Mr. Burge's version of this clause, adapting it peculiarly to the circumstances of Jamaica, but entirely preserving the spirit of the Trinidad enactment, may be found in the same volume, p. 48. It requires a simple inspection of the two clauses to place, in full light, the intended frustration by the one clause of all the benefits conferred by the other. No one can peruse it without being led to admire the dexterity with which, in the actual law of Jamaica, the crime of robbing a slave is taken out of the class of crimes, and made a mere civil injury; and as, even in the new evidence law of Jamaica, slave evidence is not admissible, under any circumstances, in civil cases, though it be in some criminal cases, it will follow that the evidence of slaves will be entirely shut out from admission in all suits respecting their property. It seems to us that there must have been something almost satanic in the mind of the man, whoever he was, who could combine such a preamble, and such a professed purpose, with such an enactment, holding forth some promise indeed to the ear, but entirely breaking it to the sense. The whole forms as gross a deception as has ever been practised.

These remarks were especially applicable to the disallowed law of 1826. That of 1831, as Lord Goderich justly observes in his despatch to Lord Belmore, dated 16th June, 1831, "is altered considerably to the slave's disadvantage; and when the owner himself is the wrongdoer the slave is left without any remedy." The new law, too, instead of imposing, as the Act of 1826 did, a fine of £10, limits the sum to be paid by the trespasser to the precise value of the property stolen or plundered; and expressly takes from the slave, and vests exclusively in his owner, all right, whether in law or equity, to sue for the recovery of his stolen or plundered property. And this is called legal protection to property!! Lord Seaford and his manager may be quite at their ease as to any danger to them from this clause. It is perfectly harmless as respects them, do what they may. At the same time we are very far from supposing that Lord Seaford would require any law but that of his own sense of right to guide his conduct in such a case. All this, however, may show what incorrect views, not merely the public at large, but even well-informed men like Lord Seaford, are apt to take, being gulled by mere words. Reading in the margin of the Jamaica Act these deceptive words, "Property of slaves protected," they take it for granted that the Act and the margin correspond; whereas they are in direct variance. The intelligent mind of Lord Seaford, if he had read the law with any care, could not have overlooked its futile and utterly evasive nature.*

But there is another part of Lord Seaford's evidence to which we must object still more pointedly, as at war with fact.-"I cannot pre

It ought not to be forgotten that, in a parliamentary paper printed on the 28th March, 1831, No. 301, Mr. Burge joined the other West India agents in imposing on Parliament and the public the version of the above clause in the act of 1826, respecting property, with the real nature of which Mr. Burge especially had been so conversant, as a complete protection of slave property. "It secures," they say, "to slaves the possession of personal property.' Can any assertion be

less true?

sume," says his Lordship, "to say from what reasons the Assembly of Jamaica, having refused at one time to make an enactment, should at a subsequent period have thought fit to make it. They refused to admit the evidence of slaves by an overwhelming majority, only two members voting for it: two years afterwards an Act was passed admitting the evidence of slaves WITHOUT ANY RESTRICTION" (p. 99). Can Lord Seaford possibly have used these words, speaking upon his solemn oath? We think there must be some mistake in the report. This law, which Lord Seaford affirms to admit the evidence of slaves without any restriction, will be found in our last number (No. 104), at p. 446. Even if Lord Seaford had not thought it necessary to look at the law before he deposed to this effect, he could hardly have wholly forgotten the comments upon it of his deceased friend, Mr. Huskisson. He might have learnt from him, as well as from the words of the act itself, that, instead of admitting, it absolutely excluded the evidence of slaves in all civil cases, which is to exclude it in a very vast majority of the cases in which slaves can have an interest, and admitted it not in the multitudinous cases of wrong connected with the ordinary and daily course of plantation discipline, but "in those cases of crime ONLY in which they (i. e. slaves) are usually either the actors or the sufferers, excluding their evidence in other cases; a distinction which," adds Mr. Huskisson," does not seem to me to rest on any solid foundation."

Nor is this all. Two slaves, examined apart, if there be no free witnesses, must depose consistently to the same fact, before any free person can be convicted; so that the rape of a slave may altogether escape punishment. Again, no slave testimony will avail against a free person after twelve months from the commission of his crime, however atrocious it may be. Nay, however a man may have been maimed or mutilated, the very exhibition of his bleeding body in court would be a bar to that court to grant him his liberty; and his mutilator, though convicted, cannot be bereft of a master's absolute dominion over him. This is a most barbarous enactment, breathing the very spirit of cruelty and distrust; and yet Lord Seaford says of it, on his oath, that it admits "THE EVIDENCE OF SLAVES WITHOUT ANY RESTRICTION."

