HC Deb 25 July 1822 vol 7 cc1783-801
Mr. Wilberforce

rose and said:*

Sir;—It will probably be remembered, that some time ago I moved an address to the Crown, earnestly entreating his majesty to renew those strenuous endeavours which his ministers had been already exerting, to prevail on several of the great powers of Europe, who had solemnly stipulated that they would co-operate with us in abolishing the Slave trade, to fulfil the sacred engagements they had contracted. My present motion may not unnaturally be deemed to be a sort of supplement to the former, or at least to arise out of it; for it is the object of my present address, to beseech his majesty s ministers to take effectual measures, without delay, for preventing, in a great colony which we have recently begun to establish, the extension of slavery, in circumstances also in which a trade in slaves would be the infallible and no distant consequence. It can scarcely be necessary for me to suggest how strongly we are urged to forbear from every the very smallest approximation to the criminal smallest practices, with the continuance of which we are reproaching our neighbours. And being convinced, that unless we immediately interpose to prevent it, we shall soon see a new slave colony formed, by means equally fraudulent and cruel as those which prevail on the opposite side of Africa, it becomes us not to lose an hour in taking adequate, precautions against the occurrence of such an evil.

* From the original edition printed for J. Hatched and Son. It is well known, that, two or three years ago, many families migrated to the Cape of Good Hope at the public expense, to whose number fresh additions are continually making. They have chiefly, settled in the two great provinces of Utenhague and Albany, at a very considerable distance from Cape Town, and where the number of old settlers possessing slaves is very small. I well remember, when we first began our operations against the Slave trade, our warmest opponents were accustomed to say, that were we to begin anew, no one doubtless would think of commencing that traffic, but, on the contrary, every one would reprobate, in the strongest terms, the very idea of instituting such a system of atrocities. The same remark may justly be applied, to the state of slavery. No man, who has any sense of the value of liberty, would think of establishing a condition of society so utterly at war with the rights and happiness of our fellow creatures. But it is one of the very chief evils of slavery, that it reduces its victims to such a state, that they cannot always be suddenly, emancipated, without some risk of danger to themselves, and to the peace of the community of which they form a part. I grant, Sir, that it is but too true, that, especially where the slaves greatly outnumber the freemen,—and I may add, where the distinction between the races is of so marked a character as in the case of the White and Black population of our trans-atlantic colonies,—a sudden emancipation of the slaves would not only be injurious to their masters, but might probably be also ruinous to them, selves. Yet I must remark, that the objections against sudden manumission ought not to be too implicitly admitted; for we have lately had instances which would lead us to a directly opposite conclusion. During our last unhappy war with the United States, the British commander in the southern colonies of America invited the slaves to join the British standard. Many accordingly deserted their plantations; and as it would have been cruelty and injustice to send them back to their old masters, it became a question, how to dispose of them. It was proposed to settle several hundreds of them (seven or eight hundred, I think) in the island of Trinidad—of course, as free labourers. But the planters opposed the idea most strongly, predicting nothing but failure to the plan; for it was contended that no free Negro would ever work, and that, of course, they would support themselves by plunder. Sir Ralph Woodford, however, the governor of Trinidad, with an energy, as well as a benevolence and an ability, which did him great honour, was not to be overborne by prejudice. Accordingly, he planted them in part of the islands where the experiment would be most safely made; and I am assured that the result has proved highly favourable to his discernment; and that these men are now earning their subsistence, with so much industry and good conduct, as to have put to silence all the calumnies that were at first urged against the measure. I may also adduce the instance of many of the soldiers of the disbanded regiments of Blacks, both at Sierra Leone and other places, who have become industrious and commendable labourers for their own support. Yet, for the safe and general emancipation of the slave population of our West India islands, a previous moral preparation seems requisite: and I say this the rather, because I hesitate not frankly to avow, that this is the only excuse for our suffering the slavery of the West Indies to continue. Not I only, but all the chief advocates of the abolition of the Slave trade,—Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, lord Grenville, lord Grey, and every other,—scrupled not to declare, from the very first, that their object was, by ameliorating regulations, and more especially by stopping that influx of uninstructed savages, which furnished an excuse for continuing a harsh system of management, and prevented masters from looking to their actual stock of slaves for keeping up their number, to be surely though slowly advancing towards the period when these unhappy beings might exchange their degraded state of slavery for that of a free and industrious peasantry. To that most interesting object, doubtless, I still look forward; though I confess, that perhaps of late we all have been chargeable with not having paid due attention to the subject. But if, because in those great countries, which are the seats of the new British settlements, there are now a few proprietors with slaves who were settled there before this emigration took place, we were to render slavery the lex loci, the pervading system of the whole region, we should be justly chargeable with setting on foot a state of slavery; for the few slaves now there bear no assignable proportion to what will hereafter become the population of this extensive district. It becomes us now, therefore, while the evil, is in the bud, to prevent its swelling and gaining strength and maturity, and diffusing its baneful seeds throughout the whole land. Rather let government endeavour to make terms with the few present proprietors, and, by grants of land, or in some way or other, prevail on them to remove form the district; or else they must be placed under some special regulations, suited to the peculiarity of their circumstances, and calculated to prevent their little stock of slaves from extending itself, and the possession of slaves by the few old settlers affording at once temptation and opportunity for the acquisition of slaves the new.

