The horrors of the Negro slavery existing in our West Indian islands /

by Anonymous

The reporters insist with much earnestness on their right to the continuance of the Slave trade, on the ground of its having been sanctioned by Acts of Parliament. But is it not absurd to suppose that any Acts of Parliament, which may have been framed to encourage the importation of African labourers into the West Indies, can have conveyed to West Indians the right of establishing such a frightful system of oppression as the preceding part of this pamphlet has proved to exist among them? What act can be produced which binds the Imperial Parliament to uphold a system so outrageously opposed to every principle of British policy and of British law; and not only to uphold it, but to enlarge its influence by the perpetual increase of its wretched victims? Granting that West Indians have that claim to which they pretend on the justice and faith of Parliament, the claim attaches to this country, and not to Africa, which was no party in the contract.

The reporters are very indignant that any of the parliamentary orators should have dared to express an opinion that the Slave trade is “contrary to the principles of justice and humanity;” and they add, that “the particular accusations of oppression, without the means of redress; of avaricious and unfeeling rigour towards our Slaves, unrestrained by a sense of interest, or the dictates of humanity; heaped upon the inhabitants of the British West Indian colonies; have been repelled and refuted by such irrefragable evidence, that they can now make little impression, except on the prejudiced and uninformed.” Page [12].

How far a sense of interest or the dictates of humanity are capable of preventing unfeeling rigour from being exercised towards Negro Slaves, let the correspondence of Lord Seaforth, already referred to, testify. If farther evidence were required on this point, that of Governor Prevost might be adduced. He expressly declares (p. [34]), that “the interest of the master in his Slaves’ well-being is not always a sufficient check.” But even supposing that a sense of interest should operate with the owners of Negro Slaves in restraining cruel treatment, yet what is likely to be the operation of this potent principle in cases where the management of the estates of absent proprietors is left to attornies, whose commissions are enlarged in proportion to the amount of the crops; and to overseers, who hold their office during the pleasure of those attornies, and whose reputation as planters depends not on the increase of Slaves, but on the increase of the yearly produce of the estate? It is the more necessary to make the inquiry, because by far the greater part of the sugar plantations of Jamaica are in this predicament. Allowing, therefore, that the principle of self-interest possesses all the force which is attributed to it, yet in the present circumstances of Jamaica its operation on the whole is more likely to be injurious than beneficial to the Negro Slaves[17].

But what is this “IRREFRAGABLE TESTIMONY” to which the Assembly of Jamaica refer, as disproving the allegations of abolitionists? It cannot have been the correspondence of Lord Seaforth with Earl Camden, for that had not yet been made public. They ought to have pointed to the chapter and page in which this invaluable testimony lies concealed. For my own part, anxious as I am that this great cause should have an impartial hearing, I still would be willing that it should be decided without referring to any other testimony than that which has already been produced by West Indians and their friends. Even on their own shewing, the charges of “inhumanity and injustice,” at least to the moral perceptions of Englishmen, are not only not disproved, but incontrovertibly established. West Indians cannot deny that the Negroes whom they purchase are procured in Africa by means the most revolting to humanity and justice. Bryan Edwards, their own historian and apologist, has said, that to deny this would be “insult and mockery.” They cannot deny that the Negroes are transported in fetters to the West Indies, and there sold like cattle in a fair. Neither can they deny that the Negroes, being sold, become the absolute property of their purchaser, who may separate parents from children and from each other, and sell them when and to whom he pleases: that, moreover, West Indian Slaves have no civil rights whatever, which are not equally enjoyed by brutes, the parade of laws in their favour signifying nothing, as has already been proved, while their evidence is inadmissible in a court of justice, and while the men who administer those laws have an interest, real or supposed, in their violation: and that therefore no effectual limit can be put to the master’s discretion, either as to the quantity of food to be given, of labour to be enforced, or of punishment to be inflicted. It is a fact equally undeniable, that the labour of Negro Slaves is extracted from them, as it is from a team of oxen, by the lash or the terror of the cart-whip[18]: that, in a climate congenial to their own, they nevertheless decrease so fast as to require constant importations to keep up their wasted numbers: and lastly, that they are regarded as an inferior order of beings[19]; from which it flows as a corollary that they can have no claim to a participation in those rights of humanity, or in that sympathy which men in general are willing to bestow on those whom they consider as fellow men. Now these are all points of general notoriety: they are either distinctly admitted by the West Indians, who have given evidence before the Privy Council and the House of Commons; or they are established beyond dispute by written documents which the West Indian Legislatures and Governors have officially furnished. That they are confirmed in some important particulars by the papers which have now been reviewed, will scarcely be controverted. If, however, the bare statement of the above facts, facts, let it be remembered, resting on West Indian testimony, should amount (as it will appear to do to all who have not been accustomed to breathe the moral atmosphere of our Slave colonies) to a charge of “injustice and inhumanity,” of “oppression,” and “unfeeling rigour,” against the West Indian system, then surely the bold and unqualified assertion that such a charge has been “refuted by irrefragable testimony,” has no foundation on which to stand.

The reporters have incidentally introduced into their Report a comparison between the state of the Negro Slaves and that of “the oppressed peasantry” of Bengal. After giving an exaggerated representation of the wretchedness of the latter, they add, “such is the situation of twenty millions of free subjects of the British empire in India, whilst its legislature is hunting for imaginary misery[20] in the West Indian colonies, where the lot of the labourer is a thousand times more fortunate.” P. [18].