Before Lord Seaford was called to give his evidence, as it has now been analysed, an important paper was laid on the table of the Committee, by Richard Garrett Amyot, Esq., first clerk in the Slave Register Office, containing a view of the births and deaths of Africans and Creoles on Lord Seaford's three estates in St. James's, between the years 1817 and 1829. We will state the gross results:

The number of slaves on these three estates, by the registry of 1817, was 450 males and 527 females, in all 977 slaves; exhibiting a state of population, in regard to the sexes, highly favourable to its increase, the females being about a sixth more than the males.

The number on these estates, in 1829, is not given in this statement, which is a great defect, and serves very much to puzzle it; but, as far as we are able to make it out, the excess of deaths over births, in the intervening time, was 101, which would make the population of 1829

876, the males being 404 and the females 472; an equally favourable state of the population as was exhibited in 1817.

The decrease, nevertheless, even thus shown, amounts to nearly one per cent. per annum. But this is clearly below the truth, as Lord Seaford's manager states the slaves at only 864 in 1825; and in 1830 his returns to the vestries of Hanover and St. James were only 846.

We are aware of the argument which it is intended to build on the distribution which is made, in this statement, of the deaths, into Africans and Creoles, and also on the distribution of the births between African and Creole mothers; but we reserve this point, to which we shall have a sufficient answer hereafter, until we execute our promised purpose, of taking a complete and comprehensive view of the whole question of population, as it has been argued both in this Committee and in that of the House of Commons. Meanwhile we shall limit ourselves to the single remark, that until Lord Seaford shall be able to show how it happens that the slave population of the United States should have increased so rapidly as it has done, namely, at the rate of 2 per cent. per annum, since the date of the abolition of the American slave trade in 1808; and that his Lordship's slaves, dating from the same period of the abolition of the British slave trade, should have decreased at the rate of 1 per cent., we shall deem this boasted argument of no value whatever. value whatever. Supposing the population of his Lordship's estates, in 1808, to have been 1050, at the American rate of progress it would have amounted, in the year 1829, to 1600; instead of being, as it actually was in that year, only 876; leaving a positive waste of human life, on these three estates, in 21 years, as compared with America, of 724. No one will venture to say that this is not a murderous difference, which no special pleading about Africans and Creoles can deliver from its guilty stain.

In one point of view we cannot regret that the course of the examination should have forced us to individualize on this occasion, painful as it must be to his Lordship's feelings, and unquestionably so as it is to our own. But where could we have found an example of a slave-holder more entitled to the praise of humane and liberal conduct towards his slaves than this nobleman? But such is the system which he has unhappily had to administer, that its inherent wickedness has set his Lordship's best wishes and efforts at defiance, and has triumphed over them all. On his beautiful estates, where all nature seems to smile, and both all vegetable life and all other animal life are seen luxuriating in the exuberance of their productions,

"Man only is the growth which dwindles here."

We have indeed heard the case of Lord Seaford, and his severe losses by the late insurrection, cited, not only with the commiseration for his share in that calamity which we participate with all who have access to know his urbanity and other estimable qualities, but as a proof of the innate obduracy and ingratitude of the Negro character, which no kindness can soften, and no obligations can bind. Here, however, we must wholly dissent. His slaves, we do not hesitate to say, owe Lord Seaford nothing. Even the kindness he may have meant them, if not intercepted in its distant progress, has reached

them only through hearts and hands known to them, not by any interchange of affection, but by the stern exaction of their unintermitted toil. While they have been surrounding him with every enjoyment which wealth can purchase, they have been wearing out their lives, by night as well as by day, in bitter bondage, under the frown or the lash of unfeeling task-masters. Compared with those under whom they plied their unremitting labours, what was Lord Seaford to them? Their happiness and their destinies, from day to day and from hour to hour, were not in his power, but in that of his overseers; and while health and life were wasting, as we have seen, apace, it is but the dream of a driveller to suppose that there existed any principle which could enable them to avert their minds from the scenes around them, and fasten them on the kindly feeling towards them which might dwell in his Lordship's bosom amid the festivities and splendours of his lordly mansion at Seaford or in Audley Square.

5. MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JOHN KEANE, K. C. B.

govern

This gallant officer passed eight years in Jamaica, in the interesting period from 1823 to 1830, as Commander-in-chief of the forces; and, during a year and a half of the time, he administered the civil ment also. He conceived himself to have had abundant opportunities of becoming acquainted with the condition of the slaves, having moved about a good deal in the island, and visited many estates. We question, however, whether he could have been a very accurate observer of what was passing around him during those years. For example,-he says, speaking of the Negro, that he has always observed it to be very much contrary to the nature of that animal to tell the truth." He thus illustrates this opinion :-"Since the enactment of slave evidence being admitted, it is quite extraordinary to see the proof given in courts. They will tell a thing off-hand, and you suppose they had it perfectly; and on their cross-examination they will forget what they have said, and will tell a story diametrically opposite to what they have before told" (p. 167). Now this is certainly a very off-hand statement of Sir John's, considering that he is on oath. Sir John Keane himself tells us that he quitted Jamaica in 1830. But the act which admitted a slave to give any evidence at all against free persons did not pass till February, 1831, and was not in force until the November following. It was therefore impossible that the gallant General could really have witnessed what he swears to have taken place. It must have been the illusion of a dream.

Again, Sir John Keane tells us on his oath that one man in England does more [labour] than ten Negroes (p. 168).

Again, he never even heard of a Council of Protection in Jamaica: it must have been after his leaving the island (p. 169); while, in truth, it forms a part of the acts of 1816 and of 1826, and was renewed in the very act of 1829 upon which he himself put his veto as Governor.

Sir John Keane says he never heard of one complaint from slaves during the whole time he was in Jamaica. Their condition was good; they were contented; their food and clothing were sufficient. He was sure they would have complained had there been any cause; but they

never complained to him; and he had never, even by accident, heard of their complaining. They were advancing fast, according to Sir John, in amelioration and moral improvement; and he had never heard of such a thing as any obstruction to it (p. 163–165).

The slaves, Sir John thought, if made free, would sit down and do nothing, like the Maroons-nothing for themselves and nothing for others; and yet he says they had become excessively enlightened: many could read and write, and could understand their catechism; yet they do not improve as to their habits of lying, thieving, dishonesty, and licentiousness; but they pay great attention to their offspring, and they have married more of late years. The planters dislike the missionaries as alienating their slaves from their work and home. A slave protector would, in his opinion, be of most dangerous tendency; besides, such a person was not required. The Governor, the King's representative, was their best protector. In all his own visits round the country, he had never heard a complaint in Jamaica (p. 169). There was a strong disposition in the planters to improve the slaves in every way. protector is wholly unnecessary. If the Governor wishes for information he can have it from the Custos, or can write to the Custos for his opinion. No cruel proprietor or manager would be tolerated in Jamaica. The Negroes would go to a magistrate either in a body or individually; but in the eight years he was in Jamaica he never heard of a complaint, and never heard of a cause of complaint (p. 170 -172). He is quite sure emancipation would lead to utter ruin and extermination; "because," says Sir John, "an aggregate body of 350,000 slaves in Jamaica could not arrange, if they were emancipated to-morrow, any thing like a livelihood or a state of creditable being for themselves; and, with St. Domingo so close to them, I think they would follow the ruinous example of that ill-fated island" (p. 173).

Sir John Keane reiterates with emphasis that he had never heard of any complaint whatever. He then corrects himself, and says, he had heard of one case of corporal punishment that took place when he was in Jamaica. It was the case of the Rev. Mr. Bridges of St. Ann. Being asked if he recollected the particulars, he said, "it was a very nonsensical thing about a turkey which Mr. Bridges was angry about, and he flogged his female slave 'in the most cruel manner in the world.'" He knew of no other instance of corporal punishment, and he never saw one himself, and never saw a slave struck.-How, then, he is asked, are slaves made to work? By usage and custom; they are used to it from infancy. He cannot tell whether they are influenced by the fear of corporal punishment; he never asked them what motive they had; he supposed, however, that the law sanctioned the driver in arbitrarily punishing a slave, but over the law he had never had any control. Slaves worked from habit, and from a wish to serve their owners, but he understood they might be flogged if they did not work. Masters did not wish drivers to flog them, and they themselves had told him so. The magistracy of Jamaica he knew, and thought them incapable of concealing cruelty (p. 175, 176).

The Negro, Sir John thinks, would consider emancipation as giving him the "free exercise of his own will, which, by the character of the