It is due to his majesty's government to state, that they have indeed adopted two expedients for guarding against the extension of slavery; the first, by making it a condition of the new grants of land, that no slaves were to be employed; the second, that of establishing a registration of the slaves. Both these expedients, however, are utterly inadequate to the prevention of the evil. Experience shows, in other countries where governments lands have been granted, and where forfeiture has been the penalty of the non-ob-servance of certain conditions, that these conditions have soon fallen into disuse, but that the penalty has never been exacted. Such has been the case almost universally in the instance of the ceded islands the West Indies. But the fact is so notorious that it will be at once admitted. Besides this, it must also be remembered, that the condition attached to these grants at the Cape of Good Hope only applies to predial, and not to domestic slavery; whereas domestic slavery is in some particulars of a still more malignant and pernicious character. I grant, that the slave employed in the cultivation of land are apt to be reduced to a lower state of degradation, and, especially in the West Indies, to be treated too much on the same principles as the inferior animals. But, though the domestic slaves occupy a higher level where they are the property of men of rank and education, yet, were the secrets of that prison-house to be opened to the view, O what scenes would be displayed of the dreadful effects of the exercise of uncontrolled power, in low, uneducated minds! And remember, that it is domestic slavery which chiefly avenges the injuries sustained by its immediate victims on their masters and mistresses, by producing all that depravation of moral character which never fails to be generated where the institution of slavery prevails. It may be justly specified as the most signal display of its depraving properties—thus constituting a striking instance of the truth of the remark, that the corruption of the best things sometimes renders them the worst—that slavery can even substitute a spirit of brutal harshness and cruelty, in the place of the natural softness of the female character. Never I taken a close survey of the effects of slavery in any community, in which several humiliating instances have not appeared of this destruction of the most delightful attribute of the fairest portion of our species. But against domestic slavery this condition in the grants is professedly inoperative. Nor is the expedient of a registry likely to be of much more avail. When we consider the great extent of these countries; how far they are from the seat and how little they will be under eye, of government; how in every community, an esprit de corps naturally forms itself, and each man is disposed to connive at his neighbour's infractions of the laws, even if he should be acquainted with them; there would be little hope of a registry being enforced in these distant provinces—though I gratefully acknowledge its benefits near Cape Town, in neighbourhood of which by far the greater proportion of slaves is to be found. But, still more, we must remember that the grand principle on which we depend for the efficacy of the registry in the case of the West Indies, does not at all apply to the colony of the Cape. The West India planters' estates are cultivated commonly with borrowed capital; and the mortgagee finds it necessary for his security from time to examine the registry of slaves; a counterpart of which is, or ought to be, kept in this country, and all variations from time to time communicated. The mortgagee knows that if the slaves are not duly registered his security is proportionably weakened, and therefore he sees to its enforcement. Thus it may be said to contain within it a self-executing principle. But the Cape cultivation is not carried on by borrowed capital, and therefore the same security fur a due observance of the registry regulations is not supplied. In short, both these measures are ineffectual, and utterly inadequate to the prevention of the evil to be opposed.

