The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-03 00:00:00

We yesterday recorded with great pleasure the
he friends of negro emancipation are fully aware
of the intimate connection between the proposed
measure of Lord JOHN RUSSELL and the great
question of freedom, which cannot become
triumphant while power is vested in the exi3ting
House of Assembly in Jamaica. The question to
be decided now is, whether the masters are worthy
to be entrusted with supremacy. The idle doubt
suggested by Sir R. PEEL as to the propriety of
suspending a popular Government in a country
which had enjoyed a popular Government for two
hundred years, is worthy of that biased Tory system
which would fain have warded off the blow directed
against slavery itself. The electoral body in Jamaica
consists of legs than 2,000 persons out of a population
of nearly 400,000, and here, no doubt, lies the solo-
tion of the mystery.
The smallness of the constituency, and the long
subsisting connection by which they are identifi
with all the horrors of the slave system, are the real
sources of Tory reverence, and the clap-trap of a popu-
lar Constitution is to be foisted on the innocent and
fthe unwary, in reference to a Government as tainted
and corrupt as ever brought discredit and disgrace
upon the name of representation. Accustomed as
we are to the audacious impostures of a very impu-
dent yet still powerful faction, we must confess that
this exhibition of quackery and humbug exceeded
our most "sanguine anticipations, and of all the
grounds on which we expected the defence of the
House of Assembly to rest, its popular nature was
the very last.
We are willing to do ample justice to these slave-
driving legislators, and they cannot complain if we
make their own words the source of our condemna-
tion of them and of their measures. We shall con-
fine ourselves to what they have done since the
emancipation. In granting them compensation for
their property in human flesh (and we take shame to
ourselves that the word property should again be
used in reference to such a subject), the people
of England exhibited a liberality which called at
least for acknowledgment if not for gratitude ; but
the papers now before Parliament will show that in-
satiable rapacity and swaggering insolence were the
only fruits of concession. It was about the middle
of last June that the Bill for abolishing the state of
apprenticeship passed the Colonial Legislature, and
on the 23d day of the same month Sir LIONEL
SMITH addressed a despatch to Lord GLENELG,
accompanied by certain inclosures, of which one
was entitled " The humble address and petition of
the Assembly of Jamaica to the QUEEN," and the
other " The Protest of the Assembly of Jamaica."
From the former we select one paragraph, intimat-
ing the enlightened and disinterested expectations
of tire petitioners, that having been paid for their
negroes under the name of slaves, they ought to be
paid for them again under the name of apprentices:—
We humbly declare to your Majesty, that, in conse-
quence of the Act recently passed by the Parliament of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, where-
in we are no ways represented, an Act dangerous in its
tendency to the peace and welfare of this island, we have
been constrained to abandon the remaining term of the ap-
prenticeship, and to pass an Act conferring or. all the ap-
The creation of Peers, which we announced in prentices unqualified freedom on the Ist of August, in the
present year ; but, while we thus abandon the apprentice_
our Evening Edition, comes most opportunely on the
heels of the Duke of NEWCASTLE'S dismissal, to sillaipt,swacerdifio
cenooft arbraonpdeortnythe right to demand indemnity for
thus forced upon us ; and which
read the Tory Lords a salutary lesson. Had they we pray your Majesty will be pleased to take into your
gracious consideration.
received it earlier they would have been less insolent.
The passages in Italics may convince the public
Never was there a set of men so spoiled by indul-
that the planters themselves regard the interference
Bence, or so ungrateful for respect. To them Lord
of England as having already destroyed their Cott_
MELBOURNE has sacrificed his popularity and his
stitution, the suspension of which Sir ROBERT is
influence ; and, in return, they have slighted,
now to make a ground of upsetting the Ministry.
thwarted and harassed him to the utmost of their
We now come to their protest, a valuable docu-
power. They were assailed in all quarters of the
ment as exhibiting the wonderful likeness which
empire. It is the general opinion that he had but
subsists between the white Protestants of Jamaica
to give his countenance to the agitation, which was
and the Orange Protestants of Ireland ; a likeness
going on against the Peerage and the Church, to
which naturally suggests the hope that the Marquis
!lave trampled both in the dust; he preferred his
of
INORMANBY, as Colonial Secretary, may as
supposed duty to popularity—he upheld his
effectually secure the hatred of the former as he
order against the onward march of the democracy— did that of the latter, while Lord Lieutenant of the
he threw the shield of his own power over them,
aister
, kingdom. We can conceive no higher ho-
and in the security of that they have never ceased
Dour than to concentrate in one person the ani-
to insult and goad him. Because he would not
mosity of the slave-drivers of Jamaica, and the hatred
take strong measures against them, his Ministry
of the Orangemen of Ireland. The protest will
was called cowardly and weak. Because he deferred
, speak for itself, and we leave our readers to
to their prejudices, protected their privileges, and judge whether it at all resembles the calm
courted them in preference to the popular party, his
remonstrance of a deliberative Assembly. It
was called the Shabby Government, and Peers and
begins with a declaration that " the legislative
Prelates thought they might kick it with impunity.
powers of Jamaica, for near two centuries. have been
At length it is plain they have carried their inso-
lence too far. Thrusting aside the shield he threw exercised by the Governor in Council, and an
Assembly elected by tire free choice of the people,
over them, they have defied him and the Com-
mons. He must now be convinced that the con- the Acts they pass being subject to the disallow-
OP
tinuance of such a condition is neither honourable the
ante of the Sovereign ; and, after asserting
unreasonableness of British interference with Colo-
for himself nor safe for the empire ;and, having begun,
we trust he will so go on as to convince the Tory lonial legislation, proceeds as follows
We believe that a people will sometimes passively sub-
Peers, armed as he is with the power of the Throne, mit to injustice and encroachment, committed by a Sove-
reign_ sprung from favour;
majesty a race which has ruled over them for
and as he may yet be with the still more powerful ages, and to which they may owe acts of grace and
majesty of the people, that he will never again the deeds of a Monarch are ascribed to his advisers, and