being ready to convert it into cash. The inconveniences attendant on an annual settlement are remedied by occasional advances on the part of the proprietors, so as to enable the cultivators on the estate to procure necessaries, while the accumulation in reserve is of course beneficial to the interests of the prudent. A strict police and the exertions of managers prevent instances of intoxication from being frequent-this evil, it might be thought, would be a consequence of wealth suddenly acquired, especially in the case of ignorant persons; but, as in military affairs, discipline is essential to the well being of an army, so is a strict police and punishment when deserved, essentially necessary in the administration of an estate, and no where is such police more efficient than in that island.

In the case of uncleared lands and new settlements, some useful hints may possibly be derived from the practice in St. Domingo, where the blacks must be supposed to understand full well the nature of the equivalent that is suited to the wants of their quondam fellow-slaves. A man of industry with some little credit, and without capital, might, in this view, feel himself competent to undertake the cultivation of an estate. In South America, in parts adjacent to French and Dutch Guyana, even on the banks of the rivers Corantain and Essequibo, under every protection, fertile districts in a state of nature might be cleared and planted at an expense comparatively trifling and free from those exorbitant demands which the settler would have to encounter in many of the islands. By agreeing with his labourers to assign to them one fourth part of the whole amount of produce, he would attract an ample number of hands necessary to enable him to prosecute his design, whereas to purchase a sufficient quantity of slaves might be wholly out his power.

It has been ascertained that the apportioning of task work, with suitable inducements, has been attended with the best effects in stimulating the energies of the negro; in such cases of course the remuneration is proportioned to the quantity of labour performed. The policy of this measure will be at once apparent when we consider the disposition of man to adapt his labour to the reward, regulating the former by the frequency of the latter.

One great bar to improvement in the West Indies is to be found in the existing practice of valuing estates according to the number of negroes attached to them; the consequence is few individuals unless some of desperate fortunes, will be found to embark in the purchase of an estate in most of the British West India possessions, because the first outlay exceeds in amount what any prudent man would think proper to hazard in such a speculation, attended with various risks. The position is not altered by the circumstance of that outlay being commuted for personal bonds, guarded by mortgage deeds of the estate and power, with warrant, of attorney. These are the refuges of the venturous planter, not the voluntary covenants of the prudent. By separating the land from the negroes, is probable many respectable persons might be induced to give

a higher price for the land alone than when coupled with the sale of those unfortunate beings, some of whom, skilled as artisans or mechanics, have, since the abolition of the traffic by sea, been sold for upwards of eight hundred dollars each. The more general and politic introduction of whites, particularly in housework, and many offices less exposed than the labour of the field, might be one, amongst other desirable attributes of a system which, when fully developed, appears to promise a happy termination to the angry discussions that have so long divided mankind on the slave question. From the colonial legislatures, however, it is hopeless to expect any regulations of internal economy such as those alluded to. Composed of the leading planters,* their interests, they maintain, are diametrically opposed to concessions of whatever nature, until they shall be roused to a sense of their danger and convinced of their errors. To the mother country we must look for the origin and accomplishment of such measures as may be ascertained to benefit a most valuable body, by whom all cultivation is performed, and nearly all trades and callings exercised-attended with as light a sacrifice as possible on the part of those who hitherto have monopolized all consideration and been permitted exclusively to reap the benefits of the prevailing system.