And would we consider what an evil slavery is, we could not but feel it our duty to provide effectual preventives against its establishing itself in a new British colony. As I have stated in the address, the condition of slavery would infallibly be soon productive of they slave trade. Both on the land and the sea boundaries, the opportunities of making and importing slaves exist in abundant measure. To the north of the colony, throughout the long line of its somewhat indefinite boundary, there is scattered a set of wretched and defenceless savages, who could make no resistance; and beyond them, recent travellers have found that there are nations in a higher state of civilization, but too likely to learn the lesson of preying upon the weakness of their neighbours, and of establishing a traffic in their persons. I grant, Sir, that probably there may not as yet have been any illicit introduction of slaves into the new settlements. Indeed, I never meant to affirm that there bad been any. But the truth is, that hitherto there has been no temptation to import slaves; but the temptation will soon exist, and then the facility with which the crime may be committed will assuredly lead to its perpetration. Again: on the marine boundary of the new settlements, there would be an easy access into the colony for slaves from Madagascar and the Eastern Coast of Africa, and the various other markets whence slaves have been till lately so abundantly supplied. I grant, indeed, that we have heard with pleasure of some of the chieftains of that part of the world having resolved to discontinue it. Rhadama, the principal sovereign of Madagascar, induced by the benevolent influence of governor Farquhar, has solemnly stipulated never again to suffer slaves to be carried from his dominions. But we know that the French are in the neighbourhood; and I am grieved to say, that, wherever they are found, they almost naturally apply themselves to the prosecution of this hateful traffic. But I will not press this topic farther. Every account which I have received confirms me in the persuasion, that, were the state of slavery to be established in those countries, a great slave trade would soon be infallibly produced: and surely the legislature of this country would be deeply criminal, if, through our negligence, such a system should be suffered to spring up. We, whom Providence has blessed with a greater degree of true liberty (liberty regulated and protected by law) than any country ever before enjoyed since the foundation of the world—what a would it be to make to the Author of all our mercies, to be employing all our superior wealth and power in marring his fair creation with such a blot as this! We are now justly distinguished for operations and exertions of an opposite nature. We are engaged in diffusing the light of divine truth throughout the earth, by our Bible societies, and by our missionaries, whom we send to enlighten and to civilize, in the most distant countries, the victims of ignorance and depravity. What a contradiction would it be, if, while we are professing ourselves the servants, and diffusing the principles, of the Prince of Peace and Love, we were to be establishing a system utterly and irreconcilably at war with the rights and happiness of our fellow creatures—in short, a system which may be justly termed one grand violation of every law, divine and human! Such a course would be inconsistent also with the examples, which, I rejoice to say, the representatives and officers of our sovereign have of late afforded, of the instinctive love of liberty which animates the hearts of Britons. In Ceylon, the judicious and active benevolence of the chief judge, sir Alexander Johnston, aided in its operation by governor Brownrigg, laid the foundation for the entire extinction of slavery at no distant period, by prevailing on the proprietors to agree, that all the children who should be born after a certain specified day should be freemen, being apprenticed only for a short time to the masters of their parents, in order to make good the expenses of their nurture and education. In St. Helena also, through the generous efforts of sir Hudson Lowe, and with the kind concurrence of the East India Company, a similar measure was establislied. And in a third instance likewise, the same blessed reformation was effected by the ever wakeful benevolence of sir Stamford Raffles—a man of whom I will only say, that, let the field on which he has to display his superior powers be ever so extensive, he will always show himself equal to the occasion that has called them forth.

Let not our conduct in our new settlements at the Cape exhibit so shameful a contrast to the generous principles on which we have acted in these other instances. How should we make good the worst suspicions and jealousies of those who have imputed to us, that our zeal for the abolition of the slave trade has been prompted by self-interest, and not by a love of justice and humanity! Justly, indeed, in that case, might those other nations retort upon us, on whom we have been so strongly and repeatedly enforcing the obligations which bound them, by good faith no less than by every moral principle, to abolish the slave trade: and what lasting reproach would stain our characters, were we thus to show, that, while pressing other nations to perform their duty, we had been so scandalously negligent of our own!

