He then proceeds to specify all the remaining obstacles which he thinks ought to be removed.
“The first obstacle to manumission arises from the apprehension of this being resorted to by the owner for the purpose of relieving himself from the burden of maintaining infirm or aged slaves.—A second obstacle to manumission seems to arise from a presumed legal difficulty, in regard to the incapability of a slave to make contracts.—A third, and much more serious obstacle arises out of the legal limitations to property in slaves; as in cases of entail, family-settlement, or mortgage.—A difficulty analogous to this arises out of doubtful or disputable titles.”
How were these difficulties to be obviated? By the compulsory enactments of the Trinidad order in council? No such thing. They were not even contemplated.
“To remove,” says his Lordship, “all the preceding obstacles to manumission, you will therefore propose to the legislature of your colony to pass a law to the following effect:—Permanent commissioners should be appointed, who (on application being made by, or on behalf of, any slave, with his master’s consent) should ascertain the names,” &c. &c. Parl. Pap. Sess. 1824. p. 10.
This passage attracted much attention in the colonies. The Court of Policy in Demerara, in stating, at a subsequent period, that it could not enact compulsory manumission, since “It had not the right to invade the property of its fellow-colonists, by admitting that they can in any manner be deprived of it contrary to the laws by which it is secured to them,” remarked—“This principle is laid down in Earl Bathurst’s letter of the 9th July, 1823, wherein the consent of the master is distinctly coupled with the application to be made by or on the behalf of a slave for freedom.”
This reply of the court of policy of Demerara is copied into a pamphlet, entitled, “The West India Question practically considered,” with which performance the Colonial Department may possibly be acquainted. It has the important words, “consent of the master,” printed as above in italics, as if to remind the government more forcibly of its own previous statement.
After this exposition, may we not venture to ask, who most deserves the reprobation of disinterested members of the legislature? The ministerial advocate, who asserts that compulsory manumission was avowed from the outset, or the West Indian who can produce Lord Bathurst’s own words to prove the contrary?
It must have been between July, 1823, and March, 1824, that the innovation was devised. But even at the latter period its bearings were not developed.
Few members of the House of Commons can have forgotten Mr. Canning’s luminous oration on this occasion, when he described the evil consequences of precipitation, and the difficulties which opposed themselves to the termination of a state like that of slavery.
It is not a little singular, that the same passage which the apologist of the Colonial office quotes from this speech as proving that emancipation was then contemplated, may, with far more effect, be turned against him. Adverting to the other measures of amelioration, Mr. Canning, on the 16th March, 1824, observed: “By this process, and by these degrees, may the slave be gradually fitted for the last grand consummation of benefit, the power of acquiring his freedom.”