and labour for their own benefit ?" It is, indeed, scarcely worth while to notice these things, except for the place where they make their appearance. We all know that the commercial interests in question, are engaged openly and avowedly in the attempt to make certain other countries rival the Western Colonies in the sugar market. And no harm in this surely. It is a matter of fair commercial speculation and ambition, and let it have fair play. We are possessed, indeed, of documents, which convince us that the East India Company would do a very foolish thing if they made this a serious object of theirs-nor do we believe they will do so in the face of the body of facts comprehended in their own folio. What we object to, however, is not the open hostility of any body, or bodies of mercantile men-not at all-they have a right to make war, but they have no right to choose unfair weapons. But, above all, it is the dirty and mean behaviour of persons, who, with "Zion" in their mouths, are in fact thinking of nothing so much as Ophir and Tarshish"-it is this that disgusts us, and all who understand it. These are the people whom we despise-and, we believe, there is nothing required but a plain exposure of the truth, to cover them with universal and overwhelming contempt. Mr Wilberforce and his friends might at least have been aware, that the time chosen for their recent alarum, could scarcely fail to subject their views and motives to a very doubtful species of interpretation. But, as we have said, we do most sincerely acquit them of the dishonesty-let them make the best they can of the weakness. The THIRD PARTY is neither a religious, nor a commercial one. It consists of mere politicians-such men, for instance, as Mr Brougham-men who appear but too willing to disturb existing establishments of every kind, provided they can see any chance of thereby gaining a little popularity to prop up the ruined reputation of their own sorely degraded faction, the Whigs. These three parties play upon, and make cat's paws of each other to the best of their ability. His Majesty's Ministry, we are pretty sure, understand them all; and we hope their united clamour will be found entirely unavailing to influence them in any way whatever, in their discharge of the great public duty which they have pledged themselves to perform-which, in our humble opinion, amounts to the same thing with hoping that this clamour may prove a powerless enemy to the real interests of the West Indies, and those of the Negro Slaves themselves. We have had occasion to speak more harshly than we could have wished, of the part which certain friends of religion have taken in regard to this matter. We trust, however, nobody will so far misunderstand us, as to suppose that we regard the condition of the West Indian slaves, in any other light than that of a subject which ought to engage the consideration of the true friends of religion. On the contrary, if there be one proposition in the world that appears to admit of no sort of doubt at all, it is this: that this great negro population must be christianized ere it can be fitted for anything like a participation in the political liberty of British subjects. In this, we are persuaded, every rational mind must completely go along with us. It is, therefore, the duty of the enlightened friends of our religion, to keep their eyes upon this subject with the most serious attention-but it is their duty to mix prudence with their zeal. Let them exercise themselves in devising all possible measures which may tend to the facilitation of that conversion, without which, nothing can be done.-But let them not rashly obtrude crude speculations upon the public. Such men as Wilberforce have no lack of access to the Ministers of England-let them suggest and reason, but let them not declaim, inflame, interrupt, and injure. While many friends of religion have been talking and writing, others have been doing. Sir George Rose, in particular, has lately published a little pamphlet which does him the highest honour-a record, not of inflammatory diatribes, but of plain intelligible facts; the history, in short, of his own West Letter on the Means and Importance of Converting the Slaves in the West Indies to Christianity. By the Right Hon. Sir G. H. Rose, M.P. London, John Murray, 1823. Indian estates, and of the efforts which he has made for the introduction of Christianity among the negro population, with which the fortune of inheritance had connected his interests and his duties. This tract, which cannot be too widely known and studied, bears in every page the impress of a most upright mind, and a most benevolent heart. Sir George has been eminently successful in the efforts he has made; and, both as a great West Indian proprietor, and as a member of the British Parliament, he has done no more than his duty in laying the full and candid narrative of his proceedings before the public. He professes himself an affectionate son of the Church of England, and yet he has made use of the Wesleyan missionaries on his estate. He details the success of these missionaries, and yet the main purpose of his pamphlet seems to be to stimulate the Ministry to the erection of a machinery by which the great work of conversion may be carried on within the pale of the Church. There may be some slight appearance of inconsistency in all this, but we confess that we attach no importance to it. Sir George found the Wesleyan body at hand, and ready; and, as an individual proprietor of slaves, it was his business to make use of the first effectual means he could find for the attainment of his individual object. His earnest expressions of hope and trust that THE CHURCH may ere long be put in possession of means for taking the great labour into her own hands, derive, indeed, a