The Sun.
London, England, 1838-03-31 00:00:00

~;1•1 paid the money for his obtaining this privilege. And let it be
7:er remembered, that while you had the money in your exchequer
1.1 could have obtained any stipulations which were necessary to en.
cure to the negro those advantages which you now make a tardy effort
1 confer upon him ; but with preposterous haste you distributed the
motley without protesting the negro, or answering the claims of
rushee and humanity.—(Cheers) It is next provided that no person
I!! Ibe committed as a vagrant except by a stipendiary magistrate.
This Clause bespeaks a foregone conclusion—that any man
50.11nd beyond the estate to which he belonged had beee
.hitherto denominated a vagrant. And this is placed beyond doubt
107 the next provision, which requires that the negro should use a pass in
going from ono part of the country to the ether. So that here is a free-
lo an —for the apprenticed negro is entitled to that appellation when he
ilts discharged his 45 hours' work in the week—debarred from the right
t
going from one place to another! The evidence is full of instances
Whir. MO, desirous of visiting their wives and families, have been pro-
hibited by the owners from passing the boundaries of their estates.
What is this but to make every plantation a prison, and to prevent a free-
tian from going beyond the limit of his task-master'e property.—(Hear
4id cheers.) I am not resorting to any doubtful evidence, but to the con-
fessions emphatically made by the provisions of your own act of amend.
s/4,ent. The next clause. prohibits the flogging of females. Why 1
iltellght we had taken steps to prevent that in the Imperial Act. It is
true in the first draft of the act all provision for this grievance was
CltSitted, and f cairn this honour of having placed on the order book a
netice to supply this defect. It is true that this point was very
l'reperly taken out of my hands by the Noble Lord (Lord Stanley)
tsut 1 ant not on that account the less anxious that this
11XeMption should be full and complete.—(Hear, hear, hear.)
Ras the provision inserted in the Imperial Act been carried into effect ?
I remember well how powerfully the Noble Lord (Stanley), in his elo.
Went speech on introducing the Emancipation Act, pointed out the un.
Manly cruelty, the total want of generous and manly feeling, exhibited
by the metnbers of the Colonial Legislatures, who could not be prevailed
Ort to give up the whip, " even in the case of the female," not to speak of
ng so far as to abolish flogging altogether. The Noble Lord thought
he had eecured that object. He applied his powerful and ingenious
Mind to the s'ehject, with a view to give effect to his wishes : the clause
was maturely frame and carried by the Legislature. Did it succeed ?
It is admitted it did not. A
'eel was it not one of the conditions, the most
dearly-cherished conditions, of the
hoots of six years' apprenticeship
granted to the planters ? It must be admitted--heaven help eke man
who can doubt it I—that the people of Erigland acceded to the payment
of the :20,000,0004 principally because they eepected that this condi .
tiofs should be faithfully observed.—(Cheers.) The Women of Eng-
land, who have sent up uncounted millions of petitions ill Avow' of the
emancipation of the Negroes, lent their countenance to the Imperial
Act, because they were convinced that it would have the effect
of rescuing the unfortunate beings of their Sex from the degradation,
cruelty, and torture of the lash.—(Cheers.) 'Pita Noble Lord (Lord
Stanley) did everything he could to make this clause as stringent as pos-
tale. The Legislature did everything it could to assist him. lint both
total?), failed ; and this diabolical and atrocious violation of the express
enactment of the Legislature some Mess have now the haelihood to de-
signate as part of a contract which ought not in the slightest degree
to be touched. Sir, the people of England latteh to scorn soar a notion,
You have heard within this House the noise occasioned by the congre.
gated dissenters who besiege your doors. And who are they theft have
raised this cry of immediate emancipation ? Are they the idle and the
violent agitators who look to the convulsions of the State, and disregard
social order; men who look to the chances of revolution as holding
out the hope of their being possibly useful to their interests ? No';
they are the steadiest, soberest, most industrious, and most respectable
Men, differing with me as to religious forms, but holding out in their
conduct the happy spectacle of religious zeal mixed with religious cha-
rity. They are men who do not care for distance of country or dif-
ference of clime, but risk their health as scattered missionaries of huma.
nity, and have travelled at their own expense to the remotest corners of th e
globe in order to indulge the noble gratification of doing the work of
their God by benefiting his creatures.—(Cheers.) These are the men
that you think to put off by a passage of Lord Clenelg'c speech or a
Solitary instance of a colony in which the apprenticeship system has
worked well. Recollect that four years hare gone by, and that suffer.
