Two considerations were, in these arguments, kept out of view, both of a practical nature, and both known to Mr. Stephen,—the cultivation of the Islands by agents having wholly different interests from their masters, and the gambling spirit of trading and culture which long habit had implanted in the West Indian nature. The comforts of the slave depended infinitely more upon the agent on the spot, than the owner generally resident in the mother country; and though the interest of the latter might lead to the saving of negro life, and care for negro comforts, the agent had no such motives to influence his conduct; besides, it was with the eyes of this agent that the planter must see, and he gave no credence to any accounts but his. Now the consequence of cruelty is to make men at war with its objects. No one but a most irritable person feels angry with his beast, and even the anger of such a person is of a moment's duration. But towards an inanimate chattel even the most irritable of sane men can feel nothing like rage. Why? Because in the one case there is little, in the other no conflict or resistance at all. It is otherwise with a slave; he is human, and can disobey—can even resist. This feeling always rankles in his oppressor's bosom, and makes the tyrannical superior hate, and the more oppress his slave. The agent on the spot feels thus, and thus acts; nor can the voice of the owner at a distance be heard, even if interest, clearly proved, were to prompt another course. But the chief cause of the evil is the spirit of speculation, and it affects and rules resident owners even more than absentees. Let sugar rise in price, and all cold calculations of ultimate loss to the gang are lost in the vehement thirst of great present gain. All, or nearly all, planters are in distressed circumstances. They look to the next few years as their time; and if the sun shines they must make hay. They are in the mine, toiling for a season, with every desire to escape and realize something to spend elsewhere. Therefore they make haste to be rich, and care little, should the speculation answer and much sugar bring in great gain, what becomes of the gang ten years hence. Add to all this, that any interference of the local legislatures to discourage sordid or cruel management, to clothe the slaves with rights, to prepare them for freedom by better education, to pave the way for emancipation by restraining the master's power, to create an intermediate State of transition from slavery to freedom by partial liberty, as by attaching them to the soil, and placing them in the preparatory state through which our ancestors in Europe passed from bondage in gross to entire independence—all such measures were in the absolute discretion; not of the planters, but of the resident agents, one of the worst communities in the world, who had little interest in preparing for an event which they deprecated, and whose feelings of party, as well as individually, were all ranged on the oppressor's side. All this Mr. Stephen, enlightened by experience, and wise by long reflection, clearly and alone foresaw; all this vision of the future was too surely realized by the event. No improvement of treatment took place; no additional liberality in the supplies was shown; no abstinence in the exaction of labour appeared; no interference of the Colonial Legislature to check misconduct was witnessed; far less was the least disposition perceived to give any rights to the slaves, any security against oppression, any title independent of his Master, any intermediate state or condition which might prepare him for freedom. It is enough to say, that a measure which every man, except Mr. Stephen, had regarded as the natural, almost the necessary effect of the abolition—attaching the slaves to the soil—was not so much as propounded, far less adopted; it may be even said, was never mentioned in any one local assembly of any of our numerous colonies, during the thirty years which elapsed between the abolition and the emancipation! This is unquestionable, and it is decisive.
As soon as it began to be perceived that such was likely to be the result of the abolition in regard to the emancipation, Mr. Stephen's authority with his coadjutors, always high, rose in proportion to the confirmations which the event had lent his predictions; and his zealous endeavours and unwearied labours for the subversion of the accursed system became both more extensive and more effectual. If, however, strict justice requires the tribute which we have paid to this eminent person's distinguished services, justice also renders it imperative on the historian of the Abolition in all its branches, to record an error into which he fell. Having originally maintained that the traffic would survive the Act of 1807, in which he was right, that Act only imposing pecuniary penalties, he persisted in the same opinion after the Act of 1811 had made slave-trading a felony; and long after it had been effectually put down in the British dominions, he continued to maintain that it was carried on nearly as much as ever, reasoning upon calculations drawn from the island returns. Hence he insisted upon a general Registry Act, as essential to prevent the continuance of an importation which had little or no real existence. The importance of such a measure was undeniable, with a view to secure the good treatment of the negroes in the islands; but the extinction of the Slave Trade had long before been effectually accomplished.
In the efforts to obtain Negro Emancipation, all the Abolitionists were now prepared to join. The conduct of the Colonial Assemblies having long shown the fallacy of those expectations which had been entertained of the good work being done in the islands as soon as the supply of new hands should be stopped by the Abolition, there remained no longer any doubt whatever, that the mother country alone could abate a nuisance hateful in the sight of God and man. Constant opportunities were therefore offered to agitate this great question, which was taken up by the enlightened, the humane, and the religious, all over the empire.
The magnitude of the subject was indeed worthy of all the interest it excited. The destiny of nearly a million of human beings—nay, the question whether they should be treated as men with rational souls, or as the beasts which perish—should enjoy the liberty to which all God's creatures are entitled, as of right, or be harassed, oppressed, tormented, and stinted, both as regarded bodily food, and spiritual instruction—whether the colonies should be peopled with tyrants and barbarians, or inhabited by civilized and improving christian communities—was one calculated to put in action all the best principles of our nature, and to move all the noblest feelings of the human heart.
