"Of all the projects that have ever been imagined, that of declaring all the children free, who shall be born after a certain time, is the one which would bring with it the most certain ruin. Indeed, we may fix the date at which that ruin would arrive: this would be (if it did not happen sooner) at the first moment when this generation had reached maturity.

"Those, who expect that this generation would resemble the free labourers of other countries, are strangely deceived. Let men conclude what they will, from cases of exception, we know that the negro race is so averse to labour, that without force we have hardly anywhere been able to obtain it, even from those who had been trained to work; and now we are to expect it from

those who have been trained to idleness!

“No—if ever general emancipation is to come without general ruin, it must come, not by emancipating slaves, but by emancipating slavery; by gradually extracting from the condition of slavery all its ingredients, till at last the whole mass of slaves shall at once glide, as it were, into freedom. From the former course we could expect only an idle and vicious population; in the latter, every step we take is good in itself, and leads to good. In the former process, the farther we go the greater is the danger; in the latter, every day would bring additional security."

Now, The Edinburgh Reviewer, with the usual good faith and sound logic of that periodical, expatiates on one or two instances of comparative and even complete emancipation, bestowed without apparent evil results on the slaves of one or two particular estates, as if these were sufficient to destroy the notions which Mr Barham, and, indeed, all actually acquainted with the West Indies, have entertained in regard to the possibility of any general emancipation, hoc statu. But is not the fallacy self-evident? I set free the slaves of my farm-well, what can they do? Every other proprietor in the island retains his negroes in their old condition. Whither then can my newmade freemen go-to what can they turn themselves? They see themselves surrounded by a territory, every inch of which is property, and everywhere furnished with a population of labourers adequate to its cultivation. Other arts besides those of the agri

cultural life, to which they have been bred, they have none. The consé quence is, that they must continue to labour my fields or they must starve elsewhere. But how widely different the case of a general, an insular, ay, an archipelagogical emancipation! All hands are set free-if all be willing to take to the mountains, and content them with the supply of the few wants of savage life, what resistance can a handful of whites offer to their determination? Without them we are all ruined, and to keep them we have neither the power of authority nor that of temptation. Away they go-our fields lie desolate and we are beggared-they raise easily, in the meantime, in that teeming climate, the roots necessary for their subsistence, and soon gaining courage from the sense of their numbers and our weakness, they issue from the hills savages restored to all the half-smouldered passions of their race; they issue to waste, to destroy, to massacre, and convert Jamaicathe West Indies-from end to end,into a faithful copy of their native or ancestral Nigritia. Such would be, we doubt not, the result of any such rash measure adopted now: and what the consequences would be to the planters, what the consequences would be to England, it is not very difficult to see:-but, "there is balm in Gilead,"quoth the Godly Scribe of the Mitigation Report," though we might get less sugar from the West Indies," say they in their Appendix, "we might get plenty of it from some other quarter!!!"

But after all, Brougham's review is no more as to this matter than a repetition of what both Mr Buxton and he himself said, and Mr Baring answered, on the 15th May. In adverting to Brougham's instances of successful emancipation, this distinguished mercantile Member expressed himself as follows:

"The honourable Mover of the Resolu

tion had given cases of Negro slavery which had been put an end to without any convulsion or ill consequences having followed. Those who spoke of these instances

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Could hardly express themselves in terms of sufficient delight. They were full of the beauty of the scene, in observing how gra dually the whole mass of slavery melted and sunk away, without disorder of any kind, or any measures on the part of the Legislature being needed, to prevent the danger and mischief usually anticipated. But he begged leave to say, that the instances mentioned are cases so little in point, that it would require much candour to suppose they could be selected, with good faith, by those who brought them forward. In New York, the white population was about a million. Its slaves, at the time of their liberation, did not exceed five thousand. It was impossible that the whites could fear anything from the emancipation of the few slaves that were among them. It was the same in New Jersey, another instance which had been adduced. There the white population was very numerous, and the number of the slaves did not exceed ten thousand. In Pennsylvania the whites were nearly as numerous as in New York, but the slave population, owing to the exertions of the Quakers, has at all times been inconsiderable. The case of Columbia was, perhaps, a little more in point. Yet, according to the statement of the honourable Mover, the free population was more than double that of the slaves, and the fate of that country. can hardly be considered as yet sufficiently settled, to draw any sober conclusions from what is passing there. In Ceylon, another of his examples, the slaves were in a state of vassalage, more like the condition of the ancient peasantry of England, and all classes consisted of men who derived their origin from the same source, viz. the Malabar race. That country was under a strong military government. Its tranquillity did not rest on the opinion of the freeman or the slave, and, therefore, neither in this nor in the other instances brought forward, is there that resemblance with the situation of

our West-India colonies, where the slaves out-number the whites, in the proportion of at least 10 to 1, to constitute anything like a perfect analogy. We are not, therefore, justified in believing, that slavery in our West-India colonies would melt into freedom, without convulsion, or that the agitation of questions of this nature is unat tended with imminent peril.