Let me earnestly conjure the House to estimate this motion at its just importance. The countries which we are now beginning to settle are of vast extent; but, still more, by imperceptible boundaries they communicate with the almost interminable regions of the African continent. And my object is, to secure, throughout that vast extent, the prevalence of true British liberty, instead of that deadly and destructive evil which would poison the whole body of the soil, and render the prodigious area one wide scene of injustice, cruelty, and misery.

It would be no small aggravation of our guilt, were we to suffer slavery to establish itself, that the natives of that part of Africa, the Hottentots especially, who would but too naturally become its victims., have of late been resuced from those foul and groundless calumnies under which they so long laboured. I do not only allude to the character given of them by Mr. Long, before the Abolitionists became the advocates of the African race. Then indeed it was unreservedly stated, that they held a sort of middle rank between the brute creation and the human species, and only a little above the ouranoutang. But let any one only read the catalogue of their wrongs, as stated in the able and interesting work of Mr. Barrow—the account of the shameful injustice and cruelty with which they were treated, and of their natural qualities, so opposite in all respects to those which had been imputed to them. Mr. Barrow states them to be "the most helpless, and, in their present condition, perhaps the most wretched of the human race;—duped out of their possessions, their country, and finally out of their, liberty," After speaking of the low opinion universally formed of them, he represents them to be "na- turally a mild, harmless, honest, faithful people; kind and affectionate to each other, and not incapable of strong attachments." In particular, he speaks of "their gratitude for any laving, that is done them;" and adds, "I never found that any little act of kindness or attention was thrown away upon a Hottentot: on the contrary, I have frequently had occasion to remark the joy that sparkled on his countenance, whenever an opportunity occurred to enable him to discharge his debt of gratitude."—Again, the prejudices of the colonists against these degraded beings manifested themselves when general sir James Craig proposed to form them into a corps. It was foretold that their drunkenness, their indolence, their filthiness, and various other bad qualities, insured the failure of his attempt. But, on the contrary, sir James observes, never were people more contented, or more grateful for the treatment they now receive. We have "upwards of three hundred who have been with us nine months, and it is with the opportunity of knowing them well, that I venture to pronounce them an intelligent race of men; all who bear arms exercise well, and understand immediately and perfectly whatever they are taught to perform. What is still more striking, of all the qualities that can be ascribed to a Hottentot, it will little be expected that I should expatiate on his cleanliness, and yet it is certain that at this moment our Hottentot parade would not suffer in a comparison with that of some of our regular regiments." He goes on to specify other instances, to prove their various natural and acquired good qualities. A part of my address recommends this hitherto degraded race of men to his majesty's special protection; and it is the more necessary to interpose vigorously in their behalf, because they have been of late subjected to a species of ill treatment which we should scarcely have anticipated from Christian masters. If I had not received the intelligence from a source of information, on the authenticity of which I can implicitly rely, I should scarcely have credited, what however is an undoubted fact, that it has of late become a practice to train up these poor creatures in the Mohammedan faith; Mohammedan priests being employed as overseers for the purpose. It is alleged that the Mohammedan religion is to be preferred, for slaves and Hottentots, to Christianity, because it gives a security against their drunkenness, and also it tends to prevent the female slave from being inseparably bound to her husband, as she would be by the Christian rule of wedlock. I trust, that, both in respect to the Hottentots, and to the slaves generally, at the Cape, particular inquiry will be made whether or not the regulations enacted under the old government for their protection and education have been duly observed. I have great reason to believe that several valuable regulations of this kind have fallen into disuse, and that the revival of them is enforced upon us by every consideration of justice and humanity.

