanding all their efforts, for the most part, if not entirely, fallen on the producers.* The disastrous effects of these combined measures cannot be better stated than in the words of Lord Sidmouth: "Much good might have been done by regulations on the coast of Africa, in the middle passage, and in the West Indies. But now we have rashly taken the bull by the horns, and while the consequences have been most injurious to our colonies and ourselves, they have in the same degree been beneficial to the maritime strength, commerce, and navigation of other nations, our rivals in peace and enemies in war; and the 31. Nor is this all-the precipitate and irretrievable step of emancipation, forced on the legislature by benevolent but incautious and mistaken feeling, has already occasioned so great a decline in the produce of the British West Indies, and excited such general expectations of a still greater and increasing deficiency, that the impulse thereby given to the foreign slave trade to fill up the gap has been unbounded, and, it is to be feared, almost irremediable. Since the disastrous measure of emancipation, the agricultural produce of the British West Indies has declined fully a half; in some branches of produce, fallen to * There is no opinion more erroneous than low, at least a hundred per cent. Nothing that commonly entertained, that the import more is required to explain the distressed duties on sugar, like other taxes on consump-condition of these colonies, even before the tion, fall on the purchaser. There is always, emancipation bill was passed, which at once, indeed, a struggle between the producer and without any equivalent, confiscated at least consumer, as to who should bear the burden sixty per cent of their remaining property. -but it is not always in the power of the The value of slaves was estimated by Colformer to throw it on the latter. In this in- quhoun, in 1812, at £55 a-head; but in 1833, stance the attempt has almost totally failed. when the act passed, it had risen to at least It appears from the curious table of prices £75 overhead, notwithstanding the change compiled by Mr Colquhoun, that even dur- in the value of money; and the compensationing the high prices of the years from 1807 to money (£20,000,000 on 634,000 slaves) will 1812, the West India proprietors paid from not, after all deductions are made, yield £25 a third to a half of the duties on sugar, with- a-head, or more than thirty-three per cent to out being able to lay it on the consumers; the proprietors. Few such instances of the the average of what they paid for those years destruction of property by fiscal and legisla being £1,115,251 per annum. The estimated tive enactments are to be found in the hisrevenue of these proprietors, during these tory of mankind. - PEBRER, 394 and 397; years, was under £4,000,000; so that, at that COLQUHOUN, 59, 325; and Commons' Reports period, they paid nearly thirty per cent on on West India Affairs, 7th February, 1831. their incomes to government. In addition to this, it was proved by the documents laid before the committee of the House of Commons in February 1831, that an annual burden of £1,023,299 was laid on the British West India Islands, in consequence of the enhancement of the price of necessary articles to which they were exposed under the restrictive system. In this way, even under the high prices from 1807 to 1812, they were paying at least fifty per cent on their incomes in taxation; and as the price, since that time, of their produce has fallen at least two-thirds, with a reduction of only a ninth (3s.) on the import duty, it may be safely concluded, that, since 1820, the West India proprietors have paid, directly and indirectly, at least seventy-five per cent on their income to government; and in the years when prices were It is frequently said that the increase in the produce of these colonies, since the peace, is a proof that their alleged distresses are either unfounded or exaggerated. This is a complete mistake; the planters had no other way to meet the enormous fiscal burdens laid upon them, since a diminution in the cost of production was out of the question, after the abolition of the slave trade, but by making the utmost exertions to augment its quantity; and thence the increase of colonial produce, which, by perpetuating the lowness of price, rendered it totally impossible for them to lay the enormous import duty, now one hundred per cent, on the consumers. Like a man sunk in a bottomless bog, all the efforts they could make for their extrication tended only to land them deeper and more irretrievably in the mire. |