The substitute proposed in order to supply the place of slaves in new settlements, and to replenish the lands required in the old, is to be found in the disposition of the Kroomen, (a hardy race of people in Africa who come down from the interior to work at Sierra Leone) voluntarily to emigrate in search of employment and in the hope of gain. The reports of the London African institution, founded on the information of gentlemen long resident on the western coast of Africa, represent these people as a most laborious and indefatigable class of persons, performing all the severer toils about the different forts and settlements, and contented with a very moderate reward. They have been known frequently to row fifteen miles out to sea and return perfectly satisfied if they earn a leaf of tobacco by rendering any service to vessels on the coast. No reasonable doubt can exist that, were a number of these Kroomen hired in the first instance by contract, for five or seven years, at a stipulated rate, the West India islands would soon be resorted to, under due restrictions, by their countrymen in numbers adequate to the demand; nor is it less likely that they would be inclined to quit their native shores than the Malays, the Hindoos and the Chinese, who, under the denomination of Lascars, freely engage themselves to the commanders of East India shipping to navigate vessels on an European voyage. We have experience of the fact of these Kroomen removing 800 and 1000 miles from the interior down to the coast in search of hire and its reward. Their fidelity and competence to hard labour are abundantly testified. Experiment only is necessary to ascertain the practibiltiy of inducing them freely and of their own accord to enter

*Governor Elliot's letter.

into voluntary engagements to serve for a limited period in the West Indies. As some proof of this project being far from visionary, may be adduced also the fact of no less than eight British West India regiments, consisting wholly of black troops, having been raised and embodied in Africa to serve in the West India islands. During a period coeval with the breaking out of the war between England and France up to the present day, these regiments, so remarkable for their good conduct on all occasions, have been recruited from Africa under every circumstance of opposition from the slave dealers on the one hand, and watchful scrutiny of the abolitionists of the slave trade on the other.

It might be curious to inquire with what feelings the slave on a plantation, who cannot be said to be a human being without thought, regards the condition of the more fortunate negro soldier; in so doing we cannot omit to arrive at some degree of approximation between the relative situation and claims of a body of slaves contrasted with those of a battalion of free men. The soldier is free, inasmuch as a price has not been set upon his head, but restraints-sometimes severity, fatigue, privations-he is obliged patiently to endure. Implicit obedience to the will of a superior officer is his first duty-neglect of it is attended with punishment. So far the soldier is a slave: but then he earns the wages of his calling, and honour is supposed to constitute a portion of his reward. Not so with the slave, he knows no reward, his labour goes unrequited-his body the property of a purchaser, but with a soul equally acceptable to God. How long shall such palpable injustice be permitted to endure? What exception to the general title to remuneration enjoyed by each labouring individual in civilized society shall be pleaded in bar of extension to the unoffending African? At a time when the abolition of the trade in slaves is professed to be enforced, how long shall the price of man continue to be estimated, buyers still be found, and sellers ever ready, even under the sanction of courts, to legalize their bargains? If such a system is to be upheld-if the rights of man are thus to be quibbled away by sophistical evasion, then indeed there remains no hope for suffering humanity, and it is an abolition only in

name.

But, the planter may urge the tenure of his property, the value of his freehold, and the prescriptive nature of his rights. Let it be so. The slave has also his rights, suspended but not forfeited, and to arbitrate between the two is the difficulty. It is impossible in the first place to forego the principle of labour entitling to reward. To wave it, would be to consign power and right to the strongest toil without redress to the weaker-enjoining to the latter unqualified submission to whatsoever the other might impose. To consent to the abandonment of all those moral ties on which the frame of human society is founded, would, in these our

See Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, on the subject of the "profit of professions."