But surely, Sir, it cannot be necessary for me to enlarge upon the innumerable mischiefs of slavery, in a British House of Commons. I may appeal rather to that instinctive love of freedom which burns in every British bosom. It was a remark of one of our greatest painters, sir Joshua Reynolds, that every artist of true genius had in' his mind an ideal form of excellence, which all the exertions of his pencil could never fully equal, and that he should have but a low opinion of the genius of him who could do justice to his own conceptions. In like manner, I may state that I should deem that man's sense of the worth of liberty to be shamefully defective, which was not far superior to any eulogium which I could pronounce on it. I will only, therefore, call upon the House on this occasion, to adopt a line of conduct conducive at once to their country's honour and the interests of mankind.

I now beg leave to move. "That an humble address be presented to his majesty, representing to his majesty, that this House has learned with great satisfaction that his majesty's government, with a just abhorrence of slavery, and a provident dread of the evils which would result from its extension, has made it a condition in the grants of land which it has recently allotted within the new settlements of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, that no Slave labour should be employed in their cultivation; also, that his majesty has established a registry of the Slave population:

"That, nevertheless, from the great extent of the colony—from its contiguity to countries whence Slaves may at no distant period be easily procured—from the remoteness of many of the farms that are scattered over its surface, and from the thinness of the population, the due execution of all laws enacted for the government of those countries, particularly those for preventing the illicit extension of slavery, must be rendered extremely difficult, more especially when self-interest shall tempt powerfully to the violation of them:

"That the regulation, so justly introduced into the colonial grants, applies only to predial slavery; whereas domestic slavery, while it is in itself at least as great an evil, would prove a strong temptation to the needy and indolent to procure drudges for their own use, and would operate with a still more pernicious influence on the feelings and habits of the new settlers:

"That, as to the expediency of a registry, the House cannot but fear, that a Slave registration for so extensive a colony, comprising thousands of square miles, where the plantations are very thinly scattered, and divided from each other by wide tracts of a desert and unpeopled country, cannot be so constituted and regulated, as materially to check, much less effectually to prevent, the fraudulent introduction of Slaves, where facilities exist for, such introduction:

"That it cannot be necessary for a British House of Commons, in addressing a British sovereign, to enlarge on the evils of slavery. It is universally acknowledged to be an institution essentially odious in its nature, baneful in its moral and political effects, and more especially repugnant to the spirit and principles of our happy constitution:

"That the continuance of the state where it already exists is reconcileable with those principles only on the ground of necessity; and therefore to continue it in any country where its present extent should be extremely small, and where the local circumstances should be such as to admit of its safe and convenient abrogation, would scarcely be less reproachful than the original establishment of that state in a place where it bad been previously unknown:

"That, in forming new settlements on the African continent, such conduct would be pre-eminently indefensible and mischievous; because the distinction sbetween the European and coloured races of, men must tend to extinguish sympathy, while the existence of the abject and ignominious state of slavery would powerfully generate or maintain, in the minds both of the white colonists and the coloured natives of neighbouring districts, feelings towards each other the reverse of those which we are bound, no less by sound policy than by every religious and moral consideration, to promote. Thus the growth of mutual good-will and civilization must be materially obstructed, to the prevention of that secure and harmonious intercourse by which important commercial benefits might be obtained on the one side, and the inestimable advantages of civil, moral, and religious improvements on the other. Instead of such happy effects of African colonization, dangerous animosities, natural injuries, and inveterate border wars, might be expected as the natural consequences of an institution which would degrade, the native race, and render them despicable in the eyes of the new settlers, while it would afford to the needy and worthless means and temptations to inflict upon them the most cruel wrongs:

"That the House also sees much reason to apprehend, that the time may come when the acts for abolishing the slave trade may be widely and fatally contravened in the new settlements now forming in Africa, if slavery shall be permitted there as a state recognized by law:

"That, under such circumstances, no effectual means can be devised for preventing abuses injurious to the best interests of the settlers themselves, pernicious to the natives of Africa, and derogatory to the honour of this country, but the extending, as far as possible, by a fundamental law, to the new African settlements, the same just and liberal, principles of colonization, with such exceptions only as the slaves actually in the colony may render necessary, which have been so honourably and beneficially established at Sierra Leone:

