The Sun.
London, England, 1838-04-21 00:00:00

reign of terror, not more than 39 lashes could be inflicted for
any domestic offence. Under the apprenticeship system,
there were 13 cases in which 50 lashes might be inflicted,
If an unfortunate man left the property to bury the dead, to
visit a sick child, or any similar errand that constituted him a
vagrant, and under the operation of the new law, by means of
which he was closely watched, he was subjected to have his
chains re-forged, and to be punished with 39 lashes. Indo-
lence, neglect, or the improper performance of work, ren-
dered him liable, at the sentence of a single Magistrate, to re-
ceive 50 lashes. Carelessness was visited with three months'
imprisonment and 50 lashes. Drunkenness (he wished the
Act as regarded that could be applied to the other party) and
other similar misdemeanors, was punishable at the will of a
single magistrate by 50 lashes. As a suitable climax to such
a piece of legislation, the strongest temptation was held out to
penal labour, and the apprentice, for bringing a charge against
his master, however true, was punishable by a double
loss of his time to his employer, and twenty lashes.—
(Shame.) Now for the charge of insolence which might
mean anything or nothing, as a look or a turn of the body
might be so construed. All instances of insubordination were
liable to be punished with 39 lashes, and to show them what
was considered insubordination, a magistrate, and a special
one too, named Price, sentenced a poor woman to the tread-
mill twenty minutes daily for a fortnight, for taking Morri-
son's pills.—( Roars of laughter.) That fact was ludicrous
enough, but it was still more wanton and brutal.—
( Hear, hear, hear.) But an equally strong case was made
out against British Guiana, which had been described by a
certain celebrated gentleman, named Gladstone, as a kind of
Oasis in the moral desert, and against which he said no com
plaints had been made, except by some anonymous slanderers.
He hoped he was not out of place, as British Guiana had
been mentioned, to allude with the permission of the meet-
ing, to that gentleman and his late speech. He was extre-
mely sorry that Mr. Gladstone had come before the public in
such an aspect, because he had been credibly informed, and he
believed, that Mr. Gladstone in private life exhibited all the
loveliest and most beautiful features of a Christian character,
and that circumstance only rendered his example the more
dangerous.—( Hear.) If, -however, he found such a person
setting at nought the dictates of the Lord and Master, whom
he professed to serve, and who required him to love his
neighbour as himself, and to do to others as he would be done
by—if he found such a person setting at naught or trampling
under foot the express injunctions of our Divine Master, not
to rob the poor because he is poor—drawing his subsistence
from the forced and unrequited labour of his inoffensive fel-
low-men—if he found him sanctioning by his example
and influence the horrible immoralities, the name-
-14 ss and untold atrocities which must exist wherever
slavery existed, then he would say, and he said it with pain,
that he trembled for such an individual, and that he blushed
for the anomalous, false, and ungracious picture which such
conduct presented. He would add, that if they had no other
representation of Christianity—if i they did not discern her
lovely features in other quarters, as they were pourtrayed in
the Book of God, they might be tempted to say that such re-
ligion could not be from abeve, from the Father of Mercies,
but beneath, from the Father of Lies, the author of all evil.—
( Hear, and cheers.) He must say, in reference to that speech,
that if ever there was a speech which bore on the face of
it the name of partizan, who laboured "to make the
worse appear the better cause"—(Cries of " Hear, hear")—
if ever there was a speech worthy of the palmy days of slavery,
it was the speech of Mr. Gladstone.—( Cheers.) It was the
speech of a feed advocate, the apology of the slave owner, and
the wrong doer, and of the interested and guilty party.—
( Cheers.) But when they recollected that Mr. Glad-
stone, or his family, received 80,0001. or 100,000/. out
of the twenty millions, which he ( Mr. Blair) maintained
instead of going into the pocket of the wrong doer, should,
upon every principle of justice and mercy, have been paid to
those who had been robbed of every thing that was dear to
men.—( Loud cheering.) When he remembered that Mr.
Gladstone still held in his grasp many hundreds of defenceless
and unoffending fellow-creatures, he could not wonder at his
defence of the system, and his anxiety to cling to the remaining
two years of apprenticeship.
The Rev. HUGH M'NEtL here came forward. He apolo-
gised for the interruption, but thought that personal allusions
of that nature had nothing whatever to do with the matter.
( Cheers, and cries of " Order, order," and some confusion.)
The CHAIRMAN said the Reverend Gentleman's interposi-
tion was very much in accordance with his own feelings.
An allusion to Mr. Gladstone was perhaps unavoidable in
reply to his speech, but he hoped it would not be pesevered in.
Mr. BLAIR had prefaced what he had to say relative to
Mr. Gladstone, by trusting that it was in accordance with
the feeling of the meeting. He would at once bow to its
decision, observing, however, that he had made no al-
lusion to the character of Mr. Gladstone,
Rev. Mr. M‘Nete—You were right to speak of him.
Mr. BI.AIR--No one sympathises more with Mr. Glad
sone, for the unfortunate position in which he was
placed, and his observations had been certainly more
.n sorrow than in anger. He would only say this
much, that if some of Mr. Gladstone's statements
were correct, either the Planters of Jamaica were the most
maligned and calumniated body of men on the earth, and the
slaves were in every respect more comfortable and happy than
the peasantry of this country ; but, then, what would they
say of the contrary statements made in Parliament by Mr.
