All this, undoubtedly, bad as it is, forms but one small feature. Small as it is, however, it is sufficient to shew what the real character of these people's method of acting is; and therefore we have not disdained to say a few words upon it. The truth is, that TRUTH is becoming a matter of the extremest rarity in anything like the discussion of anything like a public question. By truth, we mean the bold ness of truth-the courage to speak manfully" the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Look, now, at that most interesting debate in the House of Commons, of which we have been speaking-just look at it-read it from end to end; and say, honestly, whether there ever appeared in the record of any one human transaction, a more extraordinary specimen of the total suppression of the truth. We see Mr Canning, Mr Baring, and many more men of enlightened minds, of liberal knowledge, of rational conduct,. opposed to a set of people whom we all most perfectly know they regard as a set of complete imbeciles, vain and restless (however well-intentioned and well-principled) agitators-so many living specimens of humbug. But does anybody dare to hint this?-No, The subject is argued with a grave face, and the desired end is cleverly accomplished. But does any one venture to clothe that end which every one understands, in plain, intelligible words?-No, truly. The real feeling of the Ministry, and of Mr Canning in particular, we all perfectly know, was this: Here is a subject of the greatest consequence-here is a subject fit to exercise the intellect of the greatest and wisest of men-here is a subject deserving and demanding the closest and most serious attention of the first minds in England. This subject a set of dreaming enthusiasts have taken into their hands; and, if we do not take it out of their hands, they run a great risk of ruining, by means of their folly, one of the chief supports of the commercial wealth of England. We must take it out of the hands of these Wilberforces and Buxtons, or they will ruin the whole body of West Indian proprietors-they will convert a body of slaves, who are not suffering anything like the hundredth, the thousandth part of that misery which these people delight in describing-a set of slaves, who, in point of fact, are, in

no.

very many respects, better off than the poor peasantry of our own countrythey will convert these at once into a set of lawless banditti, revelling in blood. In doing this, they will absolutely ruin the fortunes, and, in all probability, endanger, to a fearful extent, the lives of our brothers and kinsmen, the loyal subjects of this empire, and entitled to all the protection of this government. They will produce such a work of desolation as their limited imaginations are inadequate to form even the most distant notion of ;-and they will do all this, because they are foolish, weak, well-meaning, vain creatures themselves; and because they are unwittingly made the tools of a set of deeper and more designing persons, who take especial care to keep out of sight at present, but whose motives and influence we are most thoroughly aware of. We must take this subject out of the hands of these men, and THESE ARE OUR REASONS.

Such, if this had been an age of openness, and real above-board proceeding, would have been the language -as every rational man is quite convinced it was the feeling-of his Majesty's Ministers. But no; this is not the way things must be managed in these days. Wilberforce, Buxton, and the rest of them, must be borne gently in hand. If we spoke the fair, simple truth about them, we should perhaps run a risk of throwing them into the hands of the Whigs. The Whigs desire nothing but a handle for creating confusion. Give them an opportunity of making a few grand flowery speeches about liberty, and they will read, without one shudder, the narrative of a whole colony bathed in blood and fire, over their chocolate the next morning. All this we are perfectly aware of; nay, more-we well know that every sane man, in these islands knows quite well that we are thoroughly aware of all this; but yet, we cannot venture to beard the humbug spirit of the agewe must not speak out-we must deal in round-abouts-we must submit to flatter these imbeciles- we are setting our faces to a toil, of which these people are incapable of estimating either the importance or the extent-we are about to do what we feel to be our duty, and a duty our hearts will rejoice in performing, cost what pain it may to us-we are setting our faces to this great toil-we are entering upon

this great work-we have freed gur country from the danger of a foreign yoke, and it is now our desire and our hope, that our future years may be destined to be spent in the not less noble toils of interior amelioration. This is a branch, and a great one, of the great, the arduous, the ill-paid toil to which we have set our hands and our hearts; but the age of open sincerity in political procedure is gone by. It is our duty and our desire to do what is right; but it is our necessity to keep terms with folly in the midst of wisdom.

