The Sun.
London, England, 1833-09-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

We insert in another column a protest of the
Duke of Wellington against the Bill for the
emancipation of the negro slaves in our colonies,
in which his Grace has been fortunate to find
three other Noble Lords intrepid enough to join
him. We willingly award them the praise of
intrepidity, because we believe that it required
no ordinary degree of boldness to affix their
names to such a document, though led on by
the " first Captain of the age," avowing, as it
does, sentiments which the nation abhors, and
condemning the spirit of a measure which no
English Government or Legislature could longer
have resisted. It is unfortunate for the legisla-
tive reputation or political character of some
Noble Peers that this privilege of protesting is
allowed to exist, or is so frequently exercised in
th.: house of our hereditary law-givers. They
have thus the means of entering a record against
themselves which the other House does not
enjoy, and which they have lately employed to
their own serious injury. In opposing a mea-
sure by their speeches, loose observations fluently
delivered, or diffuse declamation under the
forms of reasoning, may tolerably answer
their purpose, and if they do not acquire for
them the character of wisdom, at least expose
them to little danger of losing it. Their
mistakes are ascribed to inadvertence, and
their intemperance is excused by the "heat of
the debate." But in recording their senti-
ments in a protest, to be entered on the journals
of the House, they can have no such indulgence
for their extravagance—no such apology for their
errors. Weighty arguments or important prin-
ciples, clothed in forcible and almost laconic
language, can alone warrant such a decided dis-
sent from a majority as is implied in a protest.
Directness of purpose, clearness of reasoning,
spirited though solemn expression, and cogency
of conclusion, seem essential to a document
which is supposed to embody, in a short com-
pass, the results of a long series of debates or
objections. Judging of the present protest by
this rule, the Noble Duke's friends must ex-
ceedingly regret its insertion in the journals of
the House, and its publication in the newspapers.
His speeches on the subject of the Emancipation
Bill were incoherent and inconclusive enough in
all conscience, but they were perfection itself
compared with this deliberate perpetration of
violence on his usual judgment and good sense
—showing that the pen of a statesman can sel-
dom be successfully grasped by the gauntlet of
a soldier. The first thing that must strike
the reader, in this strange production, is the
almost undisguised justification of intermina-
ble and hopeless slavery. It begins, in-
deed, by stating that the West India negroes
are " not prepared" for emancipation by " a
previous course of education, by religious in-
struction, or habits of industry ;" but could
they ever be so " prepared" so long as they
remain slaves ? Has any limit, in point of
time, been proposed by the colonists to this
state of bondage, or had the masters commenced
a course of religious instruction and moral dis-
cipline calculated and intended to result in
establishing their capacity for the enjoyment of
freedom ? Would the colonists, whom his
Grace patronizes, have been satisfied to surrender
their property in the bones and sinews of their
negroes, provided they had by some miracle, or
without any visible interference, become all at
once better educated and more enlightened?
Were any of the measures pressed upon them
with this view by the British Parliament and
British Government, even during his Grace's
administration, willingly adopted ? Were the
burnings of Methodists' chapels, the prohibitions
to attend the only places of divine worship to
which their slaves could resort, and the abso-
lute refusal of all the means of moral instruction,
the gradual " preparation" for that state of li-
berty and independence which they were destined
ultimately to attain ? No, no 7. the supposition
is absurd, and the Duke must be aware of its
absurdity. One of the ablest of the West India
planters, Mr. Burnley, has almost expressed in
direct terms that there can be no modified bon-
dage, no combination of the principle of free-
dom with slavery ; that the power of the master
must be absolute, so long as the system exists
that no preparation for enjoying the rights of
free citizens can be enforced from without upon
the colonist, and therefore, as a necessary con

sequence, that, though a British Legislature
may release the slave from his owner at once,
it cannot successfully interpose between them,
while the authority of the latter lasts, so as to
prepare the former for his transition to an inde-

pendent condition. The duties and the ha-
bits of freemen can only be taught, and the
motives of freemen only felt, in a state of free-
dom ; and to delay emancipation till the fet-
tered negro should be prepared to enjoy all its
blessings and perform all its duties, would ap-
pear nearly as ridiculous a procrastination of the
intended experiment as it was in the fool of
Ilierocles to swear that though desirous to swim
he would never expose himself in the water till