"It had been said by an honourable and learned gentleman (Mr Brougham) that the insurrection of the slaves in Barbadoes, which had occurred a few years ago, was not owing to their having mistaken the object of the registry, a measure at that time about to be established. He called upon that honourable and learned gen tleman for the authority on which he made that assertion [no answer.] He, (Mr Baring,) on the authority of the governor of the island, Sir James Leith, maintained,

that it was in consequence of the intervention of Parliament at that time being mistaken by the slaves; and from that instance of mischief having ensued, he argued, that further evil may be expected from the repetition of the same causes. Indeed it was impossible but that the arguments in their favour should cause great excitement in the minds of the slaves. If Parliament were to deliberate whether the property of the rich in this country should not be divided among the poor-if the poor were told that it was hard for them to live upon bread and water, while the rich feasted upon venison and champaign, (and, on the principles of Christianity, good arguments on such a topic could not be wanting,) it would be exhibiting an entire ignorance of human nature to suppose that such discussions could be entertained without imminent danger, even in the presence of a population more enlightened and more accustomed to the occasional extravagances of free discussion than the negroes of the West Indies."

In the course of the Buxton debate, the commentaries on it, and the subsequent, as well as preceding pamphlets, a great deal is said about marriage. The West Indian planters are uniformly charged with the guilt of" denying the marriage tie" to their slaves. Nothing can be more distinct, nothing more false, than the accusation. It is very true, that up to this moment, adequate means of religious instruction have never been furnished to the negroes except in particular places. The fault of this, however, is the fault, not of the West Indian planters, but of the Crown and Parliament of England, who kept, and keep-at home to themselves the management of all the ecclesiastical concerns of those colonies, the appointment, the superintendence, everything, except only the payment, of the colonial clergy. But, to say that marriage was ever denied to the negroes, is the most preposterous, perhaps, of all the gratis dicta these pamphlets and pamphlet-speeches record. Who will believe a word of it ?-What says Mr Barham?

"The assemblies may pass what laws they will; but here are customs, manners, and opinions, to be entirely altered; deep prejudices to be rooted out, both in the White and Black population; here is the character of a people to be changed; above all, some stimulus is to be discovered, and brought into action, by which those are to be induced to labour, who have no wants, and those to submit to moral institutions, who have no moral feelings. If to change the character of a people by law be in any case the most difficult problem in political

science, what must it be in that strange anomaly of human society, which the colonies now present to our view?

"The owners of Slaves may labour for the same object as much as they will, and many have thus laboured all their lives, but have laboured nearly in vain. Nor are the causes of this failure out of sight. The changes to be wrought are not within the scope of a master's mandate; and his influence with the slaves, as to many things, is less, exactly because he is their master. To any thinking mind, this will convey no paradox: the fewer rights a man retains, the more tenacious he is of them. All here depends on opinion: the opinion of the slave at present acknowledges the right of his master to his labour, because he bred and feeds him he acknowledges the right to enforce that labour by punishment: but of any interference with his domestic life or pleasures, he acknowledges not the right, and is exceedingly jealous of any approach to it, in the shape of advice or influence.

"Nothing can betray more ignorance of the subject, than when persons blame the master for not ENFORCING marriage amongst his slaves. By persuasion and reward, sometimes, a seeming acquiescence in this institution has been obtained from a few slaves; but nothing would sooner excite their open resistance, than any exertion of AUTHORITY on the subject."

