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ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

THIS truly philanthropic society, with a view to forward its great objects of Christian mercy, has for some time published, and widely circulated, a highly interesting monthly paper, entitled "The AntiSlavery Reporter," to some of the leading matters in various numbers of which we have already adverted. We shall take the present opportunity of laying before our readers a few particulars from some of the latter numbers, omitting those already noticed in our pages. We trust that no small number of our readers will be anxious to obtain the papers themselves, which, with all other publications of the society, may be had at their office, 18, Aldermanbury; at Messrs. Hatchard's, 187, Piccadilly; at Arch's, Cornhill; or through any bookseller; or at the depôts of the Anti-Slavery Society throughout the kingdom.

The following are extracts from these papers:

"Of the 674 petitions presented to the House of Commons, 376 have been printed in the Appendix to the Votes of that House. A very cursory inspection of them will prove, that on no occasion have so many petitions, relating to one subject, and uniting in the same general prayer, manifested so clearly that they spoke the unprompted and spontaneous feelings of the petitioners, and that they were not servilely copied from any model. And, in point of fact, no such model was supplied.

"Mr. Canning objected to the loud and concurrent expression of the public voice on the subject of slavery, and to the speeches and resolutions which led to the petitions that have crowded the tables of both houses of parliament, for this reason, among others, that the effect of them would be to make the obstinacy of the colonists more obstinate; and to excite determined resistance which must be overcome, before the purposes of government could be

effected. And yet, without the efforts of abolitionists, and the loud and concurrent expression of public feeling which these have called forth, can any man believe that we should have obtained the solemn resolutions of the legislature as to the expediency of abolishing slavery; or that a single step would have been taken to that end? And even supposing such resolutions to have been passed, what weight would they, or the speeches which might accompany them in parliament, have had in the West Indies, unbacked by the awakened feeling, and the firm and conscientious determination of the country at large?"

The Jamaica Gazette quotes a letter from a member of parliament, in which he gives his West-Indianfriends the following important information: "Ienclose three newspapers containing the reports of the debates in the House of Commons, on Mr. Buxton's presenting the petition of the city of London for the abolition of slavery, and on Mr. Denman's resolutions respecting the trials of the rebel Negroes in Jamaica-and in the House of Lords, on the reference to them of the resolutions of the Commons of 1823. In the whole course of these debates, there is not one person who did not admit the extinction of slavery to be the whole object of parliament and the country-an object which they were determined to accomplish, and that the only difference was as to the means and time of its accomplishment. Nobody ventured to contend that the state of slavery ought to be maintained for ever. Even the Lord Chancellor, who spoke most strongly as to the due consideration for the rights of private property,' expressed his entire approbation of the resolutions of the House of Commons, and his concurrence in the object of putting an end to slavery. În a word, this feeling has become so universal throughout the country,

that any opposition to it would be quite hopeless. The ministry are committed to the Trinidad Order in Council; and the country are determined to have measures adopted in the colonies, which shall afford some certain means of putting an end to slavery, though they may be content to agree to their being gradual and slow in their operation. They are also very much dissatisfied with the colonial legislatures. They would, I believe, now have applauded any measure of rigour which the government might have been disposed to adopt for enforcing the Trinidad regulations; and, if the assemblies should not adopt them all (or with few or unimportant exceptions), the country and the parliament will drive the government to some strong measures of coercion. Seeing how violently and how rapidly the torrent of public feeling is running, I am convinced the only chance of preserving the independence of the colonial legislatures is by the adoption of the regulations which are about to be sent out in their next session."

But notwithstanding these auspicious anticipations, the Anti-Slavery Society remind their readers, that, even if our prospects of effectual reformation were much more flattering than they are, we ought to bear in mind that not one step has been taken, nor has any thing specific been proposed, by the government for putting a final date, however distant, to slavery in the British colonies. For any thing which is yet in progress, or even distinctly and seriously propounded, slavery may continue to pollute the national character for a century, or even for two centuries to come.

Interest is a more powerful motive with multitudes than justice and humanity; and therefore, whilst any considerable number of persons conceive a particular system to be profitable to them, it is not likely, without much opposition, to be relinquished, because it is unjust. Is then the system of colonial slavery

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really a profitable system? reply to this question, the society demonstrate that it is quite the contrary, and is upheld only by bounties, protecting duties, and most impolitic and unjust restrictions on trade. They add,-" While we continue these means of support, thus encouraging and rewarding the perpetuation and aggravation of slavery, we make the crime our own, and we set ourselves in direct opposition to the beneficent designs of the Almighty towards these his oppressed creatures."

