What has been already urged may perhaps appear sufficient to prove, that all the colonial laws for reforming the vices of the West Indian system, must be practically inefficient. Nor can any farther argument be necessary, in order to enforce a conclusion so manifestly resulting from the circumstances of the case. To some persons however it may render the point still more clear, to know, that the inefficacy, to say no worse, of the late Colonial Slave Acts, is decisively established even on West Indian authority itself.
For, about two years ago, on the application of His Majesty’s Secretary of State to the Governors of the West Indian Islands, for information as to the manner in which the late Acts for the better protection of Slaves had been executed, it clearly appeared, that though those laws had been passed so few years before with so much pomp and circumstance, yet that their provisions had never been carried into effect. This applies not merely to the impossible regulations, so to term them, prescribing the precise quantity of the food and clothing, and labour and punishment of the Slaves, but to all those regulations which really were of perfectly easy execution. There had been the same entire neglect of the religious and moral regulations, in which the Owner’s duty was clear and easy, even granting that his success might be difficult and doubtful.
This utter neglect of the Slave laws might alone have tended to give effectual confirmation to the suspicion, that the laws had been intended for the protection of the Slave Trade, rather than of the Slaves. This indeed was plainly stated by a British Officer, who was resident in one of the islands in 1788, when one of the earliest and best of these boasted laws was enacted. It was the general language of the Colonists at the time, that its only real operation would be, to supersede any similar measures which might otherwise be adopted by the British Parliament. But much to the honour of the Governor of the only island from which any satisfactory information has been returned, he has distinctly stated,—“The Act of the Legislature, entitled, “An Act for the Encouragement, Protection, and better Government of Slaves,” appears to have been considered, from the day it was passed, until this hour, as a political measure to avert the interference of the mother country in the management of Slaves. Having said this, your Lordship will not be surprised to learn, that the 7th clause of that Bill has been wholly neglected.”
It may be proper to mention, that the clause which has been thus wholly neglected, was enacted for the express purpose of securing, as far as possible, the good treatment of the Slaves, and ascertaining the causes of their decrease. Some farther information, much to the same effect, was contained in a letter to the Secretary of State, from another correspondent, concerning the encouragement which the law had required to be given to Slaves to marry.
After this, can any reasonable expectations be entertained, that the Colonial Legislatures will cordially concur in any measures for the abolition of the Slave Trade? Can the Abolitionists be deemed uncandid, for not greatly confiding in any statutes which those assemblies may enact, in co-operation with the British Parliament, for the abolition of the Slave Trade?
Laws for the protection of Slaves ineffectual in the old French, Spanish, and Portuguese Settlements.
It ought earlier to have been stated, as an additional proof of the inefficacy of all legal regulations for the government and protection of Slaves, that they have fallen into practical disuse even in countries in which the matters do not themselves enjoy that political freedom with which all such regulations are peculiarly at variance; and where, it might have been preconceived, a government perfectly despotic possessed abundant means of giving effect to its own regulations.
The better treatment of the Slaves in the Spanish and Portuguese Settlements, is much more to be ascribed to the influence of their religious zeal, and its happy consequences, than to the institution of a Protector among the one, or to the provisions of the Directorio on the other.
Again, under the more despotic system of government which was established in the French islands before the revolution, the Code Noir, and various other edicts, which from time to time had been issued, concerning the treatment of Slaves, were become a mere dead letter. It is a curious proof, how much the practice and the opinions and feelings produced by it may differ from the law, that the free coloured people had for an entire century been legally entitled to that equality of rights and privileges with the whites, the granting of which, by the national assembly of the mother country, produced so violent a ferment among the white inhabitants of St. Domingo; and the retractation of which, after its having been granted, followed by fresh grants and fresh retractations, produced the confusion which terminated in the loss of that flourishing colony.
But besides that fundamental objection to statutes, for regulating the treatment of Slaves, and securing for them, to use the words of the colonists themselves, the certain, immediate, and active protection of the law, that they must prove utterly inefficient; |Legal protection of Slaves in an abject state of slavery either impracticable or unsafe.| I must frankly acknowledge my opinion, that all those legal regulations which, in the various particulars of treatment, interfere between the Master and Slave; which interpose between them some external authority to which the Slave, when ill used, is to have a right to apply for protection and redress; unless, as I before observed, they are not executed, must prove in practice unspeakably dangerous. This is true at least where Slaves are in a state of such abject slavery as that which has so long prevailed in our West Indian islands, and where the Slaves so greatly outnumber the free men, and the difference between Slave and Freeman, is marked and palpable. In extreme cases of ill-treatment, or rather in cases of enormous cruelty, it might be practicable to apply some remedy, by the means of that regulation which was established in Athens, and which, with additions most grateful to a humane mind, prevails, we are assured, in the Spanish islands, of allowing the Slave when extremely ill treated, to be transferred to another owner. But this regulation is not applicable to those particulars of treatment, which are constant and systematic, such as underfeeding, overworking, and other general vices of management, whether arising out of degradation, absenteeship, speculation, the pressure of the times, or any other of the causes which have been above specified. And it is these systematic vices which constitute the real evils in the condition of the bulk of our Slaves.