banns produced an universal ferment in the colony: the case was immediately referred to the highest legal authorities upon the spot; nor was the question, as a point of law, settled, until it had been referred to his Majesty's legal advisers in this country." [p. 19.]

From other sources, we have reason to know, that still more recently the colonial law officers of one of our islands sent home a case for an opinion here, on the validity of the marriage of slaves, and although we fully agree in the answer to it, which asserted the power of a slave to contract this relation, we cannot shut our eyes to the obstacle opposed to his doing so, in the uncontrolled authority of the master virtually to dissolve it whenever he thinks proper, by selling one of the parties, perhaps to a distant island, and retaining the other in bondage on his own estate. The laws of all civilized states have denounced a severe punishment on the infraction of the marriage vow, by taking a second husband, or wife, during the life-time of the first; but with what justice could this be put in execution (and with us it may be death) against a person whose first marriage was in fact dissolved by a forced separation from the person whom he had vowed in the sight of God to love and cherish until death should part them. To render marriage what it ought to be, in the West Indies, masters must at all events be deprived of the power of separating man and wife; or what becomes of the command, "Those whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder."

Is it asked what provision is made for their spiritual instruction? We answer, Save by the voluntary exertions of those holy and devoted men, who, as missionaries, have gone out to the heathen, not counting their lives dear unto themselves,-little or none. On the contrary, every impediment seems to be thrown in the way of their instruction, for of all days in the week Sunday is the only one on which the negro can go to market, either to sell the produce of his own provision-grounds, or to supply the wants of himself and family. During crop, which lasts for four or five months in the year, the sabbath also, instead of being a day of rest, is the only day allowed to these poor overworked slaves, to cultivate the ground on which they all-but entirely depend for their support. And what is the example set them by the whites? The worst that can be conceived in a professedly Christian land; for the market, held avowedly for the negroes, is in fact also a market for their masters, who attend on the sabbath as regularly at

their stores, and their counting-houses as on any other day. We have the authority of Dr. Williamson for adding that the white inhabitants (of Jamaica) are wilfully "inattentive to public religious duties, and that contempt

for religion is openly avowed by a great proportion of "them." And how, we could ask, can it be otherwise? Can men, living in the daily and hourly commission of such cruel injuries to their fellow-creatures, have the slightest reverence for that religion which, assuring us that God has made of one flesh all the families of the earth, commands us to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us? Can the mild virtues of Christianity flourish, or even be professed, in a country where the common feelings of humanity are so brutalized and forgotten, that female owners of slaves will, without any scruple, order them to be flogged, and even stand by to see them stripped bare, and punished in a manner as revolting to decency as it is to every just and generous feeling of the human heart? As well might that poor, oppressed negro hope to succeed in releasing himself from these contumelious wrongs, by washing himself white. At church the white people seldom appear; and when they do so, we are told by the writer last quoted, that they conduct themselves with the greatest indecency, though they might, one would imagine, be shamed into a contrary behaviour by the propriety uniformly observed there by the people of colour. The day thus begun in the neglect of every religious duty, and spent in the pursuit of every secular avocation by master and by slave, is generally closed by both in scenes of riotous excess and brutal debauchery; for we quote again the very words of Dr. Williamson, lest we should be charged with misrepresentation or overstatement. The sabbath in Jamaica, (and that colony, or at least no worse than the rest,) " is," says he, "by the "established custom of the island, a day of marketing, “labour, dancing, and excess of every kind."

"And while," remarks the author of the Negro Slavery, "in our colonies the negro slaves are denied the sabbath as a day of repose or devotion, in the colonies of Spain or Portugal the conduct pursued is widely different. There, the sabbath is appropriated, in the case of the slaves, to rest or religious observances, and another day in the week is regularly allowed them to cultivate their grounds, or otherwise to be employed for their own benefit. The contrast is striking and opprobrious!" [p. 112.]

As Britons and as Protestants, surely we ought to blush

at the justice of this comparison, nor shall we have any occasion to congratulate ourselves on the result of another, which we are about to institute.

upon our

The degradation of a black slave below a white, is scarcely, if at all, less complete in the British West Indies than in America. An union of a white pauper, lame, halt, and blind, with the fairest negress that ever walked the earth, even with a share of worldly goods, which to him would be a fortune thrown into the scale of her recommendations, would be considered in those countries an indelible stain purer blood. Nay, to such a height have these proud feelings been carried, that one of the advocates for things as they are in our colonies, very seriously proposes, that the pains and penalties of felony should be enacted against parties so intermarrying-contra bonos mores, we presume the indictment must allege, though what moral law it would infringe, we are at a loss to imagine.

"It is a strong proof," says the author of the pamphlet on Negro Slavery," of the degrading light in which free persons of colour are viewed by the whites, that these last never introduce even their own children into company. It was thought a very extraordinary thing, on one occasion, to see a father riding in a gig with his own coloured daughter. Coloured persons reputed to be the children of the owners of the estates, are sometimes held as slaves upon them, and have been even sold along with them." [p. 68.]