Of the nature of the regulations which thus prevent the interchange of commodities, in direct opposition to the general interests of mankind, and especially to those of our own population, we may form some idea from the following facts:

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1. For the express purpose of supporting slavery, we charge a protecting duty of 10s. all sugar, and of 28s. per cwt. on all coffee, imported from our Indian dominions, and thus force our manufacturers, for the sake of supplying a miserable allowance of clothing to 700,000 slaves in the West Indies, to forego the supply of eighty or a hundred millions of people in India. 2. Instead of encouraging that competition of free labour, which would as effectually destroy the trade in slaves for the cultivation of sugar, as it has already done for that of indigo, and thus remove the great barrier to our intercourse with 70,000,000 of people on the continent of Africa, we prohibit, by extravagant duties, the importation of any sugars grown there, and we charge an extra duty of 28s. per cwt. on all coffee produced in the colony of Sierra Leone, which by discouraging cultivation must retard the progress of civilization also. 3. A bounty was long paid on the exportation of refined sugar, the effect of which was, to raise the price of all sugar in the British market 6s. per cwt. equal to 1,200,000l. per annum. At the close of the last session, this bounty

was reduced about one half. Now it is clear, that the effect of this bounty is not to increase our trade but to lessen it; to make sugar dear to the people of England, and cheap to the people of the continent.

Let us then think of our own share in the guilt of upholding this system. Let us bring the matter seriously home to ourselves, and determine to do our own duty. And if we fail, by all our exertions, to obtain any national act for the extinction of slavery, there is surely no reason why we, as individuals, should continue participators in the crime. By their individual exertions the friends of humanity may still do much; and if they can do nothing else, they may, at least, more generally than they yet have done, encourage the consumption of the produce of free labour. Let associations also be multiplied in every part of the country for raising permanent funds to promote AntiSlavery objects, and for encouraging the use of the produce of free labour. The following extract from the Gazette of St. Vincents, of the 20th of May, 1826, contains an exposition of the actual progress of moral and religious culture in that island; and will be found, if the truth were told in other places with equal frankness, to exhibit a faithful picture of its progress in every island from the Bahamas to Trinidad, as far, at least, as the efforts of the planters in general, or of the local legislatures, are concerned. "We understand that the lord Bishop has signified his intention of paying this island a second visit in two or three weeks. We cannot imagine to ourselves the surprise and disappointment that will be felt by his lordship on his arrival, to find that of the various measures of improvement, or addition to our clerical establishment suggested by him on his first visit, not one has yet been carried into effect; no additional place of worship provided; no school establishment provided, or means devised for giving additional impulse to the

moral or religious feelings of the lower classes: in short, that we are precisely in the same state his lordship left us, except, as one of our correspondents has lately suggested, considerably worse, no doubt, from the combined inroads of time and negligence."

Considerable discussions have taken place in various newspapers, on the subject of Negro Slavery, the chief results of which are given in the Reporter. We copy one passage.

"I think it necessary to produce one more witness; I mean, Major Moody. The Major tells us, that he has profoundly studied this question. He had a full' opportunity of understanding all its moral and physical relations during the years he had the task assigned him of coercing the steady labour' of Mr. Katz's 1,500 or 1,800 slaves. His attachment to colonial interests cannot be disputed. He is deemed by the colonists one of their ablest, and most skilful, and most influential advocates. And what is his evidence? It is this: In the West Indies, the climate renders agricultural labour more disagreeable to the African than similar work is, in England, to the English labourer;' therefore, the African will not voluntarily exert himself, to the same extent,' for wages. Hence the formation of a code of laws, with a view to coerce the labour of the Africans,' and hence the necessity of this coerced labour to the creation of wealth, and to steady and productive industry, which the Major enforces through many a folio page; for the free Negro, he says, is almost invariably found recoiling from the pain of steady labour in the sun. Nay, the Black and Indian races, whose constitutions are most adapted to agricultural labour, recoil from it, beyond that moderate degree of exertion necessary to procure their subsistence.' In order to voluntary industry, the Negro, he tells us, must not only encounter the pain

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of labour in the sun,' but must also 'be able to resist firmly the seducing pleasure afforded by repose in the shade the enjoyment sought for and prized by all around them.' By what motive then,' he asks very feelingly, are these men to be withdrawn from the enjoyment of that pleasure of repose which has a value so much higher in the torrid zone than in Europe? Any man,' he adds, may convince himself, that this enjoyment of repose is a high pleasure, by honestly examining his own inclination for any laborious exertion in the open air, when the sun in Europe radiates a heat measured by 80 degrees of the thermometer.' It appears to Major Moody, therefore, to be impossible to induce any free Negro, to work eight hours in a day for another man, in return for ordinary wages, in a country where the labourer could more easily obtain the same value in subsistence, by working for himself only half an hour, or an hour, or two hours.' In warm climates, 'where repose is one of the most strong desires of men,' to obtain, without coercion,' the steady labour of uncivilized men, he conceives will, in practice, be found to be most difficult.' In short, he deems it vain to expect voluntary, steady, continuous, and moderate industry in the low lands of the torrid zone' without coercion; for, he adds, in the torrid zone where steady labour in the sun is painful from the physical influence of heat, time cannot altogether remove the pain felt, though it prepares the bodies of some men to endure it. No dexterity in the use of tools can diminish the heat of the sun's rays, and, at the end of forty years, as at the end of four months, the pleasure of repose in the shade is found to be most powerful in diminishing voluntary steady industry.'

