We feel a strong objection, however, to the mode of paying for the extra labour of the slave adopted by the planters of Trinidad, and apparently sanctioned by Lord Goderich. The Trinidad allowance of food, we are told, is already greater than that of the new Order. Why then is food fixed upon as the medium of payment for the slave's extra labour? There can be no good reason for this. Under the former Orders in Council the rate of wages for extra labour was directed to be fixed in money, and so ought it to be now. The contract of the master with the slave for his labour ought to specify the money price either of his hours, or of the quantity of labour done. The slave may then receive, at his option, an equivalent in other articles. But any other course must lead to abuse and dissatisfaction, and is particularly ill-adapted to the purpose of enabling the slave to accumulate the price of his manumission.

But, with whatever doubt we may pronounce on the question of food, there are others on which we can feel no hesitation in expressing a most decided opinion (in a sense very opposite to that of the West Indians) that great modifications are called for. We chiefly allude to the totally inadequate time allowed to the slave exclusive of Sunday for the culture of his grounds; and the totally uncalled for and injurious restrictions imposed on the slave's enjoyment of his Sabbath, and the narrow limits both as to time and distance which are to bound his attendance on the means of instruction and religious worship. For the arguments by which we supported our views on these two most essential points, we refer, with entire confidence in their truth and justice, to the first number of our present volume (No. 92, p. 20-26, and p. 31 and 32). And we are fully persuaded that if, in these particulars, the Order should not undergo revision, it will greatly disappoint, in its efficiency, the expectations of its framers. With the discussion on these two points, is closely connected the imperfect regulation relating to Sunday markets. Without the substitution of a whole week-day in lieu of the Sunday, for marketing and labour, and without giving the slave a clear right to employ that week-day for these purposes, he will still be compelled to violate the sanctity of the Sabbath in order to save himself and family from want, and will still be deprived of his fair opportunities of religious improvement. (See No. 92, p. 5, and vol. iv. No. 81, p. 285, and No. 82, p. 291.)

But we would refer the reader anew to the whole of our comments on that order as they stand in our No. 92; and particularly to what is there said on the subject of the power of arbitrary punishment now possessed by the master, or by his delegate of the lowest grade, without any effective control from law or magistrate, or any effective responsibility for its harshest and most revolting exercise. What hope of seeing the oppressive use of such a power restrained can be entertained with respect to a community so lost to the guidance of principle as openly to avow their predetermination to violate, in their capacity of grand and petty jurors, the solemn obligation of their oaths, and to perjure themselves in the face of the world, and before the eye of heaven, in order to defeat the ends of justice?

IV.-RESOLUTIONS OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

At a meeting of the Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, held on the 27th of September, 1832, the following Resolutions were unanimously adopted :

1. That in the judgment of this Committee the present state of the slave question makes it a duty of paramount importance to meet the new Parliament, on its first assembling, with the voice of the nation praying for the immediate extinction of Slavery in the British Colonies, under such arrangements as may be found necessary for the safety of all parties.

2. That the religious persecution in the island of Jamaica, which in contumacious defiance of British authority has been carried to an extent unprecedented in modern times, the insurrection of the slaves, necessarily occasioned by the system adopted towards them,-and the irritating conduct of their masters, lead this Committee earnestly to deprecate one moment's unnecessary delay in the settlement of this important question. Unless immediate measures are taken for the entire removal of this great national crime, this Committee are of opinion that the mutual hostility now existing, between the slave and the slave-holder, will lead to such a termination of the system as will involve the oppressor and the oppressed in one common calamity.

3. That the Committee, anticipating the probability of emancipation being accomplished by violence, if the right of the slave to his freedom be not speedily established, call the attention of the public to the calamitous consequences which may attend further delay-consequences which all men of Christian principles would most deeply deplore; the blood which must be so profusely shed,-the inevitable destruction of property in the Colonies,-and the consequent injury to the commercial interests of Great Britain.

4. The Electors must be aware of the extreme importance of Parliamentary support in the new Parliament; the Committee, therefore, most earnestly entreat their friends not to promise their suffrages to any candidate until they have satisfactorily ascertained that such candidate will support the total abolition of Slavery at the earliest moment it can take place consistently with the safety of all parties.

POSTSCRIPT.

Further accounts have just arrived from Jamaica, and also from the Mauritius, which add irresistible force to all our preceding observations. But we have neither time nor room for details.

ERRATA.