new title to respectful attention, from the very circumstances which have induced certain not very liberal critics to impugn Sir George Rose's character both as a reasoner and as a member of the Anglican Church. The real lesson his pamphlet was intended to give, is this: it is possible for any single proprietor, nay, it is easy for him, to introduce Christianity among his negro slaves. This is Sir George's assertion; it is this that his facts were meant to illustrate; it is this that they do illustrate, ay, and prove, and that to his high honour now, and eventually-if the lesson be not given in vain, because it is received with contempt to the great service both of these colonies at large, and of CHRISTIANITY; which last, by the way, is, in our opinion, after all that has been said, a much higher consideration than all the colonies in the world. Happily British statesmen are spared most clearly in this instance—as we believe they must be spared in every instance where things are well understood-the necessity of putting into opposite scales, and balancing with an uncertain hand, here, the interests of the commercial greatness of their country, and, there, those of that faith, from the influences of which, visibly embodied in institutions and in actions, all the best greatness of that happy and favoured country proceeds. The slave population must be converted ere it is trusted with freedom: this is a proposition which we consider as so perfectly and so self-evidently true, that it would be mere folly to waste words in illustrating or enforcing it. This is the first step-without this nothing can be done. It is impossible even to dream of a rational government, situated as ours is, throwing loose such a population as this—a population of wild heathens (generally speaking)—a population destitute alike of principles on which we could place reliance, and of knowledge by which their own welfare could be guarded. The thing is absolutely impossible. The question is, how are these negroes to be christianized? We earnestly hope the answer is not long to be doubtful. We sincerely trust that the Church of England is destined to take upon herself this great and glorious labour. There is no good to be derived from reproaches; but it must be admitted, that the clerical establishment now existing in these islands is altogether inadequate for the task which the Wilberforce party seem to take a vast pleasure in telling us that establishment has not performed. In truth, that establishment never dreamt of performing it. There are, for instance, twenty parishes in the Island of Jamaica; each of these parishes has long had a rector, and more lately each of them has had a curate also. But, supposing the rector to be sufficiently occupied with his free congregation, which, if he does his duty, or indeed makes any approximation to it, must be the case, what is a single curate to do with a population of, in some instances, ten, even twenty thousand negroes, who stand in need, not merely of clerical ministration, but of the very elements of knowledge? The burden is self-evidently beyond the power of any man.* It is understood, Sir George Rose says, that the Ministry intend to establish different bishopricks in the West Indies, and to place under the new prelates, not only the clergy already existing there, but also a separate body of churchmen, appointed (and perhaps educated) expressly for the service of Christianity among the negroes. Sir George says, that as, in the military department, In most of the Islands there are only rectors-no curates at all. The following extract from a letter to Lord Bathurst, written by the Rev. W. Chatterton, rector of St Paul's, Antigua, may furnish a complete view of the situation in which these gentlemen are placed. "If the slave population is not properly provided with the means of religious instruction according to the ordinances of the Established Church, the fault rests not in us who are appointed to administer those ordinances, but it proceeds from local circumstances, with which the Prince Regent's Government ought to be made well acquainted, and which it is utterly beyond the power of the regular clergy to alter or correct. There are, sir, many obstacles of considerable magnitude, which tend to exclude the slaves from our pastoral care: The first is, the want of room in our churches; taking my own church, for example, after the regular congregation is accommodated, there is only occasionally a vacancy that would admit about thirty persons. Now, the slave population in my parish amounts to three thousand seven hundred and eighteen souls; there is therefore a prodigious number, by this single circumstance, unavoidably excluded from attending the established worship on Sunday, which is the only day they have in their power. But, suppose this impediment removed, and our churches were calculated to afford greater accommodation to these people; and suppose them either prevailed upon, or compelled, to attend our public services, still, sir, I fear the result would fall very far short of the expectations of the Prince Regent's Government. Let it be remembered, sir, that the slaves are in a state of the grossest ignorance, that their minds are totally destitute of all cultivation; to crowd them into a church, therefore, without some previous preparation, would be a procedure equally useless and absurd. Our liturgy would be wholly unintelligible to them; and the addresses from the pulpit, which surely must be adapted, in some degree, to the superior information of our more enlightened hearers, would be to them as unedifying as if they were preached in a foreign tongue. "It must be obvious, therefore, that the ordinary system of instruction pursued in our churches, and the deficiency of accommodation in point