ADDRESS.

THAT slavery is the most deplorable condition to which human nature can be reduced is too evident to require the labour of proof. By subjecting one human creature to the absolute control of another, it annihilates the most essential prerogative of a reasonable being, which consists in the power of determining his own actions in every instance in which they are not injurious to others. The right improvement of this prerogative is the source of all the virtue and happiness of which the human race is susceptible. Slavery introduces the most horrible confusion, since it degrades human beings from the denomination of persons to that of things; and by merging the interests of the slave in those of the master, he becomes a mere appendage to the existence of another, instead of preserving the dignity which belongs to a reasonable and accountable nature. Knowledge and virtue are foreign to his state; ignorance the most gross and dispositions the most depraved are requisite to reduce him to a level with his condition.

But degrading as slavery is in its mildest form, that species of it which prevails in our West India colonies* is of the very worst description, far less tolerable than that which subsisted in Greece and Rome during the reign of paganism. It would be difficult to find a parallel to it in any age or nation, with the exception of those unhappy persons who are carried captive by the piratical states of Barbary. Scourged, branded, and sold at the discretion of their masters, the slaves in our West India islands are doomed to a life of incessant toil for the benefit of those from whom they receive no recompense whatever they are indebted for their principal subsistence to the cultivation of small portions of land allotted them under the name of provision grounds: and the only time ordinarily allowed for that purpose is the day which the laws of all Christian states have devoted to On that day, instead of being assembled to listen to the oracles of God, and to imbibe the consolations of piety, they are necessitated to work for their living, and to dispose of the produce of their labour at the public market; the natural consequence is, that the far greater

rest.

The following authorized summary of the number of slaves in the British colonies, in June, 1830, may be interesting to some readers.

Antigua, 29,839. Bahama Isles, 10,841. Barbadoes, 81,902. Berbice, 21,319. Bermuda, 4,608. Cape of Good Hope, 35,509. Demerara and Essequibo, 69,467. Dominica, 15,392. Grenada, 24.342. Jamaica, 331,119. Mauritius, 76,774. Montserrat, 6,262. Nevis, 9,259. St. Christopher's, 19,310. St. Lucia, 13,661. St. Vincent, 23,589. Tobago, 12,723. Trinidad, 24,452. Virgin Islands, 5,436.

Total number of slaves in the British colonies, 825,804.

Free blacks in the British colonies, about 51,000.

The slave population of the United States of America, in 1828, amounted to 1,838,155.-ED.

part of them are as ignorant of the first principles of Christianity as though they had remained in the land of their forefathers.

They are driven to the field by the cart-whip. They are followed

* Since this address was written, the persevering efforts of the Anti-Slavery Society, and other associations formed for the attainment of the same admirable object, have led to some diminution of the evils under which the slaves in the West Indian isles have so long groaned.

In the year 1823, the House of Commons passed the following resolutions:

"1. That it is ex pedient to adopt effectual and decisive measures for meliorating the condition of the slave population in his majesty's colonies.

"2. That, through a determined and persevering, but at the same time judicious and temperate enforcement of such measures, this House looks forward to a progressive improvement in the character of the slave population, such as may prepare them for a participation in those civil rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other classes of his majesty's subjects.

"3. That this House is anxious for the accomplishment of this purpose at the earliest period that shall be compatible with the well-being of the slaves themselves, with the safety of the colonies, and with a fair and equitable consideration of, the interests of private property."

In consequence of these resolutions, several of the colonial legislatures have made enactments enforcing a more humane treatment of the slave population. Thus, in Dominica, St. Christopher's, Nevis, and Demerara, the "cart-whip" is absolutely prohibited as an instrument of punishment, and in some of them "as an emblem of authority." In Jamaica, and a few other islands, it is enacted, "that no slave shall receive more than ten lashes, except in presence of owner or overseer, &c.; nor, in such presence, more than thirty-nine in any one day, nor until recovered from former punishment, under penalty of 201." It is further enacted, that no collar or chains shall be put on slaves, but by order of a magistrate, on penalty of 501. Justices of peace to cause such collar, &c. to be removed, under a penalty of 1007."

