The Sun.
London, England, 1838-02-21 00:00:00

food, no improvement in the condition of the negro was ob-
servable. Then, with regard to time, it is obviously of the
utmost importance that the apprentice should have at least
two holidays and a half a week—the Sabbath for religious
worship and instruction, the Saturday to attend the mar-
kets, and half of Friday to work in his own garden. The
Act of Emancipation specified forty-five hours a week as
the period the apprentice was to work for his ma=ter, but the
master so contrived matters as in most instances to make the
forty-five hours the law allotted him run into the ap-
prentice's half of Friday, and even in 85Mf: cases into the
Saturday. The elenter invariably counted the time from the
moment that the slave commenced his work ; and as it often
occurs that his residence was on the border of the estate, he
may have to walk five or six miles to get the place he has to
work. This was a point which he was sure their Lord-
ships would agree with him in thinking required alteration.
The next topic to which I shall advert relates to the admi-
nistration of justice ; and this large and imporiant subject I
cannot pass over without a word to remind your Lordships
how little safe it is, how little deserving the name of just or
anything like just, that w here you have two classes you
should separate them into conflicting parties, until they be.
come so exasperated in their resentment as scarcely to re-
gard each other as brethren of the same species; and that you
should place all tho administration of justice in the hands of
one dominant class, whose principles, whose passions, whose
interests are all likely to be preferred by the judges when they
presume to sit where you have placed them on the judgment
seat. The chief and puisne Judges aro raised to their si-
tuations from amongst the class which includes the white men
and planters. But worse than that, the jurors are taken from
the same privileged body : jurors, who are to assess civil
damages in actions for injuries done to the negroes—_
jurors who are to try bills of indictment against the
whites for the maltreatment of the blacks--jurors who are
to convict or acquit on those bills—jurors who are to try
the slaves themselves—nay, magistrates, jailors, turnkeys,
the whole apparatus of justice, both administrative and exe-
cutive, exclusively in the hands of one race. What is the
consequence ? Why, it is proverbial that no bills are found
for the blacks.—( Hear, hear.) Six bills of indictment were
preferred, some for murder and some for bad manslaughter,
and at one assizes every one of these six indictments was
thrown out. Assizes after Assizes the same thing happened,
until at length wagers were held that no such Bill would be
found, and no one was found to accept them. Well was it
for them that they declined, for every one of the bills preferred
was ignored. Now, observe that in proceedings, as your
Lordships know, before grand jurors not a tittle of evidence is
heard for the prisoners ; every witness is in favour of the in-
dictment, or finding of the bill; but in all these instances the
bills were flung out on the examination of evidence solely
against the prisoner. Even in the worst cases of murder, as
certainly and plainly committed as the sun shines at noon day,
monstrous to all, the bills were thrown out when half the wit-
nesses for the prosecution remained to be examined.—( Hear,
hear.) Some individuals swore against the prisoners, and
though others tendered their evidence, the jury refused to
hear them.—( Hear, hear.) Besides, the punishments inflicted
are monstrous ; 39 lashes are inflicted for the vague, indefi-
nite—because incapable to be defined—offence of insolence.
Thirty-nine lashes for the grave and the more definite, I ad-
mit, offence of an attempt to carry a small knife. Three
months' imprisonment or fifty lashes for the equally grave
offence of cutting off the shoot of a cane-plant ! There
seems to have prevailed at all times amongst the Gover-
nors of our colonies a feeling, of which I grieve to say
the governors at home have ever and anon largely partaken,
that there is something in the nature of a slave—something in
the habits of the African negro—something in the disposition
of the unfortunate hapless victims of our own crimes end cruel-
ties, which makes what is mercy and justice to other men
cruelty to society and injustice to the law in the case of the
negro, and which condemns offences slightly visited, if visited
at all, with punishment, when committed by other men, to the
sentence that fur his obdurate nature none can be too severe.
--(Hear.) As if we had any one to blame but ourselves—as if
we had any right to visit on him that character if it were ob-
durate, those habits if they were insubordinate, that dishonest
disposition if it did corrupt his character, all of which I deny,
and which experience proves to be contrary to the fact and
truth ; but even if these statements were all truth, instead of
being foully slanderous and absolutely false, we of all men
have ourselves to blame, ourselves to tax, and ourselves to
punish, at least for the self-abasement, for we have been the
very causes of corrupting the negro character.—(Cheers.) If
some capricious despot, in his career of ordinary tyranny,
Were to tax his imagination to produce something more
monstrous and unnatural than himself, and were to place a
clove amongst vultures, or engraft a thorn on the olive-
tree, much as we should marvel at the caprice, we should
be still more astounded at the expectation, which ex-
ceeds even a tyrant's proverbial unreasonableness, that he
should gather grapes from the thorn, or that the clove should
be habituated to a thirst for blood. Yet that is the caprice,
that is the unreasonable, the foul, the gross, the monstrous,
the outrageous, incredible injustice of which we are hourly
guilty towards the whole unhappy race of negroes.—( Cheers, )
My Lords, we fill up the measure of injustice by severely exe-
cuting laws badly conceived in a still more atrocious and cruel
spirit. The whole punishments smell of blood.—( Hear,
hear.) If the treadmill stop in consequence of the languid
limbs and exhausted frames of the victims, within a minute
the lash resounds through the building—if the stones which
they are set to break be not broken by limbs scarred, and
''marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of the
whip to their toilsome task. I myself have heard within the
lest three hours, from a person who was an eye-witness of the
appalling and disgusting fact, that a leper was introduced
amongst the negroes ; and in passing let me remark that in
private houses or hospitals no more care has been taken to
separate those who are stricken with infectious diseases from
the sound portion, any more than to furnish food to those
in prison who are compelled, from the unheard-of, the
paltry, the miserable disposition to treat with cruelty
the victims of a prison, to go out and gather their
own food—a thing which I believe even the tyrant of
Siberia does not commit. Yet in that prison, where blood
flews profusely, and the limbs of those human beings are sub-
jected to perpetual torture, the frightful, the nauseous, the
disgusting—except that all other feelings are lost in pity to-
wards the victim and indignation against the oppresses—sight
was presented of a leper, scarred from the eruptions of dis-
ease on his legs and previous maltreatment, whaled again and
again, and his blood again made to flow from the gaoler's lash.