Gladstone's own friends and allies ?—( Hear, hear.) What
would Mr. Gladstone say to the sweeping condemna-
tions of Sir E. Sugden, Lord Gienelg, Sir G. Grey—
the accusations of the Marquis of Sligo, and the
terrible denunciations of Lord Brougham, and what would he
say of the Government Bill itself, which was intended to
correct the gross abuses and infractions of the Imperial Act?
Either Mr. Gladstone-proved too much or all the others Were
greatly mistaken.—( Hear.) In the space of 22 months
lie found that one in four of the whole labouring
population of the West Indies had been punished.
In transferring the power of the special magistrates, it had
been confidently anticipated that the sufferings of the negrocs
would be diminished ; but they had been disappointed, fur the
whole system of slavery, whether as regarded stocks, iron
collars, working in penal gangs, the tortures of the wheel,
which is still in active operation—when to that was added
the frequent mulcts of the labourer's time, he would say
that his condition was very little, if at all, improved or ame-
liorated. He would ask, was it for that they had poured
their money like water to redeem those unhappy creatures
from bondage.—(cheers)? It was past endurance to think
that, although they had bought the negros' freedom
with so much money, and although they called him
a freeman, still he was liable to have his body torn
like a felon, by the degrading lash ; and what was still worse,
and more unspeakably atrocious, because it was in direct viola-
tion of the provisions of the Imperial Act, he was liable to see
his wife or daughter suspended from the cursed tread-mill,
knocked and bruised by the wheel, and her blood flowing from
her body.—(Cries of " Shame.") That was a part of the
question which, he confessed, disturbed him to the very centre
to think upon, and he would ask were they to look coldly on
and behold such wrongs and indignities as these and yet make
no effort to relieve them ?—( Cheers.) Would they who
were founding an asylum for helpless foreigners driven by op-
pression to their shores, and who were ready to shed their
blood like water in defence of freedom—would they look on at
the blood-stained limbs of defenceless men and women
while they inflicted the punishment of the law upon the tortu-
rers of " the beasts that perish."---( Cheers.) How were all
these atrocities to be got rid of by the present Bill—they pro-
posed to legislate for the future, but awarded no compensation
for the past, and that measure was just as likely to be vio-
lated as the one it professed to amend.—( Hear, bear.) If
he might be allowed, without arrogance, to make one
allusion to scripture, he would say that the attempt was like
patching an old garment with new cloth. The rent would
only be made worse, the Bill would produce more irrita-
tion in the West Indies than the simple and straightforward
righteous measure they advocated. The Bill would be looked
upon as a direct interference with the rights of the Colonial
legislature, and would be treated with scorn and contempt.
There was no possibility of amending the measure whilst any
part of the original taint remained—they might prune its
excaescences, strip off its unsightly parts, but it would be but
as a whited sepulchre externally, but when its recesses were
explored,it would be found filled w ith dead men's bones,rotteness,
and corruption. From the crown of the head to the sole of
the fuot there would be no sound part in it—it admitted but
of one cure, and that was sweeping it all away.—( Cheers.)
Away then with tall tinkering, patching, and mending—let
them lay the axe to the root of the evil, and by a decisive stroke,
plied by a vigorous arm, lay the moral Upas tree prostrate.
If the Parliament and her Majesty's Ministers refused to do
their duty—if they were compelled to sustain a second defeat,
and if the Legislature still continued to turn a deaf ear to the
nation's prayer, then his hope and prayer were, that that great
and gracious Being who sat enthroned above all human le-
gislation, whose ear was ever open to the prayer of
the poor and the defenceless—(Cries of " Hear, hear.")
and who once interposed with outstretched arm to deliver his
oppressed and trodden-down people from bondage—his hope
and prayer were, that lie would rise again in his might, and
by such means as his inscrutable wisdom deemed best, shake
off the oppressor, and burst the bonds of the wicked, and let
the oppressed go free.—( Loud and gener il cheering. )
A gentleman in the body of the meeting, whose name we
understood to be Knibb, here requested that the 15th section
of the Act might be read.
The SECRETARY having read the section,
Mr. KNIBB said the clause which had been read struck him
most forcibly, though it appeared very smooth on the surface,
as the greatest curse that could be inflicted on the negro.
The Rev. Mr. BEVAN explained the origin of what ap-
peared to be a misapprehension—the clauses he had read its
the course of his address basing been taken from the Bill as
submitted to the Members of the House of Commons, in
which subsequently some slight alterations had been made
before it passed into a law.
ADAM HODGSON, Esq. rose to move the next resolution,
and in doing so observed that he was hippy to say it
required few observations from him in order to recom-
mend it to the consideration and approval of the meet-
ing. It was not necessary for him, lie believed, to
enquire into the fairness or the unfairness of the
Parliamentary tactics by which Ministers took the opportunity
of introducing their on the ccsio of Stick-
land's motion ; nor wasown Bill
hp anxiouso toa fixn the oidium ofr that
measure on their opponents. The abrupt termination of the
debate was, be believed, owing to their own friends.—( Hear,
hear, and loud cheering.) It was now admitted by all
parties that the abrupt termination of the debate
was the cause of the loss of Sir George Stricklend's motion.
es (Hear.) He vas sure that at that late hour of the meet-
ing, it would be wrong were he to detain them with any
1, ngtheread observations, He would, however, say of the
debate, that had it not been thus tort-pleated, there would have
been a very favourable impression left on the House of Com-
mons;, Been after the brilliant speech of Mr. Gladstone.—
(A .laugh.) nOf that Gentleman's character, he begged to
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