In Reporter, No. 100, p. 263, top line, for "extract" read "insert." p. 254, 7th line from the bottom, for "one parliament" read

our parliament."

London: S. Bagster, Jun., Printer, 14, Bartholomew Close.

THE

ANTI-SLAVERY REPORTER.

No. 102.]

NOVEMBER 1, 1832. [VOL. v. No. 11.

I. CONDUCT OF EMANCIPATED AFRICANS IN ANTIGUA. II.-AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY.

I.-CONDUCT OF EMANCIPATED AFRICAN APPRENTICES IN ANTIGUA.

A CURIOUS document has lately been laid on the table of the House of Commons on this subject. It is numbered 743, and bears the date of Aug. 16, 1832.

Our readers may recollect that, about a year before that date, Lord Howick, in the House of Commons, spoke favourably of the conduct of 371 African apprentices who had been seized in slave ships, and who, in 1828, had been put in possession of their liberty by an Order of the Secretary of State, referring in confirmation to the authority of Sir Patrick Ross, the Governor. This statement appears to have excited no small consternation among the Colonial Agents at home, and many of their constituents abroad. Accordingly, the Agent of Antigua, on the 10th of Sept. 1831, addresses a long letter to his constituents in that island to stir them up to disprove the statements of Lord Howick and Sir Patrick Ross; and he tells them that, if they should judge the subject as important as it appeared to him, they would see the necessity of giving him full information under the authority of the two houses of the legislature. This letter immediately roused the zeal and activity of the two houses-the Council and the Assembly. Meetings were convened, speeches made, resolutions passed, committees appointed, witnesses examined, and a joint report produced, in order to convict both his Majesty's Government and their own Governor of misrepresentation. It would almost seem as if the very fate of slavery depended on their establishing the worthlessness, idleness, and profligacy of the 371 Negroes whom Lord Howick, on the authority of the Governor, Sir Patrick Ross, had described as industriously labouring for their own support since they had been thrown upon their own resources. No man, we apprehend, can read the report of these legislative bodies on this occasion, or the evidence adduced in support of it, without perceiving the foregone conclusion at which all the actors in this investigation had previously arrived. Even Sir Patrick Ross is struck with the extreme unfairness of the whole proceeding, not only as it respects the liberated Africans, but as it respects his own measured and official representations to the Secretary of State of the facts of the case,-facts which he affirms, in the teeth of this enquiry, cannot be controverted. "The resolutions of the House of Assembly," he says, "have been passed without a single document before them on which to ground their unfair and unmerited imputation against me;" and "I have only been prevented from expressing myself to that body in terms of strong indignation, upon a proceeding

so hostile and unfounded, from the desire of avoiding a collision prejudicial to the public tranquillity, or embarrassing to his Majesty's Government." (p. 3.)

Such language, proceeding from an officer of the mild and cautious temper of Sir Patrick Ross, marks with sufficient force, presumptively at least, the tortuous aim of this transaction; and this estimate of its character, harsh as it undoubtedly is, seems borne out by the following observations of Viscount Goderich in his despatches to Sir Patrick Ross of the 3rd and 4th of January, 1832 :

"I have received your despatch of 15th November last, in which are enclosed certain Resolutions of the House of Assembly, with documents appended, relating to an enquiry into which the Assembly appears to have been misled by an erroneous representation transmitted to them, by the colonial agent, of the part taken by Lord Howick in a discussion in the House of Commons, on the 17th August last, respecting the liberation of certain Negroes.

"If the reports of Parliamentary proceedings (which are published in the Mirror of Parliament more fully than elsewhere) should have reached you, you will perceive, from the account given in that publication, however inaccurate in other respects, the real purport of that part of Lord Howick's statement which has been, no doubt unintentionally, misrepresented by the colonial agent."

We omit the particulars of what passed in the House: they will be found at p. 453, No. 89, vol. iv.-His Lordship proceeds :-

"The enquiry instituted by the Assembly having thus originated in a total misconception of what took place in the House of Commons, it is not necessary that I should take into consideration the papers which you have transmitted, otherwise than as documents containing information accidentally elicited upon a subject of some interest and importance.