he had learnt that coveted art. But though the
Duke wished to remove a part of the odium of

justifying the continuance of interminable sla.
very from his protest, by thus hinting at an itn•
possible condition on which emancipation might
be conceded, the whole of his subsequent rea-
soning shows that he entertained no hope that
ever such a state of things could occur as to
render the contingent claim of the slave avail-
able for his freedom. We read of the magni-
tude of British interests involved in the measure,
and likely to be sacrificed by its adoption ; but
it seems to be assumed, that these interests
would be equally endangered, at any future
time, from the same course of proceed-
ing ; and that the negro, however en-
lightened
,or prepared for liberty by religious
and moral instruction' would not, if liberated,
work for his master in the
therefore,
cultivation or produc-
tion of sugar. We arefore, according to
the reasoning of the protest,
o reduced to the di-
lemna of either sacrificing sugar colonies,
our colonial property, our colonial and
a great portion of our colonial re'veTipueiu,go'r of
ciqualifications
systemizal
civilization
continuing an endless and enormous
oppression, whatever be the acquired
of the slave. It is evident that the
of the bondsman could have no ir.fluen'acte"'s
reducing the dangers of emancipation, so far ina
the cultivation of sugar is concerned, unless the
gift of freedom would induce the enlightened
negro to work without any other motive but
gratitude to his late oppressors. In support of
this interpretation of his Grace's language, we
beg leave to refer to his third reason of dis-
sent, which, for confusion of intellect, and an
unmeaning jumble of words, was never, per-
haps, exceeded. He tells us that the " exper-
riehce of all times and nations hasproved that men
at liberty to labour or not will not work for hire at
agricultural iabour in the low grounds within
the tropics." What ‘. the experience of all
nations" had to do with the particular labour of
men within the tropics it would be puzzling to

explain, And we may leave out the word " un-
civilized" as having no reference to the matter.
It is thus avowed that we can never, at any fu-
ture period, command the free labour which
cultivates sugar within the tropics, and that,
therefore, unless we intend to support inter-
minable slavery, the experiment of emancipation
may be as safely tried now as at any distant
period. The fourth ground of dissent displays
the same confusion of intellect, the same defi-
ciency of knowlege, and the same misapplica-
tion of a general principle, sound in itself, to
a state of things which the Emancipation Bill
is neither intended nor calculated to produce.
We shall venture to quote it with all the ad-
miration which it deserves.
"4th. Because the number of negroes on the several
islands and settlements on the continent of America
on which they are located is so small in proportion to
the extent of the country which they occupy, and the fer-
tility of the soil is so great, and the climate (however in-
s2luhrious and little inviting to exertion and labour) is so
favourable to vegetation and the growth of all descriptions
of the produce of the earth, that it cannot be expected that
these emancipated slaves, thus uneducated and untrained,
will he induced to work for hire."
And why not work " for hire," though their
numbers be small and their territory extensive ?
What has the magnitude of the country to do
with the matter, if the emancipated slave has not
a foot of land within it which he can call his
own ? How does its fertility exempt him from
labour, if he has no provision-grounds, except at
the will of the planter, or by contract with the
state? The noble Duke and his legislative
aides-de camp have thus forgotten one thing in
their statement, which alters its whole value.
'Though the soil be fertile, and the climate favour-
able to negro life, the emancipated slave cannot en-
joy one rood of ground on which to build his hut,
raise his poultry, or grow his yams, without the
leave of his master. The provision-grounds of the
negro belong to the planter as much as his cane-
fields, and, unless he works for them, he may
be denied their enjoyment. The country may,
indeed, be extensive, but severe laws may be
enacted and enforced to compel residence, and
to repress vagrancy. The free negro refusing to
work, and wandering without the visible means
of subsistence, may be punished as a rogue and
a vagabond, as in our own free island at home.
The mistake of his Grace arises from assimilating
the emancipated negroes in the British colonies
with the blacks in St. Domingo immediately
after they had expelled the white planters. In
the British colonies the planters will themselves
be to blame if any incendiary violence or san-
guinary anarchy mark the progress of emancipa-
tion. The present frame-work of society may be
preserved by a vigorous magistracy and a power-
ful police, with only the exception of theabolition
of the cart-whip and the substitution of motives of
personal advantage for the dread ofbrutal punish-
ment. If the measure of emancipation be just
and necessary in itself, we shall not tremble at
the mass of interests enumerated in the fifth rea-
son of dissent as involved in the question. We
cannot, however, help remarking, that it seems a
strange obliquity of vision to contemplate with
feelings of overwheiming sympathy, as his Grace
appears to do, the probable damage "to the
property of thousands of proprietors and colo-
nists," and to pass unnoticed the certain oppres-
sion of hundreds of thousands of our negro fel-
low creatures, whose dark skin forms an impe-
netrable barrier between them and the feelings
of our Patrician protestors! We have left our-
selves no room to notice the 6th, 7th, and Bth
reasons of dissent, which, indeed, relate chiefly
to details on which differences may be expected
and justified, and must conclude by congratu-
lating the country that the noble author of such
a protest has ceased to be a Minister of the
Crown, with no prospect of ever being called to
its councils. An undisguised defence of the
systeni of slavery could scarcely be expected
from any Peer of, this free kingdom at the pre-
sent day, and we are at a loss to understand what
business his Grace had at the funeral of Mr.
Wilberforce with such a protest in his head or
his pocket.—Times.
The celebrated Cuvier, who was at the head
of Instruction in France, and who was ex-
ceedingly anxious to establish a sound system
of national education in France, seems to have
been looking with apprehension on the conse-
quences likely to result from the abuse of poli-
tical liberty by an ignorant population :
" Give (said the French philosoper) schools before
political rights; make citizens comprehend the duties that
the state of society imposes on ahem ; teach them what
are political rights before you offer them for their enjoy-
ment. Then all ameliorations will be made without caus-
ing a shock ; then each new idea, thrown upon good
ground, will have time to germinate, to grow, and to
ripen, without convulsing the social body. Imitate nature
who, in ho, the development of beings, acts by gradation, and
gives time to every member of her most powerful elements.
The infant remains nine months in the body of its
mother; man's physical perfection only takes place at
twenty or thirty, and his moral completion from thirty to
forty. Institutions must have ages to produce all their
fruits ; witness Christianity, the effects of which are not
yet accomplished, notwithstanding a thousand years of
existence."