"These physical facts, however, are not produced by Major Moody as a reason for sparing the Negro the agony of intense labour in the sun; or for giving him wages by CHRIST. OBSERV. APP.

way of compensating this pain, and tempting him to labour; but for coercing him, and for placing him under the power of that effective instrument, the cart-whip, which he seems to hold to be indispensable, not only for the slave population, but for all those African captives, on whom repeated acts of the British Parliament have conferred freedom. I am not now, however, considering the justice and humanity of Major Moody's inferences, (his philosophy of labour,' as he calls it,) but merely the facts themselves: and what do they prove? Do they prove that the slave population of the West Indies are happy? Do they not prove the reverse? The slaves, Major Moody give us to understand, hate labour in a tropical sun, to such a degree, that wages cannot bribe them to undertake it. It is pain,' it is 'painful' thus to labour. To do so is to do violence to nature, which, in such a burning climate, intensely desires repose in the shade. And yet all the institutions of the West Indies, and particularly the driver with his cartwhip, and the overseer with his arbitrary power of thirty-nine lacerations, and confinement in the stocks, are skilfully framed, so as to compel them to this painful labour by the means of a still more painful infliction, the torture of the lash well laid on, or the dread of that experienced torture. They are forced, not by the sweetening influence of reward, or by any of the hopes which elsewhere stimulate man to labour, but by the application of a superior degree of physical pain, to do that, steadily and continuously, which it is painful, according to Major Moody, to do at all. To take the laws of Jamaica as a specimen of the rest-They authorise the master (see the law of 1816, sec. 20, 27) to compel, by brute force, this painful labour in the field, from five in the morning till seven in the evening of each day: I say, in the field; for these hours do not include the time consumed in the morning

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in going to that field, and in the evening in returning from it, nor the time consumed in procuring, and bringing home grass for the cattle, after the labour of the field is over: so that at least fifteen hours of painful labour in the day, with the interval of two hours and a half for meals, are regularly exacted by the superior pain of the cart-whip, or the dread of it; and during four months of the year, namely, in croptime, four more hours must be added to this number, making in all nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, extracted from beings to whom every such hour, according to Major Moody, is painful. And yet the slaves of Jamaica are happy!!!"

The last Number of the Reporter entitled "Statistics of Slave Colonies," contains twenty-four closely printed pages, being an abstract of much important information recently laid before the House of Commons, in the shape of Returns from the Slave Colonies, relative to a variety of particulars; such as the marriage of slaves, the separation of families, the value of slaves, their manumission, colonial pauperism, the general population, &c.But important as are these matters, our limits oblige us, at least for the present, to pass them over. We cannot, however, refrain from copying the following passages from a Petition presented to Parliament from the Surrey Anti-Slavery Society, which is a model of force and eloquence, and not more distinguished by these qualities than by its truth and justice. It sets forth,

"That the population of our West-Indian Colonies consists chiefly of Negroes, who are either unoffending foreigners, carried thither by force, or British subjects, born within the King's allegiance :-That these unoffending foreigners possess rights under the Law of Nations which England is bound to recognize and uphold, as a civilized state, and for the violation of which, in the persons of other foreigners, a Bri

tish fleet was sent only a few years since to lay the port of Algiers in ruins:-That England on that occasion justly resented the barbarous practice adopted by the Algerines, of converting their enemies taken in war into slaves, as an uncivilized modification of the right assumed by savages of putting the prisoners to death:-That British subjects, born within the King's allegiance, and innocent of all crime, cannot be deprived of their civil existence, and reduced to a state of slavery by any power known to the constitution of this country:-That such a power necessarily supposes the annihilation of every principle on which the reciprocal claims of allegiance and protection are founded, and at once destroys the basis of the social compact:That such a power, if it could exist, might reduce to slavery all the born subjects of the King, as justly as any particular portion of them:-That while in Russia civil death has been awarded as an appropriate punishment for high treason, and in Algiers slavery is substituted for the savage right of taking the life of a captured enemy, in the West-Indian dominions of the British Crown, unoffending aliens and unoffending British subjects are deprived of their civil existence by thousands, and hundreds of thousands, solely for the emolument of private individuals, who, for that purpose alone, by a monstrous and illegal usurpation, condemn their fellow-subjects to a state of irremediable slavery, and extend the dreadful curse to their children, and their children's children:-That the claim set up by the West-Indian slavemasters, to their fellow-subjects, and to helpless strangers, as their property, rests on no better basis than the claim of robbers and receivers to goods which they have stolen, or purchased knowing them to be stolen:-That the crime of depriving an innocent man, whether a foreigner or a British subject, of his civil existence, immeasurably exceeds any one of those descrip

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