We confess it is not without sorrow and humiliation we take such a view of such matters, and such men; but we cannot alter that which we see. Our voice, at least, shall be open. We have no need to court the forbearance of those we despise. There is still one corner where truth may and shall be spoken. And well do we know, that whenever there is the courage to speak the truth, there is no fear but there will be plenty of ears to listen, and plenty of consciences to acknowledge. Our object is the truth, and nothing but the truth; and we shall speak the truth on both sides of the question. On both sides of the controversy, there has been a very great deal of unfairness. The Wilberforcians have dealt most unfairly in accepting the pledge of his Majesty's Government, and then continuing to speak and act as if there had been no counter-pledge given by themselves-no pledge to be silent spectators for a time at least-no pledge to allow the Government a free stage for experiment, and for exertion-no pledge, the matter being solemnly delivered up by Parliament into the hands of high and responsible persons, to have done with all the meddling of these unresponsible associations, until there had been time and opportunity for the Government to let it be seen whether or not they really were in earnest in the part which they had acted in the conduct and at the conclusion of that memorable debate.

In these respects the Wilberforcian body have behaved themselves in a manner which we have freely confessed ourselves unable to reconcile with any honourable and manly standard of public action. But, on the other hand, we must do these men justice in regard to another part of the controversy, which it is certainly their own

fault to have rekindled.-These men are accused loudly by the violent declaimers on the other side of the dispute, of having disclaimed, in their management of the abolition question, and in every stage of it, any intention of disturbing the condition of slavery, as existing in the West Indies.

Now, here we must at once espouse their part. Be it so, that their language as to this matter, was, on some occasions, more vague and incorrect than it should have been-we are not prepared to say, that such was the case, but let it be granted for a moment that it was so-Still we contend, there could never have been, among men capable of any degree of thought or reflection, the least doubt but that these men attacked the slave trade, first, for its own hideous peculiarities, and secondly, but not less earnestly, as a part of the system from which the existence of such a thing as slavery had come to be recognized within any part of the colonial possessions of the English crown. Whatever they said, or did not say, nobody but a very thoughtless person indeed could ever have been blind to this. If the slave trade was an abomination, it always followed as the clearest of consequences, that the existence of slavery was an evil. We confess, that till we saw some of the recent pamphlets, we should scarcely have imagined it possible that any serious accusation could have been brought against the abolitionists on this head. Such, however, has been the case; and we acquit ourselves of one of the most pleasing parts of our present duty, by thus declaring that we have listened to the accusation with all the pain which the contemplation of visible injustice, in regard to a matter of so grave and serious importance, was well calculated to inspire in impartial and disinterested minds.

Having said this, we have reduced the subject within still narrower limits. In truth, abstracting all consideration of the personal conduct of Mr Wilberforce and his friends, the matter is now comprized within a space of no very formidable dimensions. Mr Canning, in the speech which introduced the resolutions adopted by the House of Commons, pledged the government, as far as any government can pledge itself, that no time should be lost in endeavouring to do away with those most prominent features of hardship

which had so long held the first place in every representation of the evils of West-Indian bondage. He pledged the faith of Government, that its best endeavours should be given to the total and immediate abolition of the use of the whip, in so far as female slaves are concerned. This was confessedly the maximum opprobrium. The Secretary also expressed himself as having quite made up his mind about the necessity of giving the character of legal security to property realized by negro slaves-and also of extending the allowance of free time, so as to permit the exclusive devotion of the Sabbath-day to the exercises of religion and the enjoyment of repose. Upon the more intricate question concerning the admission of the evidence of negroes, in cases where the lives and properties of the whites are involved, Mr Canning frankly confessed that he had not been able to see his way through all the inherent difficulties of that matter; but he as frankly avowed the strong tendency of his mind to believe, that, upon more mature consideration, some practicable measure of improvement as to this also might be fallen upon. In regard to the liberty of bequest, he brought out the very beautiful idea of making this a reward consequent upon entrance into the marriage state, according to the solemn institutions of Christianity. In a word, the government is pledged already to do its utmost endeavours for the removal of the most black and flagrant features of this in itself evil condition; and-which is a matter of the very highest importance, although apparently but little attended to by the worthy but rash men of whom so much has been said-his Majesty's government possesses the means of making experiments as to this matter, with far greater hope of success, and speedy success too, than even the Legislature of England could possibly attain. For there are several islands in the West Indies entirely free from any control of provincial assemblies, &c.-appendages to the Crown, and nothing more. It is there, as Mr Canning, of course, took occasion to hint, that the government will make its first experiments. There it can act free, unfettered, unopposed;

and the experiment that is successfully tried there, can have but a slender chance of being met by any very considerable difficulties when it is proposed for repetition elsewhere.