There can be no doubt that the more in-
structed the people, the less they will be open
to the seductions of those who wish to employ
them in forwarding objects injurious to the com-
munity. Instruction is always a good.
" Our own inquiries," observes a sensible writer in
Tails Magazine for September (and we never lose an
opportunity of making them), "confirm this representation.
When we have heard manufacturers complaining of the tur—
bulence of their men, we have asked them which they found
the most difficult to deal with—the men who read or the
men who don't read ? The answer has uniformly been, 'Both
are troublesome, but the ignorant are the most dangerous.
The reading me❑ are always agitating, but we know what 1
t. e end of their agitation is likely to be; we know the

lenghts they will go, and how they will go, and where
they will stop ; but the ignorant, when once set in mo-
tion, are like infuriated animals; there is no reckoning
on their actions, or on any considerations that may check
them.' "

The town to which the observations of this
writer apply, affords in its past and present state
some pregnant illustrations of the difference be.
tween the outbreakings of instructed and igno-
rant men. For some time the inhabitants of

Edinburgh have been endeavouring, by passive
resistance, to defeat the law which imposes a
tax, not on the population generally—for the
Judges and lawyers generally are exempted
from the operation of it—but on the poorer
classes for the payment of the clergy. They
have settled into the conviction, that the indivi-
duals composing the Legislature are so mixed
up with the Church Establishments of the em-

pire, that there is no chance of obtaining justice
from the Legislature, and they have determined
to try what can be done by passive resistance.
Whatever may be thought of this attempt, it
cannot be denied that, during the period of
considerable length of the agitation, the people
have conducted themselves in a very orderly
manner. They have strictly confined them-
selves to the object of resist►ng this particular
tax, and have avoided all excesses. Now, the
period is not very distant when knowledge in
Edinburgh was nearly confined to the select few
—when the newspapers were as tame as the
Madrid Gazette—but when the mob bore a di-
vided sway with the Magistracy, and occasion.