Mr.

efteem himself one of the worst of men, did he not exert every means in his power perfectly to abolish fuch abominable wickedness. if, in attempting to forward this abolition, he fhowed the weakness of his ability, he muft confole himfelf with the confideration, that he felt more folid comfort from found public principles and confiftent conduct therein, than he imagined he fhould do from the exertion of any the mof brilliant faculties with which he might have been bleed.

He had only to conclude with giving his hearty affent, in the molt public manner, to the prefent motion, and with imploring the blefling of Heaven on every honest and earnest endeavour for the attainment of its perfect and complete fuccefs. Mr. Martin added his tribute of fincere thanks to the honourable gentleman who had made the motion of that day, and to thofe honourable gentlemen who had affifted him in the profecution of this bufinefs. He was very certain that they deferved the thanks of that House and the Public, and that when this matter fhould be thoroughly understood, they would receive thofe thanks in the fulleft and fincereft

manner.

Mr. Burdon remarked, that the honourable gentleman who Burdon. moved the queftion had, in a great measure, met his ideas. He confidered himself as very much in his hands; but he wifhed to go gradually, and not fo much at once, to the queftion of abolition. He wifhed to give time to the planters for taking fuch meafures as would keep up their flock; and he feared left the immediate abolition might cause a monopoly among the rich planters, to the prejudice of the lefs affluent. We ought, like a judicious physician, to follow nature, and promote a recovery which fhould be gradual. He wished, therefore, for fome motion fhort of abolition.

Mr. Francis faid, he should have contented himself with Francis. giving his vote for the motion, but for fome confiderations which were perfonal to himself, and by which he thought himfelf particularly called upon to deliver his opinion on the prefent occafion, not implicitly by a vote, but expreffly by declaration. He believed he was not very likely to be fufpected of receiving with fpecial favour and partiality, any meafure introduced and recommended from the other fide of the Houfe; that, in his own fituation in private life, every motive, by which the conduct of men is ufually determined, was united on one fide, an powerfully preffed upon him, to engage him to take part this night, against his opinion. Connections of every fort; friends who were dear to him, and who thought their fortunes were at ftake; folicitations the most urgent, from perfons to whom he was bound by mary ties; and poffibly, the profpect of advantage to him

, felf

felf or to his family at a future day, to be forfeited or preferved; all thefe were in one fcale, and nothing in the other, but the juftice of the caufe, and the protection of creatures, who would never know that he had endeavoured to ferve them, or whofe gratitude could never reach him. That he did not ftate thefe circumftances for the fake of oftentation, or as a claim to merit, but to fortify his caufe, by flewing that his opinion was fincere. Sir, I do not intend to go far into the general fubject. If the undifputed ftate of facts; if the clear and able argument delivered by the honourable gentleman, who takes the lead in this bufinefs, has not carried conviction along with it, I must conclude that truth and reafon on this fubject have no accefs to the human mind. Many gentlemen, indeed, have afferted what they have by no means established, and what, upon the whole, I utterly disbelieve, that this trade is profitable; but no man has yet had the courage to affirm, or even to infinuate, that it is not criminal. The question then is not, whether the trade be criminal, but in what degree? Is it a crime of the higheft guilt in morals, or is it in practice capable of palliation will it admit of an excufe? No, Sir; I declare upon my honour and my confcience, none, I pafs by the traffic, as it is conducted on the coaft of Africa, the temptation you give to one human creature to make a property of another, and to fell him to perpetual flavery. I take no notice of the miferies it produces in that country. Remember only, that whatever they are, you are anfwerable for them all. You create the market, and it is the market that conftitutes the demand, and produces the supply. I fhall not infift upon the horrors of the Middle Paffage; you do well to pass over them with difregard. The moft determined mind, the moft obdurate heart, if it be human, could not liften to the evidence on that fubject, without torture. I take thefe creatures in that which is ftated to be their beft fituation; at their landing in the islands; at their arrival in the land of promise, where they are inftantly to find relief from their fufferings; where, in return for a moderate degree of labour, a tolerable mode of existence is provided for them. You fay you have paid for them; that they fubfift at your expence, and that you have a right to their labour. Be it fo. On that principle, let us fee how they are treated. In confidering the state of flavery in the Weft Indies, the object which inftantly strikes my mind with a force and conviction, to which the evidence of fpecial facts hardly makes an addition, is the power of corporal punishment, allotted as I find it. I do not ask you to enquire in what manner this power is exercited, but how it is difpofed of, and to whom it is trufted, and then to determine what must be the effect of it. They know nothing VOL. XXIX.