After this, perhaps nothing more need be said; but take once more the broad view of things. All the world knows that the healthy increase of population is promoted by marriage, and indeed incompatible with the absence of marriage. Every one knows that the interest of the planters has always been, and is most emphatically now, precisely the same thing with the increase of this population. Will any man believe, then, for a moment, that they have all along exerted their utmost power against themselves against their own most clearly understood, and most undoubted, patrimonial interests? That they have laboured to make their slaves live lives of boundless and brutal licentiousness -the two plainest and most palpable consequences of this being destruction to the health of the present race, and, comparatively speaking, the absence of all offspring? These ideas may do with the Bethel Union and the Society for Mitigation, but they will scarcely go down with rational Englishmen. We have all heard the West Indians called brutes and savages, often enough, as to the feelings of the heart; but it is now for the first time that we begin

to be familiarized with the charge of utter ignorance and neglect as to the affairs of their own purses. And take notice, too, with what admirable grace this charge is made the predominant one Now-just at the time when it appears that the negroes, whose own wilful prejudices and licentious propensities were the only obstacles that ever existed to their at least living as married people, have at length, in good earnest, begun to cast those old and fatal prejudices aside when one rec tor of Jamaica has just told the world that he has himself celebrated 187 negro marriages within the last two years In his own parish! But upon what may not these privileged ones of the earth venture, cloaked and cased as they are in their all-protecting panoply, and resolved, per fas et nefas, to Compound for sugar they're inclined to, By damning sugar they've no mind to?

Another of the most common themes of declamation, is the present state of the law, as to the admissibility of negro evidence in courts of justice against whites. This is the solitary point at which Mr Canning stuck completely he said he lamented the evil, and had looked in vain for the cure. Perhaps a few words may simplify the matter. If a negro slave appears to give evidence in the case of a white freeman, he appears either against his own master, or against some other white man. In the former case the difficulty is so obvious, that it is not worth stating; in the latter, is it not sufficiently evident, that, if his master chooses to exert the influence he holds, the negro must be rendered a witness of most dubious, to say the gentlest of it, credibility? But these are mere preliminary difficulties. Lay them altogether aside, and by what means are we to make a heathen and a savage, or, at least, one who is but a step above these, a credible witness, in a Christian and enlightened court of justice? Barham, for this very reason, that we We are happy to quote from Mr differ toto cælo from that respectable writer as to many points of the case he has so ably discussed. Hear him, then-hear once more a Whig, and a most distinguished abolitionist, quoad

hoc.

"Nothing could be easier than to comply with the constant requisition, that the evidence of a slave should be admissible to

a court of justice; but no one has yet contended, that, till HE can FEEL THE OBLIGATION OF AN OATH, til! YOU HAVE at least FOUND SOME SYMBOL FAIRLY TO SWEAR HIM BY, his evidence shall be regarded as credible. What will the slave then have gained? The MOCKERY of being produced NOT to be believed. Better for him that he should remain as he is, than exchange a technical disability for a public exhibition of his incompetence."

Nothing can be more sensible than the more general observation of the same writer, that,

"Moral improvement is the hinge on which everything must turn. When that is sufficiently advanced, civil rights may be freely granted, and emancipation will have no danger. But moral improvement will not be accomplished by vain recommendation to the colonies to do what they have not the means of effecting.

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Nothing, indeed, could be easier than for the colonies to pass specious laws, which would remove every reproach from their statute books; but if, from existing circumstances, these laws could not have any practical effect, it were better that the evil should remain open to public view, than that it should be thus disguised."

We have already said a great deal more as to these matters than we intended when we began; and yet we have, comparatively speaking, done nothing in the way of detail. We have referred, however, abundantly to the sources whence the most accurate and most overwhelming information may be derived by any one who will take the trouble of looking for it, and having done this, and having most assuredly said nothing but what we have satisfied our own minds is true and uncontrovertible, we now call upon our readers to say, what is their opinion of the Mitigation and Institution Agitators? These people profess to be the best Christians in the world; indeed they will allow nobody to be a Christian at all but their own set; they profess, also, to be the very princes of philanthropy. Has their conduct been such as might be expected from the open assumption of such characters ? Have not these Christians-these par excellence Christians-been deliberately, and are they not now unabashedly, the suppressors and distorters of facts? Are they not helpless as children in logic-are they not beggers of the question, and putters of the cart before the horse at every turn they make? Are they not idle, irrational declaimers--frothy exaggerators

blind in reality-or affecting blindness, in order that the tricks of lynxlike perspicacity, as to self-interest, may not be suspected by the ignorant multitude, for whom alone their style of procedure, their tone of language, their reach and grasp of intellect, are in any measure adapted. These men are all, take their word for it, so many HOWARDS. Yet, has any one of them all either visited the regions of which they all talk so much, in order to check, by personal examination, the risk of false information? or, in point of fact, paid one jot of price in the shape of personal pain and privation, for that all-adorning, that all-sanctifying, that all-subduing, all-silencing NAME of peerless philanthropy, to which every one of them conceives himself to have as good a right as any one of the uninitiated conceives he has to the character of an honest man, or of a loyal citizen-and in which, best of all jokes that ever were jested, THEY, (never dreaming but that they may, without impiety, say, "whoever is not with us is against us,") will allow no man whatever to have either part or lot, except he has kissed their private symbols of coherence and co-operation, and renounced virtually every other principle of social compact, but theirs?