of room, present great obstacles to the slaves deriving any degree of religious improvement from the regular clergy; and a little reflection will shew, that it is absolutely impossible we should adopt any extraordinary measures for the accomplishment of this great and important purpose. Our Saviour's remark applies with peculiar force and propriety to us, in our situation with respect to the slaves: The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few.' The slaves, in fact, abound to that degree, that the single exertions of the rectors in the several parishes, supposing them to be pressed with the most ardent zeal, could never be adequate to supply their spiritual wants, and attend to those of the white and free people of colour, who constitute their regular charge. "If this class of people, sir, are to be instructed by the established clergy, we must first undergo a thorough metamorphose; we must entirely alter our present habits and manners, and assimilate ourselves to the negroes. We must give a complete turn to the train of our ideas, and bring them down to a level with those of the slave. We must acquire new methods of thinking, of reasoning, and of expressing ourselves and when we have affected this change, to make any progress in our work, we must go in continual and painful pursuit of reasonable opportunities to address these people; and we must altogether abandon the care of our present congregations, as it would be utterly impossible to attend to both, unless we were endued with those extraordinary powers which ceased with the first propagators of Christianity. "It must be evident then, sir, to any one who candidly considers these circumstances, that the project of attaching the slaves to the Church of England can never be carried into effect by means of the established clergy at present existing in this country. I will venture to add, that it could only be accomplished by a distinct and separate establishment, by a sufficient number of ministers appointed, I had almost said educated, for the sole and exclusive purpose of instructing the negroes. "To admonish us therefore to engage in this cause, is only stimulating us to unnatural and unreasonable exertions, which must ever prove fruitless and abortive. "I will answer for myself, Sir, that, impressed as I am with a firm belief of the we often find regular troops, militia, yeomanry, cavalry, &c. all serving in the same county at the same time, so there need be no disagreeable collision between these distinct, yet co-operating bodies of clergymen. We have no intention to discuss these matters; but our hope, at least, is all on Sir George's side. The slaves must be Christianized: Some of the colonial advocates," as they have been called, are so imprudent as to entertain the public with discussing the possibility-the possibility, forsooth!-of carrying on the business of the plantations with proper advantage, if the Christian Sabbath be introduced, strictly as such, into the West Indies. They say the slaves must have some time to cultivate their own little gardens-that they do this at present during a part of each Sunday-and that it is impossible for the proprietors to thrive, if another day in the week be given to the slaves besides the Sunday. But who will listen to such stuff? The Sabbath is the Sabbath-if the slaves are to be Christianized at all, they must be taught to remember that day, and keep it holy. This is the first thing. By what arrangements the interior economy of plantations is to be regulated, that is the affair of the planters-the other is the affair of the presiding State; and cost what it may, the Sabbath must be a day of rest, if there are to be Christian colonies. The work is a prodigious one, and cannot be speedily accomplished. When our Saviour appeared in this world, he found slavery established everywhere. The faith he came to promulgate has abolished slavery in the regions where it then was universal; but how?— Not by any sudden or violent means; not by any rash preaching of the absolute unlawfulness of slavery, such as this Wilberforce party are so fond of. No-on the contrary, the New Testament addressed to slaves many most solemn advices as to their duties in that state, and not one word that could be interpreted into a signal or a stimulus for revolt and disobedience. The great work must be slowly done. At the time of the Norman Conquest, six centuries after Christianity had been first introduced into England, the whole tillage of the soil of England was in the hands of serfs; and how was this state of things altered?-Why, by the slow, gradual, imperceptible operation of the influences of the Christian religion. Slavery, however, did not absolutely terminate in England until the time of James I. !-Nay, more strange still, there were some traces of villainage existing in Scotland within the recollection of many people now living. These considerations, without pushing matters to extremes, ought to impress the minds of all who take a part in the present controversy, with the propriety, nay, with the necessity, of mixing calmness and prudence with all that they do, with all that they speak, and with all that they write. "The thing that hath been, is that also which shall be," says the inspired sage; and the friends of religion and mankind must be contented to chastise the fervour of truth of Christianity, and with the deepest sense of the awful responsibility which I have incurred by becoming a minister of the gospel, there is no man more earnestly disposed to propagate its sacred doctrines among all orders and descriptions of people; and devoted as I am to our admirable ecclesiastical constitution, no churchman can be more hostile to sectarian influence. Had therefore the plan of uniting the slaves to the Church established