placed over these liberated Africans, qualified to discharge the duties of magistrates; to form and preserve those habits of order by which a rising society must be bound together; and to direct its labour to those objects of industry which may be most useful and advantageous.

In speaking of the progress of civilization in Africa, it is in Sierra Leone itself, that a rational inquirer can alone expect to find that im provement has taken root up to the present time. Beyond the borders of the colony, whilst the slavedealer, the missionary of barbarism, is in the field, there is little, or rather no, possibility of a harvest for the missionary of peace. How could a native, however curious and intelligent, occupy himself in acquiring knowledge, when he may not stir out of his village but at the risk of being seized and sold?

The civilization of Africa never can proceed until the slave trade is put down beyond a hope or possibility of return. To suspend it, to alternate between a year of repose and a year of plnuder, to give the bud just time to germinate, and then to tread it under foot, is little better than a machinery for adding to the growth and the number of the victims, and for rendering, by the contrast, their sufferings more

intense. The appearance of a slaveship demoralizes a whole neighbourhood.

But a state

The Directors close their Report with calling the attention of the public to the precise point which they have reached in this great cause, and to the nature of the difficulties with which for the future they have to contend. Our own slave trade is extinct. of things, such as at the institution of this Society never could have been anticipated, has arisen since the peace: a new disturbing force is introduced, which we have not the power of ccntrouling; and the enemies of humanity have rushed in between us and our object, and threaten to bear it beyond our reach. As in the abolition of the slave. trade we originally sought the mitigation of slavery, so we are now driven to consider, whether any other efficient means are left us, than that of reversing our course of proceeding; and whether we must not look henceforward to the mitigation and extinction of slavery, as our only security for the abolition of the slave trade. We cannot, it is true, compel other nations to abandon it; it seems too probable that they are not to be persuaded; but, by a determined encouragement of free labour, we may make it not worth pursuing.

THE Second Report of this Society brings down the intelligence on the subject of slavery, to the date of the last annual meeting.

Since the former meeting of the Society, little or nothing had occurred which affords any satisfactory indication of progress in the great work for which the Society has been instituted; the Mitigation and gradual Abolition of Slavery in the British Dominions. In the colony of Trinidad, indeed, an Order of his Majesty in Council, containing many salutary regulations, though greatly defective in some important respects, bad been promulgated. Against the

imposition of this Order, the White planters of the island have universally and strenuously remonstrated; alleging that it was pregnant with inevitable ruin to all their interests. The Governor's instructions, how. ever, were peremptory; and in June 1824, the Order was promulgated, " and became the law of the island.A committee of planters was subsequently appointed, who complain that the Order in Council" has made an entire revolution in the system under which slaves were heretofore managed and governed;" that "nothing but the force of habit, and a brutish indistinct idea of the

superiority and fixed power of their masters, keep them in awe and subjection;" that one great source of discomfort to the slave is the change produced by the Order in Council in the old mode of punishment, "so well established, recognized, and understood by the slave;" (alluding of course to the abolition of flogging as it respects the women, and of the driving whip as it respects both sexes). "By those," they remark," who have most considered the subject in this colony, the use of the whip is believed to be identified with the existence of slavery." This and much more equally condemnatory of the West Indians and their system, is said not by any enemy of slavery, but by West Indians themselves.

In the various resolutions, remonstrances, and representations of the planters of Trinidad, the Committee rejoice to learn that the free Blacks and People of Colour, with few if any exceptions, have taken no share. They possess, it is said, a full half of the property of the island; but they have not chosen to set themselves in opposition to the wishes of Parliament and of the public on this occasion. The civil degradations which they themselves are doomed to sustain are many and galling; and the Committee believe they are sufficiently enlightened to have at length attained a just and settled conviction, that the slavery of their colour is the real root of the evils they experience; and that while that slavery is perpetuated ;-while the Negro continues a "brutish" outcast from the pale of society; " deprived of his natural rights;" a mere beast of burden; a mere instrument of profit; they who partake of his colour must of necessity partake of his debasement. His brand will cleave to them; and neither wealth nor distinguished talents, nor eminent moral worth, were they all to meet in one individual, will suffice to

efface it.

It was stated in the last Report

to be the declared intention of his Majesty's Ministers, to extend the provisions of the Trinidad Order in Council to Demerara, Berbice, St. Lucia, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope; but the purpose had remained still unexecuted, probably from the opposition of the planters of those colonies to reforms which they, in common with the planters of Trinidad, profess to "regard with dismay and horror," as a dangerous invasion of their most sacred rights.

On the concurrence of the slaveholders, the resident slaveholders especially, in any effective plan for controuling their own power, and for raising their wretched bondsmen in the scale of being, the Committee have never placed any strong reliance. Indeed, they are persuaded that the aversion which prevails, in the West Indies, to conferring upon Negroes the common rights of human nature, is too deep-rooted and general to be overcome except by the direct and authoritative interference of a higher power.

The spirit and temper which the Committee attribute to the colonists, have been the most clearly manifested in those colonies where the movement of the popular mind among them is the most free and unfettered. In Barbadoes, for example, two sessions had been consumed in debate and deliberation, and nothing had yet been done towards the reform of the Slave Code. The very mover of the proposed reform seemed to feel that he could not expect a hearing, without the most unmeasured abuse of the Abolitionists, and their “hellish designs." But all the violence of this vituperation was insufficient to secure the slightest degree of popular favour in Barbadoes, to the man who had dared to innovate, however sparingly, on the sacred institutions of its slave code. The speech was followed by upwards of two months of deliberation, in the Assembly, on the bill which it introduced; but during this time the mover of it appears to have been assailed, out of doors, by

terference of the imperial Parliament is imperatively called for to ameliorate and finally abolish this unjust and wicked system.