On every account, therefore, we are most anxious that Mr Wilberforce and his associations would be persuaded to pause. The fact cannot be denied, that the Ministry have within the last few years done enough to entitle them to the same respect as internal reformers, which their conduct of the war of revolution so undeniably fixed upon them as defenders from foreign aggression. If these men are not to be trusted, where are we-to whom can we look? If we have not faith enough to give them "ample room and scope enough" for a work which they pledge themselves to go through with, to what quarter are we to turn ourselves? The prominent agitators of the emancipation question are not statesmen at all

and they that at least wish to lurk behind, are, as we shall shortly have occasion to see, persons whose past history has been but little calculated to create any feelings other than those of distrust-distrust moral-distrust political-distrust religious-total and deep distrust.

In the meantime, it is very gratifying to learn, upon authority, which a few sneering paragraphs in the last pamphlet of the Mitigation Society have little chance of discrediting, that, in point of fact, it is utterly false that no improvements have been already introduced into the condition of the West Indian Negroes. That very rash and ill-judged production, "The Appeal" which Mr Wilberforce published in the beginning of this year, has called into the field a highly respectable and most zealous clergyman of the name of Bridges,* who has long been resident in Jamaica, and who necessarily, from the character of his office, has had the very best means of making himself acquainted with the real state of the negro population of that great island. This gentleman's letter appears to have excited feelings of no pleasurable nature in a certain quarter-and no wonder; for, in truth, Mr Bridges, churchman though he be, seems to be far more than a match for the church-despising institutionists

against whom he has been induced to draw his pen. His little pamphlet is composed, in general, in a style that does him honour-a sprinkling of Latin quotations, rather of the tritest order, may indeed throw rather a ludicrous air over some passages; but, on the whole, the production is evidently that of a gentleman, a Christian, and a philanthropist. But this philanthropist has really lived in the West Indies. Hear in what language he ventures to address the Honourable Member for Bramber:

"You, sir, have never been in the West Indies; you have never viewed the habits of negro life in its indigenous state; nor ever had communication with that people, other than what you may have obtained from some casual intercourse with a few individuals in London, who have visited you as their avowed protector, and the ready listener to their tales of woe; yet you conceive your knowledge of their character to be perfect. As perfect, sir, as is that you would form of the English peasant, from the artful tale of a wandering streetbeggar at your door.

Allow then one who has profited by all those opportunities which you want, one whose professional duties induce an intimate acquaintance with the negro character in its progressive stages of improvement; one who is equally anxious as yourself to see the negroes raised to the rank which all Christians should be first rendered competent to sustain, to tell you that you are fatally in error throughout;-that, in fact, you know little of their actual state; and that if your views of the case are founded on the statements detailed in your Appeal,' they are as inaccurate and premature, as the information you have obtained is false."

And again

"Las Cases, the great philanthropist, whose labours were, for fifty years, exclusively directed to the melioration of slavery in the West Indies, before he ventured to

charge his fellow-countrymen with cruelty, made repeated voyages across the Atlantic, to inform himself correctly on the subject of their actual condition; unwilling, from hearsay evidence only, to cast imputations upon men who possibly might not deserve them; and thinking it not too much to sacrifice a life of ease and opulence to effect strict justice in the cause he undertook. His equity, and his impartial labours, though not crowned with all the success they so richly merited, yet obtained for him the gratifying title of Protector of the Indians;' meed of honourable fame which will attach to his name as long as the world exists; and he is, doubtless, now wearing a bright diadem of immortal glory, the reward of his upright philanthropy, and

benevolent exertions in the cause of justice and OF TRUTH. You, sir, doubtless, are actuated by the same humane motives, and hope for the same celestial rewards; but, permit me to remind you, that you follow that great man at an immeasurable distance. Instead of endeavouring to gain the most satisfactory information, you sit calmly in your library, compose speeches, and write books, on countries you have never visited; on the imaginary condition of a race of people four thousand miles from you; and in defamation of fifty thousand of your countrymen, who are actually labouring with you in the same cause of humanity, though, from experience, with more circumspection; content, it should seem, to gather the little information you possess from the disappointed or disgraced refugees of these traduced colonies."