been practicable, it would not now remain to be attempted in my parish. "I humbly trust, Sir, that, in my professional character, I am neither deficient in zeal to stimulate me to activity, nor in courage to support and carry me through the most violent opposition, when I see the least prospect of success; but in a case like the present, where these principles must be prostituted and disgraced, where zeal would degenerate into enthusiasm, and courage into fool-hardiness, I have felt myself bound to remain passive; and, although I deeply lament the hard necessity which excludes these poor slaves from the advantages of our incomparable ordinances; yet, as I am conscious that I could make no successful attempt to remove the causes of their exclusion, I have contented myself with looking forward with hope to the arrival of some happy period, when due and effective arrangements may be made by superior authority, for the accomplishment of that most desirable end; and with praying the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth a sufficient number of appropriate labourers into his harvest." their benevolent aspirations, by something like a deliberate recollection of the past history, both of their species and of their faith. On the contrary-we regret exceed ingly that it should be so, but we do feel that it is our duty to end with this-on the contrary, the conduct of too many of these persons appears to be constantly and resolutely at variance with every principle of sound judgment. They are every day doing what in them lies to injure those whom they no doubt must surely believe themselves to be befriending. Take for a concluding instance the following quotation from the last publication of the "Society for the Mitigation," &c. "In the year 1776, Samuel Nottingham, a Quaker, who became possessed of a small estate in Tortola, to which were attached twenty-five negroes-viz. six men, ten women, four boys, and five girls-determined on manumitting them. He accordingly did manumit them by the following deed : Be it remembered, that whereas I, Samuel Nottingham, of Long Island, in the province of New York, gentleman, am owner, or reputed owner, of a number of negroes, on the island of Tortola, in the English West Indies; and considering that liberty is their right and property, which, in equity, justice, and good conscience, ought to be restored to them; and having a testimony in my heart against the iniquitous practice of enslaving our fellowmen; therefore, as far as in me lies, I conclude it necessary for me to grant unto the said negroes their natural right of freedom, and, accordingly, I have granted, and by these presents, in consideration of five -pounds sterling to me by the said negroes paid at and before the sealing of this instrument, and for divers other good causes and considerations me thereto moving, do grant, bargain, sell, release, assure, and confirm, unto all and every of the said negroes, their liberty and freedom, as fully and amply as though herein particularly and respectively stated. And moreover, I, the said Samuel Nottingham, do covenant and grant, for myself, my heirs, executors, and administrators, to and with the said negroes respectively, that they, and each of them, shall and may enjoy their freedom, and any estate real or personal which they, or any of them, may acquire, with out the let, suit, hindrance, or molestation of me or my heirs, or any person or "About six years afterwards, Samuel Nottingham addressed to one of these slaves the following letter: Bristol, 30th of the 9th Month, 1782. 'DEAR GEORGE, • THY letter of the 8th of last 6th month we received, and it was well pleasing to us to hear of the present good disposition of thyself and the rest of our late servants, whose welfare and happiness both here and hereafter we have much at heart; but we are sorry to hear of the removal of poor John Venture, and Harry, though not without hopes of their partaking of that mercy which is extended to all, without respect of persons, whether white or black. So, George, remember, what we write to thee we write to all of you who once called us master and mistress; but now you are all free, as far as it is in our power to make you so, because none are free indeed, except they are free in Christ; therefore, we admonish you, not as your master and mistress, but as your friends and benefactors, beseeching you to be cautious of your conduct, and circumspect in your behaviour to all, that none may accuse you of abusing that freedom which we, in the course of Divine Providence, have been permitted to give you. Remember also, that, as free men and women, ye stand accountable for every part of your conduct, and must answer for the same in your own persons, if you do amiss; in which case the laws where you are have provided a punishment, according to the nature of the offence; but do well, and ye shall have praise of the same. And that you may be enabled to live honestly among men, we have given you our East-End plantation, in Fathog Bay, with everything thereunto belonging, which we will endeavour to have secured to you by all lawful ways and means, that none may deprive you nor your offspring of it, but that you may freely cultivate and improve it to your own benefit and advantage, and thereby be provided with a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably together, in all friendliness and cordiality; assisting each other, that those more advanced in years may advise the younger, and these submitting to the counsel of the Substance of the Debate in the House of Commons, on the 15th May, 1823, on a Motion for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. With a Preface and Appendices, containing Facts and Reasonings illustrative of Colonial Bondage. London, Hatchard and Son, 1823. |