§ Lord Wynfordpresented a Petition from an individual possessing considerable property in the West Indies, stating that he had invested a capital of 28,000l. in slaves and estates, which he had purchased from the Crown. He demanded that his property, or an equivalent, should be restored to him when the measure for the emancipation of the slaves should be passed. The prayer of the petition appeared to him to be only equitable and right.
Lord Suffieldpresented thirteen petitions from various places, against negro slavery. His Lordship observed, that in the remarks he made the other night upon this subject, he had forgotten to allude to one authority, than which a better could not be adduced, to prove that man could not be made a slave. It was the authority of Chief Justice Best. In a judgment which that learned individual had given some time since, amongst other excellent sentiments which he uttered, were the following: "That human beings could not be the subject matter of property," and that any law sanctioning slavery, was "an anti-Christian law, and one which violated the rights of nature."
§ Lord Wynfordsaid, the judgment alluded to had been delivered by him some twelve or thirteen years ago; and in it there was not a single opinion expressed which he was not prepared now most fully to maintain. It was only in England that he recognized that principle; in any other country—especially in the West-Indies—he was not so ignorant not to know that it would not obtain. All he declared in that judgment was—that a slave became a free man the moment he trod the deck of a British-man-of-war. No one was more friendly to emancipation than he was; but he would not consent to it at the expense of a mass of individuals who, whether right or wrong, had, under the sanction of English laws, laid out their capital in the West-Indies. All that ever he had asserted in the judgment alluded to, or in anything else was, that no action could be maintained in this country, which would attempt to recognize such a property as man; but he knew too well it was very different in other countries; at all events in the West-Indies.