Such, we are told, has been the law ever since the year 1826. But how is it administered? The following narrative, published in the Kingston "Watchman" of the 10th of July, 1830, may suffice as an answer to the question. It exhibits a case of outrageous cruelty, combined with a gross violation of the sanctity of the Sabbath.

"Yesterday morning, William Henry Hall, Esq., a magistrate of this city, preferred a complaint to the sitting magistrates, J. Smith and J. Nethersole, Esqrs., against Mr. W. J. Harvey, a white person, employed on the wharf of Messrs. John Wilson and Co., for cruelty towards two negro men slaves, belonging to the drogging (coasting) schooner Judith Farmer, lying along-side that wharf.

"Mr. Hall stated, that about six o'clock on Monday afternoon, he received information that two negroes had been flogged in the workhouse early that morning, by order of Mr. Harvey, their owner, and on their return to the vessel, that they were chained down to the deck by the wrist, where they remained the whole day, with the lacerated parts exposed to the heat of the sun. He then proceeded to the wharf with two constables, and on going on board found the negroes still chained on the deck. They had on only their shirts. He ordered a pair of pantaloons to be given to each of them, and desired the constables to release them from the chain, and to take them to the cage; at the same time warning Mr. Harvey, the owner of the slaves, and Captain Bacon, the commander of the schooner, to appear on the following morning before the sitting magistrates.

"Captain Bacon, the commander of the vessel, stated, that on Sunday morning the two men present, Bush and Bull, left the vessel with two other negroes, named John Uter and William: that they returned on board early on Monday morning, and resumed their work. Shortly after, Mr. Harvey came on board, and on demanding their reasons for not loading the vessel on Sunday, they answered that they thought it very hard they were not to be allowed even one Sunday; they were not insolent. Mr. Harvey then seized them, and placed them in a boat, for the purpose of giving them a flogging in the workhouse, to which place he took them. When he returned on board with the negroes (about seven o'clock the same morning), he ordered witness to chain them, which he did. Mr. Harvey came on board several times during the day, and saw where the negroes were lying, and the naked state in which they were, but gave no orders that they should be removed out of the heat of the sun, or that pantaloons be put on them. Bush and Bull remained in that exposed situation from about seven o'clock in the morning till six in the evening, when the magistrate and constables released them. He had no fault to find with the negroes; they certainly were not the very best of negroes; Bush was a little trickified, but generally he had no fault to find with them. They were flogged and chained for no other offence than for not loading the vessel on a Sunday. "[During the examination, Mr. Harvey whispered something twice or thrice to Captain Bacon, who answered, 'I must speak the truth, Mr. Harvey;' for doing which he has since been discharged.]

"There were several other witnesses present, ready to corroborate the statement of Mr. Hall and the captain, as well as to prove Mr. Harvey's general cruel treatment of the negroes under his control, but the magistrates refused to examine them.

"Mr. Smith (one of the magistrates) said, he conceived that Mr. Harvey acted very properly in correcting his negroes as he did. He was of opinion that it was highly necessary that they should have been on board on Sunday; and with regard to their being exposed to the sun all day, he knew that they preferred being in the sun than to be in the shade. In fact, he knew it, and therefore dismissed the complaint."

The proceeding in this case was vindicated by other newspapers, and particularly by the" Coarant." In reply to them the editor of the "Watchman" puts the following questions:

1st. By what law was Mr. Harvey authorized to punish, by the infliction of thirty-nine lashes each, two men, merely because they would not work on the Sabbath-day?