reasonings a priori, go to favour one class of mankind at the expense of the other; depressing the slave to the level of the brutes, and erecting the proprietor into a lord of the universe, even over his own kind. To the planter it may be urged that, to concede somewhat in order to insure the preservation and tranquillity of the whole, is the part of wisdom. He must be lost indeed to all sense of reason if he ventures to deny those precepts of natural and revealed religion which prescribe duties to all sorts and conditions of men, and teach that" charity covereth a multitude of sins." But it will hereafter appear on what his interest in this point consists. As to the slave, it must be seen that a gradual emancipation is most desirable even for his welfare. He is the subject of real property, the perverted object of purchase and sale-his services have been bought for a valuable consideration. In order to conciliate the concurrence of the planter thus materially implicated, he can only expect by industrious perseverance, and the accumulations of a strict frugality, to aspire in time to the purchase of his freedom by degrees, so soon as a regular system of wages is introduced in the islands. A legislative enactment on this subject would do more real honour to its framers than any measure perhaps, connected with the slave trade, since the memorable day of its abolition. But let us see in how far the planter, the West Indian interests, so predominant in the British parliament, and we may add the government itself, are severally concerned in the adoption of a more enlarged and beneficent scheme of policy. Revolutions would affect all; and though we may pronounce on the inefficacy of such partial attempts at insurrection as in Barbadoes, yet when the proportion of slaves to whites is considered, being in the island of St. Kitts alone as thirty to one, the mischiefs even attendant on those attempts are not to be laid out of calculation. The insurrection of the negroes in St. Vincent and Grenada about the year 1797, when all the estates were nearly destroyed, will long be remembered, and ought to furnish a useful lesson at the present day, when the flame of discontent appears smothered only for awhile, to burst out anew with additional horrors. But a higher motive exists to invoke impartial attention to this momentous inquiry. The history of mankind forbids us to rely upon the uninterrupted duration of a state of peace. A few years may materially vary the pacific views of different powers. In such a contingency, will it be forgotten that, during the hostilities with America, a British naval force under admiral Cockburn giving freedom to the slaves on the plantations of the Chesapeake,* received on board and transported to Nova-Scotia, a considerable body of the fugitives? Has France yet ceased to impute her reverses in St. Domingo, partly to the defeats that led to the capture of Cape St. Nichola Mole and, partly, the ascendancy of the blacks to the instru mentality of the British arms? The evident policy of England in neutralizing that important colony may be too successfully imitated in cases where possession may not be convenient. In a state of feeling like the present on the part of the slaves, with the seeds of

* See documents, page 65.

rebellion long implanted and ready to start to life, it would not be difficult of accomplishment for a hostile force bombarding the towns, harassing the inhabitants with feigned attacks in front, and inciting the negroes to revolt in the rear, in this manner to ruin a valuable possession where conquest might not be practicable. During the late American war it was understood that a squadron of light frigates under commodore Porter was in preparation for a similar service, when intelligence of the treaty of Ghent being concluded was received.

In a series of years we have seen nations rise and fall, and maritime strength (hitherto the bulwark of British power) acquiring consistency or verging to decline, according to the vigour or decrepitude of governments.

In such a crisis as we have contemplated, the sole security of the British West India islands would rest essentially upon that attachment of the negro to his employer which it should be the object of the statesman, equally with the philanthropist, to bring about -an attachment founded upon reciprocal interests, alike necessary to each, deriving in common, protection from the government that shall reconcile the planters' rights with the fair claims of the labourer, and thereby preserve the colonies in their allegiance to the parent state. May the days of peace be far prolonged, and national animosities give way to that spirit of forbearance one to another which is no less consistent with prudence and sound policy than with the injunctions of our religion!

Essay II.

If, on surveying the four quarters of the globe, we consider that which has enjoyed fewest opportunities of foreign intercourse, and stretching between the Mediterranean sea in the north, and the Cape of Good Hope in the south, appears from its extraordinary extent, its variety of soil and climate, specially to claim the investigations of the cosmopolitan-we shall be led to the conclusion that circumstances of more than ordinary import in the history of that country must have operated to impede the march of civilization, and oppose the customary influence of commerce on a people. That Africa, the subject of our inquiry, has been peculiarly depressed, is a melancholy truth, to be attributed to no moral incapacity in the inhabitants, but derived from the long history of aggressions committed upon its innocent population by almost every power possessed of colonies or plantations. Until these obstacles shall be removed-until the progress of civilization, and the consent of all Christian states shall have terminated the baleful consequences of a trade in slaves, by its entire suppression, there can be no confidence so indispensable to national prosperity-no security for persons or property, and therefore no improvement.

Vith regard to the allegations of those who maintain that there en dealt out to the natives of Africa an inferior portion of gifts, that the Almighty hath set a mark or stamp of dey-equivalent, as it would seem, in the opinion of some, to of servitude upon them, nothing can be more impious, ded, and unjust.