"That we cannot but feel that many of the above considerations derive peculiar force from the efforts which this country has for some time been using to induce other nations to join with us in enforcing the abolition of the slave trade: that we should expose ourselves to just merited reproach, if it could be truly alleged, that, while we had been using those endeavours, we had been violating our own principles by permitting the state of slavery to establish itself in regions where it had previously little or no existence, and more especially where a slave trade would almost inevitably follow:

That we cannot but contemplate with pleasure the honourable and successful to efforts, which, under the paternal influence of his majesty's government aided by the liberal spirit of the masters, have been made in various British settlements for meliorating the condition of the slaves, and for ultimately putting an end to the state of slavery and that we cannot but hope that his majesty's government will studiously avail itself of any opportunities it may possess of acting in the spirit of these benignant precedents:

"That we also beg leave humbly, but earnestly, to recommend the state of the Hottentots to his majesty's benevolent care—a race of men long misrepresented and vilified, who, however, have since abundantly proved that any efforts used for their moral improvement would not be employed in vain:

"That we consider that the communication of Christian instruction to the slaves and Hottentots, is a paramount act of duty; and the more necessary, because efforts have been made, not without success, to propagate among them the tenets and practices of Mohammedanism: that no doubt can be entertained of the happy result of those Christian endeavours: nor can we forbear to indulge the gratifying hope, that by the gradual diffusion of the blessings of civilization and of moral and religious knowledge through- out the coloured population, those degraded classes of our fellow-creatures may by degrees be raised from their present depressed condition, and be rendered not only useful members of the colonial community, but valuable subjects of the British empire."

Mr. Wilmot

said, that the hon. gentleman had assumed in his argument, that the colony at the Cape, and especially the newly settled part of it, might become a great mart for slaves. Now he thought that such an. apprehension was wholly unfounded; and he firmly believed, that the condition annexed to all new grants of land, that it should not be cultivated by slaves, had in no one instance been violated. The slave population of the districts in which the new settlements had been formed, at present amounted to 546 males and 464 females. The House, however, would recollect, that the districts in question were not to be considered as a new colony, but were part of an old and long-settled colony, throughout which the same laws and institutions prevailed: it would be found difficult, therefore, to establish distinctions which would be available in practice, or to depart at once from the laws and usages which had previously existed. He certainly should be very ready, at the same time, to encourage the manumission of the slaves, by holding out some equivalent to the master; but he thought it would be most impolitic, even in offering a fair equivalent, to make manumission compulsory on the owners of slaves, How ever much he deplored the evils of slavery, he thought that any thing like a sudden and general manumission would be ruinous, not only to the master, but to the parties it was intended to benefit. He was disposed, however, to consider predial slavery as far more, injurious than domestic slavery. The evil was not of our creation, and he was persuaded that the remedy for it, to be safe, must be gradual. With respect to the clandestine importation of slaves from the interior, he believed there was no just ground for supposing it would occur; and as for importations, there seemed to be no probability of their taking place. The natural difficulties of the coast were such as seemed to present insuperable impediments, and to form a rational security against any such attempt. There was a high surf which beat upon the shore, and there were no navigable rivers; so that, independently of the vigilant measures adopted by the government to prevent the Slave-trade, it seemed scarcely possible to smuggle slaves on shore. With respect to the Hottentots and other natives, their freedom was completely recognized by the laws. In the propriety of giving moral and religious instruction to the slaves, he fully concurred. The subject had not been overlooked by government. It was its wish to afford every facility to the improvement not only of the bodily comforts, but of the moral attainments, of the Hottentots and slaves in this colony. In short, ministers were determined to do all in their power to promote the objects which the address had in view; and it would be an instruction to the commissioners about to be sent out, to inquire into the state of the slave population, as well as to ascertain whether or not any clandestine importation of slaves had taken place.