"2d. Was it necessary to ensure obedience, after they had been flogged, to handcuff them to a chain cable, on the deck of a vessel, from seven o'clock in the morning till half-past six o'clock in the evening?

by a driver, with this dreadful instrument constantly in his hand, with which he is empowered to inflict, at his own discretion, a certain number of lashes on their backs, with no exception whatever in favour of the softer sex. During the four or five months of their harvest they are compelled to protract their labour through half the night, or through the whole of each alternate night. They are every moment liable to be removed, at the will of their masters, to the remotest parts of the island, or to be transported into other islands. The ties of kindred are violently torn asunder, and the mother and children often assigned to different purchasers, and separated to distant parts. The ordinance of marriage is scarcely known among them; while the most unrestrained licentiousness and profligacy of manners, as well in their intercourse with each other as with the whites, is indulged and encouraged.

The practice of emancipation, which has long prevailed to a great extent, and been followed by the happiest effects, in the old Spanish colonies, is discountenanced by the laws of our colonies, and loaded with such heavy fines in some of them as almost to amount to a prohibition. The design of such regulations is unquestionably to confer perpetuity on the present system, and extinguish in the breast of the negroes the faintest hope of the enjoyment of freedom.

Nothing was wanting to complete the misery of such a state, except to attach absolute impunity to the atrocities which the unlimited subjection of the weak to the strong is sure to produce; and this is amply provided for by that regulation universally adopted in our colonies, which excludes the testimony of a negro against a white inhabitant. In consequence of this law, the vilest miscreant may inflict whatever cruelties he pleases on the wretched blacks, provided he takes care that no white person be present. There are laws, it is true, which constitute the murder of a negro a capital offence, and which limit the measure of his punishment; but, as if for the very purpose of rendering them nugatory and ridiculous, conviction is made to depend on a circumstance attending the perpetration of crimes, which it is most easy to exclude. Thus, in opposition to the genius of all enlightened legislation, the greatest facilities are presented to oppression-the greatest impediments thrown in the way of detection-and, in all that relates to the treatment of slaves, the voice of truth is silenced, evidence sup

"3d. Was it, or was it not, cruelty to confine them, in the manner described, during the whole day, in a hot sun, in a state of partial nudity, at the risk of their lives?

4th. What would have been the consequence, had it come on suddenly to blow (as it is said to have done on the day previous) half a gale of wind? And whether such an event might not have been attended with the loss of those unfortunate individuals' lives!

"If Mr. Harvey, or the magistrates, will reply satisfactorily to these questions, we will then acquit the former of the charge of cruelty, and the latter of having outraged common sense, by declaring that he acted very properly in correcting his negroes as he did!

"Mr. Harvey went round, on the Saturday, to the different wharfs from which his vessel, the Judith Farmer, had to take goods, and requested those goods to be left on the bridge of the wharf, so as to enable him to employ his negroes on Sunday in taking them off, and therewith loading his vessel! In order to avoid what they very properly considered a hardship, namely, loading the vessel on Sunday, the negroes went away, and did not return until six o'clock the following morning. For this heinous crime two of these men received thirty-nine lashes each, and were handcuffed to the chain cable of a vessel in Kingston harbour, until liberated by a magistrate; and yet this is the kind of conduct that Mr. James Smith and Mr. John Nethersole attempt to justify, and to examine and decide upon which they, as magistrates, meet and award JUSTICE by dismissing the complaint.”—Ev. VOL. II.-L

pressed, the claims of justice studiously defeated, and the redress of the most atrocious injuries rendered next to impossible.

There is another particular in the state of the laws respecting negroes too remarkable to be passed over in silence. It is the obvious dictate of justice, and the practice of all civilized states, that, till guilt is proved, innocence shall be presumed; and that the onus probandi, the obligation of adducing evidence, shall rest with the accuser in the first instance. In the West India islands the reverse of this is established, and every negro, or man of colour, though free, is presumed to be a slave, and liable to be treated as such, unless he can furnish documentary evidence of his freedom. It is enacted that the presumption shall always be taken against him: so that if he loses his certificate of freedom, or it is stolen from him, it is at the option of any person to claim him, and replunge him into the horrors of slavery. By this means many are daily deprived of their freedom; and the danger of incurring that calamity is constantly suspended over the heads of the innocent.