I have told your Lordships how Bills have been thrown out
for 'murdering the negroes. But a man had a Bill presented
for this offence : a petition was preferred, and by a white
limn. Yes, a white man, who had dared, under feelings of
excited indignation, to complain to the regularly constituted
authorities, instead of receiving for his gallant conduct the
thanks of the community, had a Bill found which was pre-
sented against him as a nuisance. I have, within the last two
hours, amid the new mass of papers laid before your Lordships
within die last forty-eight hours, culled a sample which, I
believe, represents the whole odious mass. Eleven females
have been flogged, starved, lashed, attached to the tread-
mill, and compelled to work until nature could no
longer endure their sufferings. At the moment when
the wretched victims were about to fall off—when
they could no longer bring down the mechanism
and continue the movement, they were suspended by their
arms, and at each revolution of the wheel received new
wounds on their members, until, in the language of that law
so grossly outraged in their persons, they " languished and
died." Ask you if a crime of this murderous nature went
unvisited, and if no inquiry was made respecting its circum-
stances? The forms of justice were observed ; the hand-
maid was present, but the sacred mistress was far away.
A coroner's inquest was called ; for the laws decreed
that no such injuries should take place without having en
inquiry instituted. Eleven inquisitions were held, eleven
inquiries were made, eleven verdicts were returned. For mur-
der ? Manelalighter ? Misconduct ? No ; but that " they,
died by the visitation of God." A lie—a perjury—a blas-
phemy ! The visitation of God 1 Yes, for it is among the
most awful of these visitations by which the inscrutable pur-
poses of his isill are mysteriously accomplished, that he
Sometimes arms the wicked with power to op-
press the guiltless—and if there be any visitation more
dreadful than another—and which more tries the faith
and vexes the reason of erring mortals, it is when Heaven
showers down upon the earth the plague--not of scor-
pions—or pestilence—or famine—or war—but of unjust
judges and perjured .persons—wretches who pervert the law
to wreak their personal vengeance or compass their sordid
views, and forswear themselves on the Gospels of God,
to the end that injustice may prevail, and the innocent be de-
stroyed I—( Cheers.) Now, my Lords, it is for the purpose of
stopping such enormities as these, of correcting the adminis-
tration of justice, of securing the comforts and restraining the
torments to which the negroes are now subject, of amending
the discipline of the prisons, and of giving the necessary
Powers for enforcing the local acts--it is wills these views that
I Propound to your Lordships the first five resolutions, to have
effect during, I trust, the very brief period which will elapse
between this hour and the time when freedom is finally este-
bliithed. My Lords, I entirely concur in what was formerly
said by Mr. Burke, and afterwards repeated by Mr. Canning,
that while the making of laws was confined to the owners of slaves,
tlothing they did was ever found real or effectual. And when,
Perchance, anything was accomplished, it had not, as Mr. Burke
"id "an executive principle." But, when they find you deter-
mined to do your duty, it is proved, by time example which
they have given in passing the Apprenticeship Amendment
Act, that they will even outstrip you to prevent your inter-
ference with them.—( Hear, hear.) Therefore, if your reso-
lutions demonstrate that you are in good earnest, depend upon
h themselves will be in earnest tomcat them. I look forward
host undoubtedly to great improvements being effected by the
bten which I propose here, and which will be followed up
elsewhere; but from all the attention which I have been able
to bestow on the subject, I niuet look on it as the origin of
that complete and final emancipation which I hare demon-
strated to be safe, expedient, useful, and imperative.—
(Cheers.) The proposal which I make is one of expediency
and temporary application, to be observed until the time
arrives when freedom can be secured. But let that once be
established—place the negroes on the same footing with other
inen—and give them the uncontrolled power over their time
and labour—and it will become the interest of the planter, as
well as the rest of the community, to treat the negro well,
for their comfort and happiness depend on his industry and
good behaviour. —(Cries of " Hear, heel.") It is a con-
sequence perfectly clear, notwithstanding former distinc-
tions, notwithstanding the difference of colour and the
variety of race in that population, the Negro and the
West Indian w ill in a very few generations—when the clank
of his chain is no longer "heard, when the oppression of
the master can vex no more, when equal rights are enjoyed
byilia end all have a common interest in the general pros-
perity-_be impressed with a sense of their having an equal
share in the promotion of the public welfare Such are the
visions of improvement ; not only of peace and happiness fol-