The Sun.
London, England, 1838-04-25 00:00:00

to contribute all in their power to their amusements. Why
had the secret been let out at last ? Because all the money
had been paid. The people of Bath were simple enough to
swallow all these extraordinary statements, and therefore he
was warranted in saying that they had sanctioned the payment
of that large sum of money to the West Indian slave owners.
—( Hear, hear.) He would now remind them of the measure
of justice dealt out on that occasion to the Rev. Mr. Knibb
and his party. Mr. Borthwick, when delivering his lec-
j tures, had stated that the Baptist leaders were very bad fel-
-1 lows, but That Mr. Knibb was especially such as he was, a-self-
convicted liar, a foul libeller, and deserved hanging. Mr. Knibb
afterwards met Mr. Borthwick in that town, and in a defence
of two hours replied fully to every one of the charges brought
against him. Mr. Borthwick denied that he had ever abused
Mr. Knibb, or spoken ill of him, and not having completed
his reply, he was allowed an additional half hour by the
Chairman ; and when Mr. Knibb rose there was an uproar
from the opposite party, which prevented a single word from
being heard. The Chairman actually left the Chair, and an-
other gentleman took it, although Mr. Borthwick and his
party had actually refused him that measure of justice.—
(Hear. ) He would say then that great injustice, great folly,
and great delusion had been practised in Bath, and persons
had been induced to subscribe largely to the champion of a
bad cause. Had that not been the case—had they not sanc-
tioned such statements, it was very possible that the evils they
now all lamented would never have occurred. He would,
therefore, call upon them, although he was aware that many of
those present had their hands clean, and had never touched
slave money, or subscribed for the presentation of that piece
of plate—still living in the same place, he called upon them,
more than any other town, city, or place, to redeem their
characters, by doing justice to the unhappy slave, whose cause
they had on the former occasion abandoned for that of his
brutal master.—(Cheers.) Perhaps after all, Providence was
only hardening the hearts of these Pharoahs in order to bring
down its summary vengeance upon them—perhaps they might
yet see on their shores a Red sea, and the people separated
from their task masters by the hcruest assertion of their rights ;
and he sincerely hoped if justice did not come from any other
quarter, that Providence would work it out for them in its
own inscrutable ways.—(Great cheering.) He felt much
pleasure in moving the first resolution..
The Rev. W. BEVAN, Secretary to the Liverpool Anti-
slavery Society, seconded the resolution. As their Chair-
man had, on Friday last, very properly and honourably re-
presented the feelings of the people of Bath, at the meeting
in the former town, he (Mr. Bevan) now s!-.cod there as the
representative of the people of Liverpool, rho were united
with them by a community of interests, and a feclng of sym-
pathy in the promotion of that great national causa. As his
Reverend predecessor had addressed himself to local circum-
stances, it became his (Mr. Bevan's) duty to address himself
to the resolution which was before them. He begged, in the '
first place, as the friend of the negro, most solemnly and &s-
-tinctly to disavow any political or party feeling ; and he re-
joiced to know that, in the town he came from, all those who

were the antipodes on every other question, joined heart and
hand in helping forward the cause of humanity, the cause of
religion, the cause of justice, and the cause of God.—(Cheers. )
In addressing himself to the question, therefore, he begged
to be distinctly understood as casting no imputation upon the
motives or characters of any of those parties who had interested
themselves in the opposition with which they had had to con-
tend. They had to deal with their conduct, and not with them-

selves. They had to deal with one particular point of their
administration, and not with their general system of policy.
—( Hear, hear.) The resolution set forth that Sir G. Strick-
land's motion had been defeated "in consequence of the op-
position of the Government to that measure of sound policy
and justice ;" and that opposition stood upon rather peculiar
ground—Lord Glenelg admitting the manifold evils in the
working of the Abolition Act, and Sir George Grey dis-
tinctlydenying many of the admissions of the Chief Sc.
cretary, and in some instances throwing ridicule upon the
strong and irrefragable testimony advanced in its support.
Upon these conflicting admissions and denials the measure
had been made to stand. That measure had been brought
before the House for second reading under circumstances
calculated to excite suspicion and distrust, since it was made
to appear that although Sir George Strickland's motion had
priority in point of time, the other as a Government measure
was to have priority in point of intrinsic importance ; and
while they admitted the expediency of the piiuciple of Sir
George Strickland's motion, they were not to regard it to the
detriment of the measure the Government was about to bring
to maturity.—( Hear, hear.) It was well known, and had
been admitted by men of Parliamentary experience, that that
superinduction of the 2d reading the Bill of the Government
would seriously damage and endanger the motion of Sir G.
Strickland. The onus of such a step rested with the Colonial
administration, and upon them he believed it must be east.
The measure thus brought forward by the Government proved
the validity of the evidence tendered by the friends of the ne-
groes, and in the very first clause an admission was contained
that a proper division of time had not taken place—that it had
been illegally and cruelly distributed under the Abolition
Act. The infraction of the time allowed to the negroes was
recognised in the second clause, and in the third clause there
was ample proof that the adequate maintenance and customary
allowances to females had been withdrawn.—( Hear, hear.)