It is thus that an English gentleman, everyway as well educated as Mr Wilberforce, and certainly possessed of much better opportunities for understanding the true state of West Indian himself entitled to address a person for affairs than he can have enjoyed, thinks whose character as a philanthropist he had once, as he himself tells us, been accustomed to entertain an almost superstitious degree of veneration. The simple fact, that a gentleman, situated, in all respects, as this Mr Bridges is, has ventured to write such a pamphlet as this at this time, after all the discussions that have taken place, at the back of all this voluminous paper war, in the teeth of all this array of Associations and Institutions, is at least a sufficient proof of one thing-and that one thing is neither more nor less than this: that Mr Canning ought to begin his career with sending out some really sensible, impartial, and well-educated man or men, to collect something like a real body of information regarding the actual state of the West Indian be done well, or wisely, or effectually, slaves at this moment. Nothing can until there is a clear foundation of knowledge to build upon. And it certainly does strike us as a most remarkable thing, that, while every season brings so many Tours, descriptive of foreign countries with which we have, comparatively speaking, nothing to do, we have no one good book of travels in the West Indian islands. If any one man of common observation would go out for a year, and give us, at the end of that time, a plain unvarnished diary of his residence, we should know more of these regions, and of the real condition of their inhabitants, than we

shall do fifty, ay, a hundred years hence, if we have nothing to look to but the vamped-up ex parte statements of the appendices of institution and association reports. This hint we drop -and stop there for the present. His Majesty's government have sent out commissioners to inspect Botany Bay -how infinitely more necessary is it to send out for sound information concerning those great colonies, in the soil, commerce, and shipping of which, it is probably much within the mark to say, that TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLIONS STERLING of British capital are invested!

In the present inadequate state of information which surrounds and includes us, there are two circumstances which certainly have always weighed very strongly upon our minds when considering these matters, and the opposite points of view in which the conflicting parties represent them. The first of these is the paucity, after all, the extreme paucity, of instances of actual cruelty and oppression, which Mr Wilberforce and his friends have been able to bring home to the planters. In spite of all the books they have written, their facts are amazingly few -the same stories are endlessly repeated, which certainly argues no wealth of stories; and, what is still more suspicious, the far greater proportion of the stories are of very old date. We have quotations from Barbadoes of one hundred and fifty years standing, and of long since obsolete statutes and enactments everywhere. And the instances of anything like modern, not to say contemporary atrocity, are so few, that they have been reprinted en masse fifty times over in the space of half a dozen pages. Now, what a contrast is here to the overwhelming richness of detail which these same men poured upon the indignant world, when their object was the abolition of the African trade in slaves! Their diligence, in both instances, has been great-probably equal -how different, how prodigiously different, the result! And then what a mass of evidence is there on the other side of the question! how many affecting stories of negro attachment have we not all of us met with! how strange is the contradiction between the two parties! Hear once more the Reverend Rector of Manchester, Jamaica-(he is addressing Mr Wilberforce, as before)

6

"Amongst your numerous nugæ canoræ,' you say that your feelings are shocked by hearing some of the partisans of the West Indies have re-echoed the assertion, that these poor degraded beings, the negro slaves, are as well, or even better off than our British peasantry.' P. 45. Now, sir, if a constant supply of all the necessaries of life; the best advice and assistance in sickness; perfect reliance on the future support of themselves and children; if warm houses, freedom from all restraint during fourteen hours of relaxation out of every twenty-four, with a proportion of labour incalculably inferior to that of our own English workmen, whose o'er-wearied slumbers are too often broken by the agonizing thoughts of the future, or by vain attempts to sooth the heart-rending cries of their hungry helpless children; if these are blessings which can elevate the one above the other, so far the comparison is infinitely in favour of our West Indian labourers. And without intending to render the English peasant discontented with his condition, I will add the important truth, that the advantages I have enumerated as possessed by the negro, ARE HIS OWN BY LAW; he claims them as his right, and holds them by a far more noble tenure, of which he is fully aware, than the British labourer holds the parish pittance, that rather prolongs his misery, than relieves his wants. And for this reason, that the negro either has already paid, or is now paying his master, with his labour, for the comforts which that master is compelled by law to allow him; he therefore receives his allowance with a feeling of independence, and as the wages of his service. And to prove the ample means which are placed within reach of the industrious slave, let me mention, that on an estate in the parish of Westmoreland, the overseer be. ing about to make a large purchase, was accosted by one of his slaves, who told him that he was aware of his need of money at that moment, that he had about four hundred pounds by him, his friend, another slave, as much more, and that it was all much at his service to supply his immediate wants. With respect to enjoyments superior to those of sense, you urge their sent incapacity, yet you draw a comparison which in that respect confessedly places them on a level with the English peasantry.

pre

Is there,' you say, in the whole three kingdoms, a parent or a husband so sordid or insensible, that any sum, which the richest West Indian proprietor could offer him, would be deemed a compensation for his suffering his wife or his daughter to be subjected to the brutal outrage of the cartwhip, to the savage lust of the driver, to the indecent, and degrading, and merciless punishment of a West Indian whipping.' P. 47. Now, sir, comparaison n'est pas raison;' and, unless you allow to the ne