Major Moody examined into the conduct of sixty-one apprenticed negroes who had been rescued from the Manuella. The masters and mistresses were carefully interrogated. It appears from the schedules signed by the Major himself, that good characters were given to forty, and only appeared to be idle and disorderly. With respect to twelve, no decisive information was obtained. A similar inquiry took place respecting fifty-five apprentices who had formed a part of the cargo of the Venus. Good accounts were received of forty. Only six were described as idle and disorderly.
Among sixty-five negroes who had been taken from the Candelario, there was not a single instance of grossly bad conduct. Fifty-seven received fair characters for honesty and industry.
Lastly, of one hundred and ten negroes who had been on board of the Atrevido, only four are characterized as decidedly worthless. Nine may be considered as doubtful. A favourable report is given of the remaining ninety-seven.
These facts, as we have said, we find in the papers signed by the Major himself. He has not, it is true, thought it necessary to give us the result of his inquiries in the Report so compendiously as we now exhibit it. He dwells at great length on particular cases which prove nothing. He fills page after page with the nonsense of planters who had no apprentices, who evidently knew nothing about the apprentices, and who, in general terms, proving nothing but their own malevolence, characterized the whole race as idle, disorderly, quarrelsome, drunken, greedy. But, from the beginning to the end of the Report, he has not been able to spare three lines for the simple fact, that four fifths of these vilified people receive excellent characters from their actual employers, from those who must have been best acquainted with their disposition, and who would have lost most by their idleness. Whoever wishes to know how Daniel Quabott broke his wife’s nose—how Penelope glum whipped a slave who had the yaws, how the Major, seventeen years ago, went without his supper in Guiana—how the arts and sciences proceeded northward from Carthage till they were stopped by the frozen zone, may find in the Report all this interesting information, and much more of the same kind. But those who wish to know that which Major Moody was commissioned to ascertain, and which it was his peculiar duty to state, must turn over three hundred folio pages of schedules. The Report does not, as far as we have been able to discover, give the most distant hint of the discoveries which they will make there.
We have no idea of charging the Major with intentional unfairness. But his prejudices really seem to have blinded him as to the effect of the evidence which he had himself collected. He hints that his colleague had privately prepared the apprentices for the examination. Of the justice of this charge we shall be better able to judge when the answer of Mr. Dougan shall make its appearance. But be it well founded or not, it cannot affect our argument. The Major does not pretend to insinuate, that any arts were practised with the masters, and it is on the testimony of the masters alone that we are willing to rest onr case. Indeed, the evidence which was collected by the Major in the absence of his colleague, and which we must therefore suppose to be perfectly pure, tends to the same effect, and would alone be sufficient to show, that the apprentices have, as a body, conducted themselves in a manner which, under any circumstances, would have been most satisfactory.
It is perfectly true, that a knot of slave-owners, forming the legislature of Tortola, petitioned the Government to remove these apprentices from the island. From internal evidence, from the peculiar cant in which the petition abounds, and from the sprinkling of bad grammar which adorns it, we are half inclined to suspect that it is the Major’s own handywork. At all events, it is curious to see how he reasons on it. It is curious to see how the Major reasons on this fact:—
“Doubtless, the legislature of Tortola may be mistaken in their opinions; but the mere fact of their agreeing to sign such a petition, shows they really did think, that the labour of the African apprentices, when free, would not be useful to them or the colonists generally.
“And this fact alone, my Lord, is calculated to excite important reflections, as to the character of the free Africans, for industry in West Indian agriculture.
“Is it probable, that mere prejudice against the colour of a man’s skin could ever induce anybody of people, like the Tortola petitioners, to make a request so apparently absurd, as that of removing from their colony a numerous body of Africans, consisting of able bodied men and women, If they were as willing as they were capable of working, and increasing the value of the land now given to pasturage, for want of cultivators to be employed therein.” (1)
We earnestly request our readers to observe the consistency of Major Moody. When his object is to prove, that whites and blacks cannot amalgamate on equal terms, in one political society, he exaggerates every circumstance which tends to keep them asunder. The physical differences between the races, he tells us, practically defeat benevolent laws. No Act of Parliament, no order in Council, can surmount the difficulty. (2) Where these differences exist, the principles of republican equality are forgotten by the strongest republican. Marriage becomes an unnatural prostitution. The Haytian refuses to admit the white to possess property within the sphere of negro domination. The most humane and enlightened citizen of the United States, can discover no means of benefiting the free African, but by sending him to a distance from men of European blood. “I should ill-perform my duty,” says the Major, “if I suppressed all mention of a physical cause like this, which in practice is found to have an effect so powerful, however the philanthropist