ings have been endured for that period, and yet two years more are now
to be thrown in to answer the purpose of your present "hit or miss"
kind of legislation. If you think they will bear this, you mistake the
men. They have too much good sense and good feeling not to deter_
Mine, should you reject this motion, to redouble their efforts, and to
send up to your table 500,000 petitions, besides crowds of deputies who
will peaceably and quietly stand before your door, but who will insist on
having his freedom granted to the negro.—(Cheers.) They are enlisted
in a cause too good and too sacred—dear as it is to humanity, and con-
secrated to religion—to admit of their respiting their exertions for a
tingle moment until they succeed, as they ought to do, and until the
last fetter is struck off from the limbs of the negro. But this Bill con-
tains one or two other provisions for compelling compliance with the
conditions of the Emancipation Act. At this moment the distinc.
Lion between predial and non predial has been ascertained. The Hon.
Baronet (Sir G. Grey) stated last night that if you passed a law in ac.
cordance with the resolution, it would not reach the West Indies until
a day or two before the Ist of August. Now, I shall ask in turn, what
is to be the effect of his legislation, delayed until the Ist of August, for
distinguishing predials from non-predials ? How many a man, then
entitled to his freedom, will be condemned to the illegal sufferings of
slavery ! The Jamaica Legislature have pertinaciously refused for four
years to pass an Act on this subject, which you ought to have compelled
them to have done in the first instance. It took myself a fortnight to
understand the distinctions between predial and non-predial, attached
predial and non-attached predial. Now, it ever there was a case which
required that you should depute some High Commissioner for its settle-
ment, it is that to which I have referred. But is it not insufferable that
you should allow three—four years to pass without legislating at all on
this question, and that you should pass a law which enables a man to
augment his property at the expense of another, by raising the value of
iron-predial over predial slaves ? This is a matter on which the public
sentiment cannot be checked. Dust may be thrown in the eyes of
good men : delusions may be practised on honest men ; but let me ask
whether the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench would have volun-
teered an Opinion, if his conscience did not :all upon him to promulgate
it lam entitled to ask who appointed the Noble and Learned Lord;
who declared him to be the fittest man to preside over the first bench in
the British dominions, which decides on questions relating to the
honour, the lives, and the property of her Majesty's subjects? The
Present Government.—(Hear, hear.) They at least arc precluded from
`aging that he is not a man competent to the situation; and when he has
stepped out of his usual course at the call of justice and humanity, his
°Pi"°, May be called extra-judicial ; but he lies proclaimed, with all
the solemnity and sanctity of his name, that there is saci contract to
Prevent us from doing justice.--(Cheers) I have, of course, wearied
the House—(Much cheering)—but I think I have established these pro-
Positions, that the West India planters have been greatly benefited by
the emancipation; that complaints of distress and difficulty are no
°offer heard; that the imports are increasing, and the exports diminish.
fig ; and that the negro population have completely vindicated their
character, and read an emphatic lesson to another country, calling
itself free, and boasting of its democratic institutions, to prove, when
they speak of dangers to be apprehended from the brutalised negro, that
he went through an apprenticeship of full four years, that his conduct
was scrupulously watched, regularly attended to, and cautiously re.
Ported, and that he came out of the frial with the full praise of possess-
ing all the kindly and warns feelings which belong to the social charac-
ter, and of demonstrating his desire to ameliorate his Condition, and to
benefit the objects of his choice and love.—(Cheers.) What is the
next proposition ? I have proved that there was no compact, and that
there were no parties to it ; for that the legislatures of the colonies,
though not disregarded by the Noble Lord (Lord Stanley), were treated
With that hig's hand which he had a right to use. I have next shown
that this case is one on which the House is called upon to legislate, and
on which it is not necessary that it should depart from any of its ordi,
in,tY functions and powers. The Honourable Gentleman (Sir G.
Grey) has said that the law of the country admitted a state of
slavery. I utterly deny that declaration in the sense in which
Was made' and I put it to this test, that if a negro were
the
law
coosouulr
not
ot have handed before him as a Judge in 1833, and his purchase proved, he
hint over as property to the owner, I admit that
suffered the practice in the colonies. Why ? Because the arm
of the law of England was not long enough to reach them ; and because
the writ of habeas corpus did not run into those colonies, But the
Moment the slave appeared at the bar of the King's Bench the title of
tne master was gone.—(Cheers.) But looking to the high power of the
Legislature to decree the extinction of slavery, seeing that ernancipas
ton was greeted in a manner most advantageous to the planter, who got
a large sum of money, which, though I opposed, I should not now re-
gret if I obtained value in return, and maintaining that the appren-
ticeship was given on conditions, I now stand on my last proposition,
that these conditions were not performed, aed that you may as well at-
tempt to call back the waters of the Thames on which the late snows
drifted, as to resist the demands which are made to strike off the last
fetters of the slave, and to make him what the people of England in.
tended him to be. [The Hon. and Learned Gentleman sat down amid
loud and confirmed cheers.]