"In this view, I cannot but wish that there had been a greater appearance of impartiality in the manner of instituting and conducting the investigation which was made into the conduct and character of the Negroes in question. It is stated by Mr. Bindon, on his examination before a Committee of the Legislature, that, whenever the captured Africans have been brought before the magistrates, they have not been able to obtain sureties on account of the general bad character which they bear, and they are invariably sent to the common gaol. He adds that he verily believes that the major part of the robberies committed in town are committed by them; that he considers the African Hospital a nuisance to the town, and a receptacle of idlers and thieves. You have yourself brought the correctness of the opinions thus delivered to a test to which the Assembly did not think proper to expose them. The returns which you called for from the provost-marshal established the fact, that out of the 371 Africans who were liberated in January, 1829, only fourteen had been committed to gaol up to 13th November, 1831, being in the proportion of less than two out of 100 in each year. It is not stated for what offences any of the fourteen were committed to gaol; but when I bear in mind that none of them have been removed from the colony, and that you were authorized, by the instructions from my predecessor for their liberation, to take measures for the removal of any who, within a period of seven years, should be convicted of theft, or any other offence against the peace of society, or should be found seeking subsistence as a common beggar or vagrant, or should become chargeable upon any parochial or public rates, except in cases of sickness or other inevitable accident,-I am led to infer that the offences for which the Africans in question have been committed to gaol are not of a serious complexion, and that they have not tended to bring upon the colony any considerable burden.

"The Assembly have observed that the Africans were, whilst in apprenticeship, by the terms of their indentures, exempted from agricultural labour, and

that thus they have not been habituated to such labour, and have not, since their liberation, in any instance engaged in it. Had it been permitted to indent captured Africans to planters, for the purpose of being employed in the labour of the plantations, there was every reason to apprehend that no distinction would have been made between their condition and that of plantation slaves. Unless such a distinction could have been enforced, it would have been obviously inconsistent, on the part of his Majesty's Government, at one and the same time to maintain that the labour allowed by law to be exacted from plantation slaves was excessive, and their rights i!l-secured, and nevertheless to devote to that unprotected and possibly severe condition of servitude persons who were committed to the care of the Crown, for the purpose of being preserved from slavery, and prepared for the exercise of industry in freedom. If the plan of training them as apprentices to other crafts and occupations than those connected with agriculture has not been generally successful, and if the Negroes do not now pursue those occupations with diligence, this result is greatly to be regretted, but is not difficult to be explained. The number of the captured Africans who happened to be brought into the island of Antigua appears to have been disproportionate to the wants of the colonial society for mechanical or skilled labour; and by reason of this disproportion a large number of the Africans appear to have remained unapprenticed on the hands of the collector of the customs. If it be true, as the Assembly have stated, that the captured Africans, whilst under the care of the collector, did not receive any moral or religious instruction, this is a circumstance which ought undoubtedly to have attracted the attention of the Government, and to have been brought under the notice of the Secretary of State. I fear, however, that in this respect the captured Africans only shared the fate of a large proportion of the Negroes in the colony. It would be a subject of sincere satisfaction to learn that the Assembly of Antigua have provided more adequate means of imparting religious instruction to the slaves generally; and it is particularly desired that the liberated Africans should be especially attended to by that portion of the church establishment in Antigua which is provided for by a Parliamentary grant.

"I observe it to be stated, in the evidence taken by the House of Assembly, respecting the character and conduct of the liberated Africans, that the women of that class of persons are particularly complained of. I have already reminded you that under the instructions of my predecessor, which led to the liberation of these people, you were authorized to remove any of them from Antigua who should be convicted before any magistrate of theft, or of any offence against the peace of society, or should be found seeking their living as common beggars or vagrants, or who should have become burthensome to any parochial rates, except in cases of sickness or other inevitable accident. I have now to call your attention to the expediency of exercising the authority with which you are thus invested in the case of every female African who may render herself liable to be removed; and I have to request that you will cause every such female African to be removed to Trinidad, there to be placed on one of the settlements, either of disbanded soldiers or of American refugees." p. 18-20.

The sequel of this correspondence is remarkable, and seems decisive of the question mooted by the Antigua Agent and his constituents. On the 25th April, 1832, Sir Patrick Ross, in reply to Lord Goderich's instructions, "on the subject of removing to Trinidad such of the liberated Africans as may have forfeited the privileges derived from the liberty that had been awarded to them," observes

"It is a cause of satisfaction to me to be enabled to state that the conduct of these people continues so much at variance with the character given of them in part of the evidence which was laid before the Houses of Legislature, by their joint committee, in November last, that there has not come to my knowledge a single case which could justify me in putting in force the penalty of removing them from a country in which they have been for so many years domiciled.