We apprehend that we have done enough to justify these expressions; but to attack individuals we have no wish whatever, nor is there, we are persuaded, the slightest necessity for our doing so in this instance. The truth is, that the knowledge is everywhere and in every hand: the only thing that is needful, is, to call upon men of common understanding to turn their eyes outwards and inwards, and consider what has been going onwhat they themselves know to have been going on. Time has been when the House of Commons would have been the natural sphere for such discussions to take place in, and for such hints to have emanated from. But there, as we have said ere now, and as all that have sense to feel anything have felt long ere now, things of this sort are in these glorious days of smooth speaking entirely out of the question. There, every one is the honourable member

"So are they all, all honourable men." There, MOTIVES must not be even glanced at: there, if the LIE be given,

the word, the honest word, is only uttered to be eat again in the fastcoming qualm of the all-levelling endemic. It is on paper only that TRUTH can be hinted. The only comfort is, that when truth is hinted anywhere, there is a principle not yet entirely eradicated, which renders that one golden atom more powerful than a thousand tons of the blown-up soulsickening verbiage that would fain oppress and smother it.

The truth is, then, that slavery wherever it exists is an evil-an odious evil; but that the slavery to which the negroes are subjected in the West Indies is as nothing, compared with the slavery to which all negroes are born in the native country of their race: that in respect of physical comforts, the West Indian negroes are superior to almost all the labouring peasantry of the Old World: and that in those matters wherein these negroes are inferior to the labouring classes of European countries, the inferiority is not by any means, even take the worst times and the worst places, so great as it would have been had they remained in Africa. That the moral condition of these negroes ought to be improved, is evident; that it must be improved ere they are made free to do as they choose, is as evident ;-that is to say, if any regard whatever is to be paid either to the welfare of our colonies, as parts of our empire and instruments of our wealth; or even, laying these matters altogether out of view, to the true interests, moral and intellectual, of the negroes themselves. This, in so far as the negroes are concerned, is the truth. Have the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Macaulays-have the Broughams, acted as if this were the truth? Have the Ellises, the Marryatts-ay, has even Canning, the orator and the statesman of the timeprimus absque secundo-has even he answered these men as if it were so? No. The only man in the House of Commons who has ventured even to come within a hundred miles of any thing like the indication of his true feelings, is Mr ALEXANDER BARING. Observe the parliamentary style

"With every respect for the motives of the numerous petitioners on this subject, he must confess, that he had witnessed too much the tricks and calumnies by which

these representations were collected, to ascribe much weight to them, and he conjured the Right Honourable Gentleman, as a Minister of the Crown, not to be led away by petitions so got up.-(Only conceive of Mr CANNING really led away by these things!)--They were signed by persons, few of whom (mark the few!)—had any means of information, and mostly by those, who were in the habit of annually quieting an over-timid conscience by a subscription to missions and to some petition about slavery, of the nature of which they knew nothing, but from the distorted exaggerations of enthusiasts. When it was considered that these petitions were, as is well known, brought in such loads to the table of the House, in consequence of a plan organized by a few persons in the metropolis, gentlemen would ascribe to them only the weight they deserved.”

In regard to the interests of the colonies themselves, and their English proprietors, the TRUTH may be stated almost as briefly. Whatever may be the sin of slavery, it is no more theirs than it is that of Mr Wilberforce or Mr Buxton, or of any other given man or men now residing in England, and eating the fruits of English manors,to say nothing of English breweries. The slave-trade was not the child of our West Indian colonists. It was

established in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, (who took a personal share in it,) before we had any of these colonies at all. James I., Charles I., Cromwell, Charles II., James II., but above all, William III., did their utmost to extend the slave-trade.* William was the king, and the great Lord Somers the minister, who concluded the Assiento treaty, with which our colonies had nothing to do, but by which England bound herself to furnish the Spanish colonies with 144,000 slaves, at the rate of 4800 per annum. During all this time, the West Indian colonists of England did nothing but buy slaves from the British merchants, the said merchants being 66 ged" in the said traffic by a regular sequence of Acts of Parliament. Nay, farther, however much the dupes may start, the fact is certain, that the said colonies began the attack on the said traffic, so favoured by the Government and Parliament of England. Three different acts were passed in the colonies for the restriction of the slavetrade between 1760 and 1774, and all

encoura