Hh

of

of the human conftitution, who have not obferved, that power of every fort of one man over another, has a natural tendency to deprave and corrupt the mind. The moment I hear of fuch power, uncontrolled, in any hand, I conclude that the depravity is unlimited. The actual exercife of it, in the infliction of punishment, affuredly introduces that worst and most odious of all diforders in the moral fyftem, perfonal cruelty. The truth of these principles is acknowledged by the fpirit and caution of our penal laws in every other inftance, by the care they take, in all criminal proceedings, to feparate the intereft from the judgement, and the judgement from the execution. They will not fuffer fuch characters and powers to be united in one perfon; nor are they united in any civilized fociety upon earth, except in our Weft-India islands. What are the ufual offences imputed to the negroes? In ninety-nine inftances out of a hundred, they are either idieness or theft. They do not work hard enough to fatisfy the task-mafler, (and why they fhould work at all, I know not) or they fteal provifions. The thing they can eat is the only thing worth their ftealing. Food is the only object of theft which it is in their power to conceal, or that could poffibly do them any fervice. Confider the risk they run, the horrible punishments they fuffer when detected, and then you may conceive in what manner they are fed. in the confideration of thefe offences, who is the offended party? The negro driver. Who is the judge of the fact? The driver. Who awards the punishment? The driver. Who inflicts it? The driver with his own hand. But how? Captain Giles, of the army, fays, that "the punishment "by whipping, though with fewer lafhes given, is more fe"vere and cruel than that of the army, because of the fize "of the whip." Captain Hall, of the navy, fays, "that "in Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, the treatment of "the negroes on the plantations was inhuman; that the "punishments inflicted were very fhocking to persons not "ufed to fee them; much more fo, than on board a man of "war. The field flaves he has feen, (a great many) were "generally marked with the whip." This is the mode of punishment. What is likely to be the degree of it? An angry man determines the penalty; an offended judge inflicts it; and he, perhaps, by office, by habit, and occupation, one of the loweft, if not worst of our fpecies. If you cannot have an indifferent judge of the offences of thefe wretches, at leaft let there be a cold, indifferent executioner. It is a horrible truth, that when once the lafh is lifted by an angry man, with defpotic power over the object, his rage is inAamed by every ftroke he gives. The cries and writhings of

I

But,

the

the creature are called refiftance; even his patience is called fulkiness; even his fufferings are an offence. The decrees of paffion are executed by pafion. Admitting the power to be neceffary, is there any protection against the abuse of it? Have the negroes any fhelter? Have they any appeal? Is there a law to deter, is there a magiftrate to refort to ?No, Sir; none at all. Mr. Terry, who was many years an overfeer in Grenada, fays, "that he has known flaves punished by managers feverely for trifling faults; that they durft not complain to the owner, for fear of worse treatment; that he has known them punished by the owner "for fo doing, and fent back, though their complaint was "juft; that field flaves ufually bear the marks of the whip; "and that he never heard that a flave complained to a ma"giftrate of his owner, manager, overfeer, or attorney;

that he has known the fame perfon both attorney, mana66 ger, and doctor on one estate; that he never knew a plan"ter or manager interfere with another's treatment of his flaves; that food is the general object of theft among flaves, and at the hazard of their lives. That an overfeer on the "eftate where he was, (Mr, Coghlan) threw a flave into the "boiling cane juice, who died in four days; he was not pu"nifhed otherwife than by replacing the flave, and being "difmiffed the fervice; was told of this by the owner's fon, "the carpenter, and many flaves on the cftate; has heard it often,"

Against all the allegations and all the arguments on this fubject, one general answer is usually stated, and supposed to be conclufive: The negroes are our property; we have paid high prices for them; our profits depend upon the care we take of them. If we are bad men, at least we understand our intereft too well, to deftroy or difable the inftruments, by which alone our estates are made of any value to us. In the first place, Sir, the proprietor is not in general the perfon who exercifes the power in queftion; if he were, it might be fair to prefume, that the cònfideration of his true intereft would be some restraint upon his paffions. 1 fear, that in general it would not be effective. Many of the Weft-India proprietors, I know, are men of as much honour and humanity as are to be found in any other rank of life; but they refide in England. Concerning the managemeat of their eftates, they have no other evidence but the information of their overfeers; concerning the treatment of their flaves, they have nothing to judge by, but the amount produce of their labour. If the returns are abundant, it is not likely that the owners fhould be much difpo ed to enquire into abuses, by which their immediate profits do not appear to be diminished. They hear no complaints; they

live happily themselves, and conclude that all is well *. But I deny that the principle, fo affumed and relied on, namely, that flaves will be well treated, because it is the intereft of an owner to take care of his property,' is conclufive in this cafe, as it would be in the cafe of inanimate property. All the protection which you can expect from the principle, and it goes no farther, is, that corporal punishment fhall not be inflicted to the hazard of life and limb; that the flave hall not be difabled from performing the task allotted to him. Within that limitation, the lafh may be inflicted with the most fhocking, capricious feverity, provided it does not effentially injure the property of the owner. But to fecure even that degree of protection, he ought never to truft the lash out of his own hand. He delegates his power to another, but not the intereft, which, you fay, is to govern the exercife of it. Still the negroes are your property: fo are your hoifes, and of more value too, if price and value are the fame. See how thofe noble, ufeful animals are treated, by coachmen and others, every day in the freets; every night at the doors of the crouded affemblies of this town, before. the eyes of their mafters and mifirefles, and even at the hazard of their lives. I have been often witnefs to these abominable scenes of riotous or paffionate cruelty. Did you ever hear of a coachman punished, or even difmiffed, for cruel treatment of his horfes ?

One would think, at the first view of the fubject, that a plantation, once properly flocked with male and female negroes, would fupply itfelf, without farther importation. I wifh it were fo; for then I fhould conclude that the condition of the negroes was tolerable at least. There is nothing in the climate or foil to counteract the propogation of negroes in the islands, any more than in Africa, where they multiply to excefs. In all other countries, the labouring part of the people are in general the moft prolific. Wby not in the Weft Indies? Exceffive labour, and fcanty unwholesome food, would be fufficient to check population any where.But the fact is, that the planters do not think it their intereft to encourage it. Captain Hall tells you, that "in the

British islands, breeding is not thought defirable; they ra*ther thought it a misfortune to have pregnant women, or "even young flaves. They esteemed the charge of rearing a child to maturity, more troublesome and greater than

*Captain Hall fays, "he believes that the flaves fuffered from the "owner's abfence, because it was the bufinefs of the overfeer, for his "own credit, to make as much fugar as poffible; to do this, he must "work flaves to the utmoft; it being no concern of his whether they

died or not."

"buying