I would here ask the framers of this Report a few questions, which may serve to throw light on the comparison, which they have instituted. Do they not know that the Bengal peasant is not dragged from his own country by force or fraud, loaded with fetters, chained to the deck, or stifled in the hold of a Slave-ship; bartered as a mere implement of agriculture; separated at the pleasure of another from his wife and children; worked under the lash without the liberty even of pausing in his toil, but at the bidding of the driver; and liable to be punished to any extent, and with any circumstances of cruelty, which the caprice of his master may direct? Do they not know that the Bengal peasant is not punishable by any other sentence than that of the law, after a regular trial and conviction; that his person and property are as fully secured to him as those of the Governor General of India; and that he is the sole judge both of the labour and of the food which suit him? There is only one answer which can be returned to these questions; and that answer will prove it to be no better than absolute mockery in the Assembly of Jamaica thus to compare the condition of the Bengal peasant with that of the Negro Slave.

But this is not all. The reporters enter into tedious calculations to shew how much higher the wages of the Negro Slave are than those of the Bengal peasant; but they omit to advert to one very material point of difference between them. The wages of the Bengal peasant are paid to himself: he labours for his own benefit solely. But it is to his master, and not to himself, that the wages of the Negro Slave are paid. From his thankless toil must be extracted, not only the means of his own subsistence, but the means of pampering the luxury, swelling the pomp, gratifying the avarice, or discharging the debts of his owner. And when the circumstances in which the planters are now placed have been considered, it cannot be expected that a very ample proportion of the Slave’s earnings should be applied to his own sustentation, especially as that proportion, whatever it may be, depends entirely on the will of an insolvent, or nearly insolvent master.

The reporters complain that they were not permitted, in the session of 1804, to produce fresh evidence at the bar of the House of Commons in favour of their right to a continuance of the Slave trade. But would any evidence which they could produce contradict that statement of the nature of West Indian slavery which they themselves have already furnished, and by which its injustice and inhumanity are clearly demonstrated? And supposing they had been hardy enough to do this, would any credit have been due to such contradictory testimony? Besides, what confidence can the British Parliament or the British Public repose in the declarations of West Indians, even if they should sanction those declarations with all the solemnity of an oath; when it appears from the acknowledgment of Governor Prevost, and from the concurring testimony of their own records, that the most honourable men among them could so far forget their high obligations as legislators, as to join in a combination to deceive the Government and the Legislature of this country, and to obtain credit to themselves for humanity, by passing laws which they meant at the time to be wholly inoperative?

I shall only detain the reader while I notice one more argument in favour of the Slave trade which is contained in this Report. The continuance of importations, it is affirmed, will not increase the disproportion of Blacks and Whites so much as the abolition would. This is an argument not very level to common understandings; but the reasoning on which it is built is of this kind. If the Slave trade were abolished, the number of adventurers who repair to the West Indies in the hope of amassing a fortune would be diminished, and consequently the white population would decrease. But supposing the number of adventurers who go out with such large expectations were diminished, does it follow that an equal number, with more moderate views, might not be procured to supply their place? While emigrations to America are so frequent and numerous, might not a part of them, with proper encouragement, be easily diverted to the filling of vacancies in Jamaica? The planters of that island, however, are far from feeling, on this point, the solicitude which they express. Several proofs of this might be given. In the first place, do they not almost universally refuse to employ on their estates, in any capacity, white men who are married and have families? If they really wished to increase the number of whites, would not men with families be the most desirable persons to employ? Another proof is, that although there is a law of the island requiring the proprietors of estates to maintain a certain number of white servants in proportion to their slaves (about one white to thirty slaves), yet the tax, which is payable in case of a deficiency in that number, is so low, that it is in general a gain to the proprietor to pay the tax rather than to procure the individuals. In short, it is notorious, notwithstanding the language employed in the Report, that no pains have been taken to remedy the disproportion of the black and white population.

The true reason, however, of this argument is to be found, not in the increased danger which will result to the island from abolishing the Slave trade, but in the constitution of the Jamaica Assembly. That Assembly (though containing a small proportion of wealthy planters) is chiefly composed of such adventurers as are alluded to in the Report, and for whose privileges so much solicitude is there manifested: viz. either merchants who are concerned in the sale of Slave cargoes, or agents employed to manage the estates of absent proprietors; to whom are added a few insolvent proprietors of sugar estates, largely indebted, perhaps, to those very merchants and agents. Now it is the voice of these adventurers which is heard on the present occasion, and not that of the real proprietors of Jamaica. The real proprietors, if their voice could be heard, might possibly speak a different language; and we see that in some cases they do so. Many of them are sensible, that, added to the fatal rivalry of Guiana, the true cause of their embarrassment (as their historian Long has well shewn), and the grand source of their danger also, is the continuance of the Slave trade: and if they were not influenced by prejudice or party connexions, or deterred by the threats of creditors, or duped by the misrepresentations of agents, they would follow the example which Mr. Barham has set them, and take that part which prudence and policy concur with justice and humanity in dictating; I mean the part of forwarding a legislative abolition of the Slave trade, as the only safe and practicable, and at the same time effectual remedy, which can be applied to the dreadful evils of our colonial system. Eighteen years have passed since this question was first agitated in Parliament; and since the public have been amused with tales of the amelioration of Colonial bondage. That every hope of this kind is completely blasted, the information contained in this pamphlet sufficiently proves. Nor can such a hope be otherwise than abortive, until Parliament shall consent to abolish the Slave trade.