Thomas Clarkson, as far as his means extended, aided this great excitement. He renewed his committees of correspondence all over the country; aided by the Society of Friends, his early and steady coadjutors in this pious work, he recommenced the epistolary intercourse with the provinces, held for so many hopeless years on the Slave Trade, but now made far more promising by the victory which had been obtained, and by the unanimity with which all Abolitionists now were resolved to procure emancipation. He also recommenced his journeys through the different parts of the island, and visited in succession part of Scotland, almost all England, and the whole of Wales, encouraging and interesting the friends of humanity wherever he went, and forming local societies and committees for furthering the common object.
But it was, after all, in Parliament that the battle must be fought; and Mr. Buxton, of whose invaluable services in the House of Commons the cause has lately been deprived, repeatedly, with the support of Messrs. Wilberforce, William Smith, Brougham, Lushington, and others, urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of making pretences and gaining time.
At length came the great case of the missionary Smith's persecution, trial, and untimely death, when all the forms of judicature had been prostituted, all the rules of law broken, all the principles of justice outraged, by men assuming to sit in judgment as a court of criminal jurisprudence; and though assisted by legal functionaries, exhibiting such a spectacle of daring violation of the most received and best known canons of procedure, as no civilized community ever before were called upon to endure. This subject was immediately brought before Parliament by Mr. Brougham, and his motion of censure, which might have been an impeachment of the governor and the court of Demerara, was powerfully supported by Mr. Wilberforce, the amiable, eloquent, and venerable leader of the party, Mr. Denman, Mr. Williams, and Dr. Lushington, but rejected by a majority of the Commons, whom Mr. Canning led, in a speech little worthy of his former exertions against the Slave Trade, and far from being creditable either to his judgment or to his principles. Yet this memorable debate was of singular service to the cause. The great speeches delivered were spread through all parts of the country; the nakedness of the horrid system was exposed; the corruptions as well as cruelty of slavery were laid bare; the determination of colonies to protect its worst abuses was demonstrated; necessity of the mother-country interfering with a strong hand was declared; and even the loss of the motion showed the people of England how much their own exertions were still required if they would see slavery extirpated, by proving that upon them alone the fate of the execrable system hung.
The effects of this great debate cannot be over estimated. The case of the missionary became the universal topic; The name of the martyred Smith, the general rallying cry. The superior interest excited by individual sufferings to any general misery inflicted upon masses of the people, or any evil, however gigantic, which operates over a large space, and in a course of time, has always been observed. The remark was peculiarly applicable in this instance. Although all reflecting men had, for many long years, been well aware of the evils pervading our colonial system, and though the iniquity and perverseness of West Indian judicatures had long been the topic of universal comment, yet this single case of a persecuted individual falling a victim to those gross perversions of law and justice which are familiar to the colonial people, produced an impression far more general and more deep than all that had ever been written or declaimed against system of West India slavery; and looking back on the consummation of all our hopes in 1833 and 1838, we at once revert from this auspicious era to that ever memorable occasion as having laid the solid foundation of our ultimate triumph.
In this important day, which has thus by its effects proved decisive of the Emancipation question, Mr. Stephen bore no part. He had long ceased to adorn and enlighten the House of Commons. His retirement was the result of honest differences of opinion respecting West India slavery with his political friends, then in the plenitude of their power. Those differences caused him to take the noble part, so rarely acted by politicians, of withdrawing from Parliament rather than lend his great support to men with whom he differed upon a question admitting no compromise; and he devoted his exertions in private life to the furtherance of the cause ever nearest his heart, the publication of his able and elaborate work on the Colonial Slave Laws was the fruit of his leisure; and had he never lent any other aid to the Emancipation, this would alone have placed him high among its most able and effective supporters. In all the consultations which were held before Mr. Brougham's motion in 1824, he bore an active and useful part. In pushing the advantages gained by the debate he was unwearied and successful. Unhappily it pleased Providence that he should not receive here below the final reward of his long and valued labours; for he was called to his final repose some months before the Emancipation Bill passed into a law.
There remains little to add, except that this measure, which was carried with little opposition in 1833, owed its success in Parliament to the ample bribe of twenty millions, by which the acquiescence of the West Indians was purchased. The measure had hardly come into operation, when all men perceived that the intermediate state of apprenticeship was anything rather than a preparation for freedom, and anything rather than a mitigation of slavery. It is due to some able and distinguished friends of the negro race to state, that they all along were averse to this plan of a transition state. Lord Howick, then in the Colonial Office as Under-Secretary, went so far as to leave the department, from his dislike of this part of the measure. Mr. Buxton and others protested against it. Even its friends intimated that they wished the period of apprenticeship to end in 1838 instead of 1840; but there was a general belief of the preparatory step being necessary,—a belief apparently founded on experience of the negro character, and indeed of the vicious tendency of all slavery, to extinguish the power of voluntary labour, as well as to make the sudden change to freedom unsafe for the peace of the community. The fact soon dispersed these opinions. Antigua in a minute emancipated all her slaves to the number of thirty thousand and upwards. Not a complaint was ever heard of idleness or indolence; and, far from any breach of the peace being induced by the sudden change in the condition of the people, the Christmas of 1833 was the first, for the last twenty years, that martial law was not proclaimed, in order to preserve the public peace. Similar evidence from Jamaica and other islands, proving the industrious and peaceable habits of the apprentices, showed that there was nothing peculiar in the circumstances of Antigua.