It is not, however, merely by the interference of Parliament, in the internal legislation of the colonies, that the mitigation and final extinction of slavery may be effected: the abolition of the West-Indian monopoly would tend, perhaps, even more certainly to that end.

That monopoly is at present supported, first, by a bounty of upwards of six shillings per cwt. on the export of refined sugar, and which necessarily raises the price, not only of all the sugar exported, but of all the sugar consumed at home, to the extent of the bounty;-and secondly, a protecting duty of ten shillings a cwt. more on East-Indian, than on West-Indian sugar, which favours sugar grown by slave labour, in preference to that grown by free labour, to the extent of about 50 per cent. on the cost of the article, and tends to exclude the latter from our consumption, and to force us to consume the former. On coffee also, the West Indies have a protection of 28s. a cwt. Now, to say nothing at present of the degree in which prices are raised by the operation of the protecting duty, the cost of the West-Indian monopoly, arising from the sugar bounty alone, is estimated at about 1,200,000l. annually. And it is this large sum, (in addition to whatever enhancement of price may be produced by the protecting duty,) paid by the people of this country to the growers of sugar, over and above what that sugar would otherwise cost, which does in fact chiefly maintain unimpaired and unreformed the wretched system of colonial bondage.

The

people of England are therefore the real upholders of Negro slavery. Without their large contribution to its support, it could not fail to be rapidly mitigated, and eventually extinguished. It is absolutely vain, therefore, to be hoping to abolish slavery, or to expect that by the

vehemence of our speeches, or the force of mere parliamentary resolutions, or of royal recommendations, we shall be able to abate this evil, while we are extending to it such solid marks of our favour, and thus affording to it its great and principal means of support.

If it were proposed in Parliament to give to each of our 1800 WestIndian proprietors, pensions, varying in their amount from 500l. to 5000/. a year, according to the quantity of sugar which each might extract, by means of the cartwhip, from the labour of his slaves; and forming a total aggregate of one million two hundred thousand pounds, what reception would such a proposition meet with? Would it be tolerated for a single moment? And, yet, wherein does the actual state of things differ substantially from the case which has been supposed, except that, in this last, the transaction would stand forth to the public view in all its flagrancy, while, in the other, it is more concealed from observation. The payment is not the less real on that account.

It will not be alleged that the West-Indians have any claim to levy such a contribution upon the people of this country for merits or services of their own. They are themselves sensible of this. They allege it to be necessary, not so much on their own account, as with a view to the well-being and comfort of their slaves. But no notion, the Committee maintain, can be more fundamentally erroneous than this: and they shew, that whatever tends to raise the price of the slavegrown produce of our colonies, tends in the same degree to rivet the chains, and to add to the labour and misery, of the slave; while the depression of its price operates beneficially both in relaxing his bonds, abating his toil, and enlarging his comforts. Our readers will find a most convincing argument on this subject in the Report before us.

The Committee do not, however, mean to argue that slaves may not

be wretchedly used, and cruelly oppressed, when prices are low, and their labour comparatively unproductive. It is not in human nature that the possession of such an uncontrolled despotic power as that which is possessed by the colonial master over his bondsman should not be abused, under whatever cir. cumstances or system.

But still it will be argued, that the abolition of the bounties and protecting duties must issue in the ruin of the planters. If, with all the support which these afford them, they find it scarcely possible to keep themselves from sinking, their utter ruin must be the inevitable consequence of withdrawing that support. Now, although it is too much to require that the pecuniary interests of 1600 or 1800 sugar planters should be allowed to come into competition with the comfort, the health, the liberty, and the lives of seven or eight hundred thousand human beings, and with the clear interests of the whole community of the British Empire; and although the facts of the case leave no room for hesitation as to the expediency, nay as to the absolute necessity, of putting an end to this most impolitic, inhuman, and unchristian system; yet the Committee meet their opponents, even on this ground. The system of bounties is a system of pauperism on a large scale, attended with all the evils of pauperism. But for this, would it have been possible that the West Indies should have continued in that low and wretched state of improvement which they now exhibit; that the miserable hoe, raised by the feeble hands of men and women, driven forward by the cartwhip, should still be their only instrument in turning up the soil, to the neglect of cattle and machinery;-that all modern improvements in husbandry should be almost unknown; that one unvarying course of exhausting crops should be pursued without change or relief; and that in a climate congenial to them the population

should continue progressively and rapidly to decrease? These and many other points that might be mentioned are fatal anomalies, which can only be accounted for by the withering influence of slavery and of the factitious aid by which it is upheld in all its unmitigated malignity. How different would have been the state of things in our colonies, had a different course been pursued! Nothing short of the removal of all protection of the produce of slave labour, against competition with the produce of free labour, can effectually banish the evil.

The cultivation of sugar is at present a forced cultivation, which must ever be a hazardous and expensive process, and can only be supported by a monopoly price, both high and permanent. The first effect of the removal of restrictions would be, that the colonist would be induced to withdraw from sugar cultivation (which is at once the most exhausting to the soil, and the most oppressive to the slave of any) his inferior soils, and to employ them in pasture, or in the growth of other articles of a less onerous description. By reserving his best soils only for sugar, its remunerating price would be lowered, and his profits of course raised. But the necessity of the case would force upon him other improvements. He would be obliged to become resident. That curse of the West Indies, a non-resident proprietary, would cease; the heavy cost of agency would be saved; the ruinous effect arising from the unfaithfulness and disobedience of agents, frustrating every designed amelioration, would be stopped; the plough and various other articles of machinery would then be brought into use, and would both lessen the expense of culture and lighten the labour of the slaves. Cattle would be more generally employed: a change of crop, a better system of manuring, and a better system of general management, would follow. The women would be relieved from that con