lie found in it also an admission of practices of the greatest
cruelty and injustice—that the manumission tribunals were
defective, and that the classification was unjust, and in many
cases totally neglected. With these admissions on the very
face of the Bill, he met its promoters, and he contended that
the case of the abolitionists was made out—not only by the

large amount of documentary evidence from official sources—
ncit only from the speeches of the Colonial Secretary himself,
but also by the very measure for which the West India inte-
rest in Parliament voted, and in voting for which they gave

the lie to their own denial of the truth of the statements put
forth by the Anti-slavery Society and its friends.—( Cheers.)
They stood by that measure in a triumphant position. Parlia-
ment not only recognized the statements which had been made,
but they admitted them in a shape which permitted of no de-
nial, and suffered no exception.—( Hear,' hear.) The enquiry
then was, these evils having been admitted by the Act,
what did they propose to remedy these evils, and remove these
abuses? They found most distinctly that inynany clauses of the
Act, there was a want of executory principle, and in others
much imperfection either in their spirit or letter, as would
make them fail in affording any adequate protection to those
for whom that protection was sought.—(Hear.) Under the
Act great responsibility was imposed upon the Governor—he
who acts upon his discretion as he thought fit—and yet, he was
to be held responsible for acting according to the dictates of
his own discretion and judgment, but he was still further re-
st ricted, and shackled by another power. He was not to ex-
ercise his own discretion, unless by and with the advice of the
Privy Council, a body composed of persons resident in the
colonies, mixed up in its concerns, and it might be personally
and deeply interested in the continuance of the abuses of the
system. If the Governor was a humane and righteous man, be
would be obstructed by those otherwise disposed ; and if he were
not an honourable and honest man, then he fell in with the
views of the planters, and the abuses were perpetuated under
the new Act.—( Cheers. ) Who, he would ask, would under-
take the office of Governor with such a responsibility and so
trammelled—liable to be looked upon with suspicion, either by
the people of this country, or by the planters in the colony ?
But not only was the measure Unjust in its principle, but in
several instances of complaint there was no adequate provi-
sion made for their removal. He would turn to the subjects
of regulation and classification, and it had been matter of cons-
plaint that while the Abolition Law provided that parties only
duly registered might be held in bondage, there were thou-
sands retained in that servile condition who bad never been
registered, whom Lord Glenelg himself admitted ought to be
set free—he alluded to the 2,000 negroes, concerning whom
he had sent a despatch to the Governor of the Mauritius, and
who were, for aught they knew, still illegally detained in a
state of bondage.—( Hear, hear.) There was nothing to
meet that in the Act. The classification had been also a
subject of complaint. The non-preedials, under the operation
of the Act, were to be liberated in 1833, and the prmdials
in 1840. Now by the confusion or neglect of classification,'
it was well known that many proprietors were holding in the
prospect of future years of bondage many persons who were
not legally included in the class, by bringing non-prmdials
into the prandial class. How was that to be remedied? He
found that the classification was to be revised as in Jamaica.
There was a certain test by which that revision was to be'
made, and that test was the classification law which Lord
Glenelg himself disavowed. The test sent to the Commis-
sioners of Compensation regulated the amount of compensa-
tion for the two classes, and he held that if the owner received
a just ansount of compensation, the apprentice was, at the ex-
piration of the time limited by it, entitled to his freedom.
He found that the Act disallowed by Lord Glenelg passed the
House of Assembly in March last, and Lord Glenelg then
expressed his gratification that it had passed. On the Ist of
June it came into operation, and on the 30th of June its ope-
ration ceased, and then, after the lapse of time between March
and September, after the expression of his Lordship's great
gratification, he wakes up from his slumbering, and on the 2d
of September takes no less than six distinct objections to this
very Act, and the consequence inevitably appeared to be that
the Act must be disallowed. But what must be their surprise
to find the very Act so disallowed raised from the sepulchre
in which it was entombed, and now sent out for the
guidance of the Governor and the colonists ?—(oh, oh 1)
He was at a loss to know why that substitution should have
been made. It was further stated that the manumission was
rendered difficult, and it was proposed to remedy that defect.
The slave was entitled to purchase his freedom whether the
the master consented or not • for that purpose two Justices,
one of them special and the other local, were to form a tribu-
nal, and to call in a third Magistrate if they disagreed. That
had been open to great abuse, and Lord Glenelg proposed to
remedy that in the 6th clause, by appointing official umpires,
whose award should be final ; but there was no restriction or
stipulation as to who these umpires were to be. They might
be planters or overseers, the mercenaries and tools of the plan-
ters, and thus Lord Glenelg proposed to throw the appren-
tices upon the tender mercies of the cruel planters.—( Hear,
hear.) It appeared further that the negro suffered a loss by
the infraction of his time, and Lord Glenelg met that by
enacting that the Governor might appropriate and distribute
the legal working hours; but there was nothing to prohibit
the planter from extending the period to nine or ten hours
daily.—( Hear, hear.) Furthermore, it was complained that
the negroes had been subjected to ,reiterated and galling
cruelty, and Lord Glenelg provides that parties treated
cruelly might be discharged from servitude ; but it did
not say that these persons must be discharged—it left
it entirely in his discretion, and the poor negro was as far as
ever from a remedy. There was still further difficulty in the
case of a negro wishing to establish a complaint against his
master. The special justice was not allowed to give notice
of the time he would visit au estate, and the negro could have
no opportunity of arranging his witnesses, and he came before
the special justice without due preparation. They all knew
the quirks and quibbles of the gentlemen of the law, and he