It is no small aggravation of the cruelty of this system that its unhappy victims have not been exposed to it as the punishment of crime, but by the violence of ruffians, who, having traversed the ocean in quest of human prey, forcibly tore them from their native shores and the embraces of their dearest relatives, in order to expose them to sale in a distant quarter of the globe. The forms of judicial inquiry, the examination of witnesses, the proof of guilt, and the sentence of a judge were not the precursors of this most dire calamity; it was the assault of brutal violence on helpless weakness and unsuspecting innocence-it was the grasp of the marauder and the assassin hurrying away his victims amid shrieks of horror and the piercing accents of despair which prepared these scenes of wo. These and the descendants of these are the persons who compose the black population of our islands. Their number is computed at present at 800,000; and if we direct our view to that portion of the British dominions, we behold the shocking spectacle of nearly a million of our fellow-subjects, with no other imputation than that of a darker skin, doomed to a condition which, were it assigned as the punishment of the greatest guilt, would be accused of immoderate severity. We behold these children of nature, for the purpose chiefly of supplying us with the ingredient which sweetens our repasts, compelled by men who call themselves Christians to exhaust to its dregs a more bitter cup than is usually allotted to the greatest adepts in crime.

It is confidently asserted by advocates of slavery that the situation of the negroes in our islands is preferable to that of the labouring classes in England. But the falsehood of this assertion is sufficiently proved by the numerous elopements which take place there: on referring to a very recent Jamaica paper, we observe a list of more than a hundred runaway slaves; so that admitting this to be a fair specimen of what usually occurs, the number of slaves who attempt to escape from their masters in one island only amounts annually to five or six thousand. It appears that the far greater part were branded,

many of them in different parts of the body, and not a few are designated by their wounds and sores, the effects of immoderate punishment. A moment's reflection must convince us that the condition must be intolerable from which such numbers daily attempt their escape at the hazard of tortures and of death.

We are in possession of a religion the communication of which would afford some compensation for the injuries we have inflicted, and let in a ray of hope on the benighted mind. To say that no effectual provision has been made for this purpose is to assert the smallest part of the truth. The religious instruction of the negroes has not only been neglected, but such regulations introduced as renders it nearly impracticable. The attempts of this sort which have been made have not resulted from any legislative enactment, but merely from the zeal of private individuals exposed for the most part to the utmost opposi tion and obloquy; nor will it admit of a doubt that but for the seasonable interference of the government at home all such proceedings would long since have been suppressed. The colonial legislatures have displayed nearly as much aversion to the religious instruction of the slaves as to the extension of their civil immunities; and, judging from their conduct, we should be tempted to infer they were no less careful to exclude them from the hope of heaven than from happiness on earth. It would be natural to suppose such a system could have few charms for the spectator, that the presence of such a mass of degradation and misery would be a source of continual annoyance, and that no exertion would be spared by those who have it most in their power to diminish its pressure and lighten its horrors. On the contrary, the West India planters view it with the utmost complacency; in their eyes it seems to be a most finished and exquisite specimen of social order, a masterpiece of policy, the most precious legacy bequeathed them by their ancestors, which they are bound to maintain inviolate in every part, to defend at the greatest risk, and to transmit unimpaired to future generations. They anticipate with the utmost confidence the perpetual duration of the system, and reprobate every measure which has the remotest tendency to endanger its existence as the offspring of indescribable folly and wickedness. To such a degree are their moral perceptions vitiated, that they really believe they have a prescriptive right to be guilty of injustice, to trample on the image of their Maker, to erase his superscription, and to treat that portion of their species which fortune has subjected to their power as mere beasts of burden, divested of the essential characteristics of humanity. In this instance impious speculations have been resorted to in palliation of practical enormities; nor have there been wanting those who avow their persuasion that the negro is more nearly allied to the orang-outang than to the human kind.

Hence it appears that a state of slavery is in its operation as mischievous to the master as to the slave. If its effects on the latter are more visible in his corporeal structure, in his debased physiognomy, his dejected countenance, his lacerated skin, and not unfrequently in his "wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores," its effects on the mind