The Sun.
London, England, 1830-10-29 00:00:00

SLAVERY AND THE EAST INDIA

DIRECTORS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR,—As it must he of importance at the present
nument that the public should be made acquainted as ex-
tensively as posvilde with the policy of all our Institutions,
but especially that which monopolises so large a branch
of the trade of the empire, I beg leave, through the
medium of your widely-circulated Paper, to quote the
opinions of the East India Directors on the conduct of the
late Sir Stamford Raffles, who had ventured, upon his own
authority, to exercise the policy of emancipation in favour
of the slave population committed to his care during his
government of the several colonial stations in the Eastern
Archipelago, of Java, Sumatra, and Singapore.
After his arrival in England in August, 1826, and after
the disastrous accident by the burning of the Fame,
which deprived this very distinguished personage of a
great part of his property, and the country of an invaluable
collection of materials for illustrating the history of the
several possessions he had presided over, he was above all
things anxious to ascertain the opinion of the Court of
Directors on the general character of his public conduct,
when they at length complied with this desire, concluding
the detail by the following summary ;
" The government of Sir Stamford Raffles appears with
sufficient evidence to have conciliated the good feelings of
at least the great majority of the European and native
population ; his exertions for the interests of literature
and science are highly honourable to hint, and have been
attended with distinguished success ; and although his
precipitate and unauthorised emancipation of the Com-
pany's slaves, and his formation of a settlement at
Pulanius. chiefly with a view to the suppression of a
slave traffic, are justly censured by the Court! his motives
in these proceedings, and his unwearied zeal for the abo-
lition of slavery, ought not to be passed over without an
expunction of approbation!"
Here we have upon one side the policy of as able and
enlightened an individual as probably ever presided over
the dektinies of India, acting under the practical influence
of his own conviction, giving freedom to the slave and
laying the foundation of a system for abolishing slavery in
every settlement under the dominion of the Company ;
while, on the other hand, we see contrasted with this en-
lightened policy the narrow•minded and arbitrary dictum
of a body of men whose principles of government must be
on all occasions Ito powerfully influenced by their own per-
soual and individual interests as to see nothing so pro-
minently as the loss of this darling attribute of power,
and the loss of empire beside., in any further extension of
either liberty or privilege to the children of mankind,
whose fate it it to be connected with or placed under their
contrail.

Another commentary on this contrast will appropriately
clone the foregoing observatiuna ; it is extracted from the
Quarterly Review (p. 84):--" Chance and opinion are
unquestionably two powerful agcnta for good or evil ; but
we cannot help hunpecting that, considering the placid and
pliant material, to work upon in that empire (India), if a
!taffies were placed at the head of each of the three pre-
sidencies, and of a foul th or central one, which ought, as
we think, to be entablinhed, chance would Ire less liable to
injure, and opinion the influence most likely to strengthen,
the frail thread which binda to a foreign yoke from eighty
to one hundred millions of human creatures!"