Mr. W. Smith

said, we had a clear right, and it was no less clearly our bounden duty, to prohibit the very existence of slavery, whether predial or do- mestic, within the territory allotted to the new settlers. And even supposing some few grants to have been previously made, the difficulties in the way of such a prohibition did not appear to him to be hard to be overcome. Was it not possible, for instance, to divide the new settlements from the old by a geographical limit, on the eastern side of which liberty should be completely the lex loci? And if a few insulated farms should be found existing within this space, as exceptions to the general rule, could no arrangements be made with the owners, which should equitably satisfy any claims they might have acquired? All claims which were set up against the inalicnable rights of human nature were in his eyes less than nothing. And such was the pretended claim of property in the persons of our fellow-creatures. One man, might, indeed, acquire some claims on the labour of another; but, farther than was necessary for the reasonable enforcement of these, he could possess no right in his person. The unqualified power over the negro slaves formerly contended for, necessarily vanished as soon as it was allowed that negroes were men. Would it now be alleged, that one man could possess a right to murder or to mutilate another? The very contrary was proved by the laws which had been passed on the subject. The power, then, which the master possessed, whatever it was, was a power to be restrained and regulated by law. Societies, so numerous that they were almost identified with the country itself, had for some years been laudably employed in spreading, to the utmost limits of the globe, the knowledge and benefits of our holy religion. Now, it had been a frequent objection in the mouths of its adversaries, that, whatever might be the purity of its doctrine, no corresponding practical good had resulted from its diffusion. But, among the many answers which had been given to this objection, none perhaps was more satisfactory that the undeniable fact, that through the influence of the Christian spirit, in the absence of any positive precept on the subject, personal and domestic slavery had been banished from among the civilized nations of Christendom, excepting, proh pudor! as respected the unhappy Africans in their colonial possessions. Now could we endure to be reproached with the glaring inconsistency, that while zealously pursuing we the laudable Objects just alluded to, we should at the same moment be founding, in our own dominions, new slave colonies? On the whole, he hoped that not only would the pest of slavery be now prevented from entering to pollute new regions, but that measures would be adopted, in every British possession, for diffusing such Christian light, and such habits of morality and good order, as would prepare the way for the safe communication, erelong, of liberty, to all who were now unhappily in bondage.

Mr. Money

said, that the extension of slavery into the new settlements, dependent on the Cape of Good Hope, appeared to him to so wrong in principle, that he most cordially concurred in. the Address. He was decidedly of opinion, that neither the adoption nor the continuance of what was evil in principle, and cruel in operation, could be justified by any view to private or public advantage. In the present case, however, to permit slavery to exist was not only wrong in itself, but impolitic and dangerous. The hon. gentleman saw difficulty in preventing slavery in the new settlements, because it had been allowed by the Dutch laws at die Cape of Good Elope. It was true, that when we took possession of the Cape in 1806, the rights and privileges previously enjoyed by the Dutch had been secured to them; and among those privileges, was that of holding their fellow-creatures in slavery. But, surely it by no means followed, that after the cession of this Dutch colony in full sovereignty to his majesty, we were bound to follow the laws and customs of the Dutch. Those who maintained this proposition, might with equal propriety contend that the abominable practice of extorting evidence by torture, which formed a part of the Dutch criminal law, ought to have been continued; and yet it was one of the first acts of the British government to annihilate that monstrous proceeding. But even if it were admitted, that the articles of capitulation deprived us of the right to prohibit the old Dutch inhabitants from still treating their slaves as property, and selling them to each—other, it could not be expected that, in forming new establishments, we she should furnish them with new customers for their human merchandize. Surely we might make it an inviolable condition, with those whom we permitted to migrate thither, nay whom we assisted with the public money to settle there, that they should not outrage British feelings and Christian, principles by becoming the propagators of slavery; that they should not convert an infant establishment, reared under the auspices of a free and Christian government, into a mart for the sale of human beings. If, however, his majesty did not speedily and effectually interpose, such would be the inevitable consequence. The attacks of the Cafires of the interior on our distant settlements had already been formidable. If these should be renewed, would not the slaves, if slavery were allowed; consider it their interest to join the assailants? His acquaintance with the Cape, led him to dread the extension of slavery in any way which would bring more of our fellowcreatures under the merciless lash of the Dutch Boors, to whose service, death was often preferred, even by the slaves of Cape Town. He rejoiced also to learn, that a commission was about to be appointed to inquire into the administration of justice at the Cape. During a considerable stay there, he had been led to entertain a great abhorrence of the manner in which justice was administered under the Dutch colonial law, where the functions of judges were performed by persons having a common feeling and interest opposed to the slaves. There was now at the Cape a Dutchman who caused the death of one of his slaves by hanging him at his door. He was brought to trial. His defence was, that he had only intended to punish him, and not to take away his life; and he was acquitted!—In 1819, a female slave belonging to a Dutch gentleman at the Cape, had been treated with harshness; and at last her mistress threatened that she would take her children from her, and sell them to the Boors in the interior. The dread of that worst of all evils so worked upon her mind, that, to save them from this fate, that she took them, four in number, down to the sea, where she succeeded in drowning three of them, and was in the act of destroying herself and the remaining child when she was discovered; and the alarm being given, she was rescued from her watery grave in a state of insensibility. She was carried to the jail, where medicines were applied to restore her, and a court of criminal justice was immediately summoned to try her. Scarcely able to stand, she was brought before this tribunal. When asked, what she had to say for herself, she stared wildly, and made no answer; and in this state of apparent unconsciousness to every thing around her, she was convicted to be strangled at a stake. The following morning this sentence was carried into execution; a party of the military attending under the command of a British officer. Many more cases might be adduced, to show the necessity, of reforming the criminal law at the Cape, and of giving to all classes of the inhabitants, bond as well as free, the benefits of a better and plum system.