But enough of this disgusting catalogue of injuries, insults, and cruel oppressions. To render it complete, we observe in conclusion, that every possible obstacle seems to be thrown in the way of emancipating slaves from the thraldom in which they are held. Should a slave be able to pay his value in monies numbered, or should any benevolent being offer to pay it for him, it is entirely in the discretion of the master to refuse or grant it; an evil which the whites feel not, when it presses but upon the slave,though they occasionally murmur somewhat loudly when they cannot effect, by purchase, the emancipation of their own illegitimate children by the black slaves of some other proprietor. For some years the West Indian slave-owners have been professing the most anxious desire to ameliorate the condition of their slaves, and even, when a fit time shall come, to emancipate them altogether. But in the midst of all these professions, what has been their practice? Let the following short statement of facts, from the pamphlet on Negro Slavery, answer the question:

"In May, 1801, an act was passed in Barbadoes, to increase the fines on manumissions from £50 to £300, on each female manumitted, and to £200 on each male. In July, 1802, the legislature of St. Kitt's imposed a fine of £500 currency on the manumission of slaves born in the island, to be increased to £1000 in the case of slaves not born in the island. In some of the other islands fines of inferior amount were imposed; and in the Bermudas an act was passed to prohibit emancipation altogether, and to prevent persons of colour being seized of real estates;—and all these acts received the royal assent! Such has been the spirit of colonial legislature, even at a recent period!" [p. 111.]

We have long been in the habit of looking on every institution of Spain as tyrannical and oppressive, but in the midst of the boasted superiority of our own laws and constitution, the following account of her colonial policy should make us ashamed of its comparison with ours.

"In the Spanish American possessions it has always been the established practice to encourage manumissions. A slave had a right by law to his freedom, as soon as he could repay to his master the sum he had cost. In order to enable the slave to do this, he was not only allowed the undisturbed enjoyment of the sabbath, either for rest or for religious purposes, or for his own emolument, as he might like best, but he was allowed also one day in the week for the cultivation of his provision-grounds; his master being entitled to the labour of the other five. As soon, however, as the slave, by his industry and frugality, had accumulated the fifth part of his value, it was usual for the master, on being paid that amount, to relinquish to the slave another day of the week, and so on until he had repaid the whole of his original cost, and thus became altogether free: He continued, however, in some cases, during the days which were his own, and even after his complete emancipation, to labour for hire in his master's service. By this process, not only was the master's capital replaced without loss, but a peasantry was formed around him, which had learned by experience the happy effects of industry and frugality, and were therefore industrious and provident. Notwithstanding this liberal policy, the enfranchised slaves have never been known in the Spanish possessions to rise against their former master, or to excite those who were still slaves, to seek any other method of deliverance than they themselves had pursued; whilst they formed, by their number and hardihood, a valuable means of defence from foreign aggression. In consequence of this admirable system, the whole negro population of the Spanish possessions were so rapidly approximating to emancipation, that about the year 1790, the number of free blacks and people of colour somewhat exceeded, in all of them, the number of slaves. Since that time, in Cuba alone, in consequence of the immense importations

from Africa into that island, has this proportion been diminished; but even there the free black aud coloured population amounts to from a third to a half of the number of the slaves. In the other transatlantic possessions of Spain, their number has gone on progressively increasing, until now slavery can hardly be said to have an existence there. And this happy consummation has been effected without any commotion, and with the ready concurrence of the master, who has not only not been a loser, but a gainer, by the change. How opprobrious to Great Britain, is the contrast which this system exhibits, to that of our colonies!" [p. 109.]

"The happy effects of this admirable mode of manumission are well illustrated in the following extract from Humboldt's Travels:

"We observed, with a lively interest, the great number of scattered houses in the valley inhabited by freedmen. In the Spanish colonies, the institutions and the manners are more favourable to the liberty of the blacks, than in the other European settlements. In all these excursions we were agreeably surprised, not only at the progress of agriculture, but the increase of a free, laborious population, accustomed to toil, and too poor to rely on the assistance of slaves. White and black farmers had every where small separate establishments. Our host, whose father had a revenue of 40,000 piastres, possessing more lands than he could clear, he distributed them in the valley of Aragua, among poor families who chose to apply themselves to the cultivation of cotton. He endeavoured to surround his ample plantations with freemen, who, working as they chose, either on their own land or in the neighbouring plantations, supplied him with day-labourers at the time of harvest. Nobly occupied on the means best adapted gradually to extinguish the slavery of the blacks in these colonies, Count Torur flattered himself with the double hope of rendering slaves less necessary to the landholders, and furnishing the freedmen with opportunities of becoming farmers. On departing for Europe, he had parcelled out and let a part of the lands of Cura. Four years after, at his return to America, he found on this spot, finely cultivated in cotton, a little hamlet of thirty or forty houses, which is called Punta Zamura, and which we afterwards visited with him. The inhabitants of this hamlet are nearly all Mulattoes, Zumboes, or free blacks. This example of letting out land has been happily followed by other great proprietors. I love to dwell on these details of colonial industry, because they prove to the inhabitants of Europe, what to the enlightened inhabitants of the colonies has long ceased to be doubtful, that the continent of Spanish America can produce sugar and indigo by free hands, and that the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasants, farmers, and landholders.'" [p. 110.]

And how, we may be asked, are all the dreadful evils you have exposed to be remedied? Not, we answer, by leaving the gradual abolition, or even the reformation of the present bar