Mr. PLUMPTRE had not heard sufficient reasons assigned to induce
him to vote for the resolution of the Hon. Baronet (Sir G. Strickland).
He did not feel satisfied that the proposition would prove beneficial to
The negroes, whilst it would be an act of injustice to the planters.-
---!Hear.) The motion of the Hon. Baronet might be carried, but it
wou,:i be with the loss of life, with the ruin of families, and through the
distress of countless thousands.
Lord 1-:0 W ICK said that the deep interest he had for many years
felt in the su Nect of slavery, and the part he had taken in the several
discussions that had from time to time ensued upon it, made hiin most
anxious to state to the Mouse the grounds on which lie intended to op-
Pose the motion of the Hon. Baronet. If his (Lord Howick's) vote de-
pended on the question as to wieeher or not he had altered the opinions
formerly entertained, and on all ocesisions expressed by him, previous and
subsequent to leen, he should save no hesitation in giving the motion his
support. The experience of five years which had elapsed since than only
impressed on his mind themore deeply the conviction of the necessity which
then existed for a complete and unconditional emaucieation of the ne.
&roes. But unhappily a political error could not be redeemed by a re-
tracing of the steps which led to it; and the case under consideratien
Was one which only tended to aggravate the original evil. It would be
necessary for him to take a review of the circumstances which led
t 5 his present decision, at well as to the probable results which
would accrue if the motion of the Honourable Baronet were agreed
to. In the first place, he should beg to remind the House
that the apprenticeship interval was not proposed by any one having
an interest in slave property, but by the Government themselves,
The principle of that plan had received the sanction of the House,
Cod, more particularly of his Honourable and Learned Friend be.
n id him and others, who like him were the active and zealous
friends of the negro. It was true that some of the conditions
had been protested against, and many wished that the powers
Were more restricted, but the principle of apprenticeship was
'lever opposed. In consequence of this, no division took place on
those resolutions in which it was embodied. He (Lord Howick) was
'well aware of the high and honourable motives which influenced his
°n. and Learned Friend, and many of those who acquiesced with him,
in their approval of this principle; but he thought at the same time
that tr
-•'eY had fallen into a very natural error on the subject. How-
xher e
easy it might be now for Hon. Members to assert that apprentice.
wn a great evil, and that total emancipation was absolutely ncces.
--4,`Y at that period, some years since such was not the general opinion
.°` the House or of the country. At the time alluded to and previously
t was the expressed opinion of the most powerful and consistent advo-
cate' of uegro freedom that then or ever lived-51r. Burke, Mr. Can-
hang, Mr. Buxton, and many others—that the slaves should riot be Jibe.
rted ,
, once or on a sudden • and the second-named of these statesmen
n 4,1 . •
that "we must take off their fetters link by link." Now he
(Lord iPowick) did not in the onset pretend to be free from that too
easily adrn!tted error; and, for a long time after his emerging into
riblic life, he was accustomed to receive it as an incontestable truth
out w"
Only during the period that be had the honour to hold the
th 'e
tinder-Seers tarp for the Colonies—a space of two years—
invatorhtuenlittad occasion to change his opinion on the subject. The
ea), the
Y Which he then had of witnessing the diffieerlties,
is utter impossibility, of carrying into effect the theory
t slavery should be mitigated by degrees, that opened his
:Yrle'otti(:,:he error he had been labouring under in comma., wLitt almost
°ui
Persons at that period. He was at length convinced, beer,. his
ruin observation, that the vice of slavery lay in slavery itself, and that
modification of a system „web gave one malt a compulsory
• snit to the labour of another was eolniettible with good will ; ant's he
hetet",
le multiplication, of e fully satisfied that whilst that right 4,4140 ti
vuatic,n):•e:Tkh'aatnwd regulations
years' observatSots, during
the result in his trsiri4 of two
regularly
ea leriod his Noble Friend at the boo of the Colonial Department
kiewiek) e endeavoured to work out his systeari, In 1830 he (Lord
by cable to the conch/49n that a wrong course wee being pursued
PoPulatio "Friend and the GOverisenent. He thought that thelaheoring
rtlieshounidorbtehe'veEt Indies should be sett in a moral position, and that
—nes • acted on by influencing their will, not by punishing their
in the same He
S's.eed manner es other labourers. was further con.
at the project pr triining the slaves ft? r *gancipation