Dr. Phillimore

cordially approved of the motion. At the same time that he felt the difficulty and delicacy of interfering with the rights, or alleged rights, of the ancient Dutch colonists, he entirely agreed that, with respect to the districts newly settled, liberty ought to be the general law, the lex loci, and slavery the exception. Whatever tenderness might be due to the old settlers, he would not concede to the new the shadow of a right to establish a property in the persons of their fellow creatures.

Mr. F. Buxton

said, that if he concurred, with the hon. secretary, in thinking that there existed no more than a bare possibility that slavery might be introduced into our new settlements at the Cape, that bare possibility would be an unanswerable argument in favour of the motion. But could we flatter ourselves that there existed no more than a bare possibility? This much was certain; within our dominions there, the value of a slave was 160l.; without our dominions, and at no great distance, there were populous and savage nations, often engaged in war, and often liable to famine. Couple but the two facts together, and the consequence seemed irresistible; namely, that an active Slave trade would soon arise. It appeared, by a trial which took place at the Cape, that four negroes who had served in the British navy were then slaves—a fact utterly unaccountable, if we denied the existence of Slave trading. If, in spite, of the unequivocal title to freedom which they possessed, these four men had been enslaved, were our apprehensions ground the less, that the ignorant natives in distant parts of the settlement would be fraudulently consigned to slavery? To one fact which proved the anxiety of the new British settlers to obtain slaves, he could himself speak. In conjunction with some other persons, he bad assisted a family that obtained land at the Cape an earnest application had since been received from them for a further advance of money, in order to enable them to become the purchasers of slaves.

With these facts before us, it was clear, that upon the conduct of our government, in the course of the next three or four years, depended the great question, whether our immense dominions in that part of Africa should or should not be cultivated by Slave labour; whether the surrounding nations should or should not be visited by the havoc and desolation which an active Slave trade would produce; whether our own colonists, sent out by the capital of the country, should or should not be exposed to that moral turpitude which slavery always produced; and, lastly, the question whether we should or should not stand before Europe detected and convicted of the grossest hypocrisy. Nothing could be conceived more derogatory to the character of the country, than the semblance of a just suspicion that we should permit a new Slave colony and Slave trade to arise in our own dominions. We, who had stood foremost in the glorious cause of its abolition—we, who had ventured even to chide the tardiness, the ill faith, the inhumanity of other nations—were we at length, outstripping even their perfidousness, to see slavery beginning in parts of our dominions where it did not exist at the period when we acquired them? Let the commissioners immediately determine the spot where slavery existed on our arrival, and beyond these let liberty be proclaimed the lex loci without delay. He should give the motion his most cordial support.

The Address was agreed to.