The History of the Abolition of African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. Thomas Clarkson
of twenty millions. Experience having shown that no preparation at all was required, it was preposterous to continue the restraint upon natural liberty an hour longer, as regarded the negroes, — the only party whom we had any right to consider in the question; and as for the planters there was the grossest absurdity in further regarding any interests or any claims of theirs. The arrangement of 1833, as far as regards the transition or intermediate state, had been made under an error in fact, an error propagated by the representations of the masters. That error was now at an end, and an immediate alteration of the provisions to which it had given rise was thus a matter of strict justice; — not to mention that the planters had failed to perform their part of the contract. The Colonial Assemblies had, except in Antigua, done nothing for the slave in return for the large sum bestowed upon the West India body. So that in any view there was an end of all pretext for the further delay of right and justice.
The ground now taken by the whole Abolitionists; therefore, both in and out of Parliament was, that the two years which remained of the indentured apprenticeship must immediately be cut off, and freedom given to the slaves in August, 1838, instead of 1840; The peace of the West Indian community, and the real interests of the planters, were affirmed to be as much concerned in this change as the rights of the negroes themselves. Far from preparing them for becoming peaceable subjects and contented members of society at the end of their apprenticeship, those two years of compulsory labour would, it was justly observed, be a period of heart-burning and discontent between master and servant, which must, in the mean while, be dangerous to the peace of society, and must leave, at the end of the time, a feeling of mutual ill-will and distrust. The question could no longer be kept from the cognizance of the negro people. Indeed, their most anxious expectations were already pointed towards immediate liberty, and their strongest feelings were roused to obtain it.
Of these sentiments the whole community partook; meetings were everywhere held; petitions crowded the tables of Parliament; the press poured forth innumerable tracts which were eagerly received; the pulpit lent its aid to this holy cause; and discussions upon petitions and upon incidental motions shook the walls of Parliament, while they stimulated the zeal of the people. The Government adopted an unfortunate course, which contributed greatly to weaken their hold on the confidence and affections of the country; they resisted all the motions that were made on behalf of the slaves, and appeared to regard only the interests of the master, turning a deaf ear to the arguments of right and of justice.
It was found, during the course of these debates, that a new Slave Trade had sprung up in the East Indies, with the sanction of an English Order in Council. Under pretence that hands were wanted to cultivate their estates, the Demerara planters had obtained permission to import what they termed, with a delicacy borrowed from the vocabulary of the African Slave Trade, "labourers" from Asia and from Africa east of the Cape, and to make them Indentured Apprentices for a term of years. No restrictions whatever were imposed by this unheard-of Order. No tonnage was required in proportion to the numbers shipped, no amount of provision, no medical assistance; no precautions were taken, or so much as thought of, to prevent kidnapping and fraud, nay, to prevent main force being used in any part of Eastern Africa, or of all Asia, in carrying on board the victims of West Indian avarice; in short, a worse Slave Trade than the African was established, and all the dominions of the East India Company, with all the African and Asiatic coasts, as yet independent, were given over to its ravages. This was repeatedly denounced by Lord Brougham in the House of Lords; and although his motion for rescinding the order was supported by Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Wharncliffe, the influence of the Government and the planters prevailed, and the House rejected it. A bill was afterwards brought in to check the enormities complained of; but no remedy at all effectual is as yet applied. The official documents, however, proved that already men had been inveigled on board, by the agents of the Mauritius planters, in different parts of the East, and that the mortality on that comparatively short voyage exceeded even the dreadful waste of life which had characterized, and impressed with marks of horrid atrocity, the accursed Middle Passage.
This subject, as might well be expected, once more roused the energies of Thomas Clarkson: he addressed an able and convincing letter to Lord Brougham, his old friend and coadjutor in the sacred cause; and it was printed and universally circulated. The subject still remains unsettled: and the labours of the enlightened philanthropist cannot now be directed to one more important, or more urgent.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1838, the question of Immediate Emancipation was agitated throughout the country. The Government proved hostile. Immense meetings were held at Exeter Hall, which were attended by many members of Parliament, over which Lord Brougham presided. Among others who were present and bore a distinguished part, were certain representatives of Ireland who promised their strenuous support. It is a painful duty to add, that their fellow-members from Ireland did not, on this great occasion, follow their good example; for eleven only of those, on whose votes reliance had been placed, opposed the Government, while no less than twenty-seven gave them support.
The question was rejected by the House of Lords, when brought forward by Lord Brougham; but in spite of the efforts of the Government; the defalcation of the Irish, of a still greater proportion of the Scotch representatives, two hundred and seventeen members of the House of Commons voted for Immediate Abolition, out of four hundred and eighty-nine who were present on the occasion. A second effort in the same session placed Ministers in a minority; but they immediately gave notice, they should strenuously oppose any attempt to carry into practical effect this decision of the House; and in this determination they were supported by a majority on a third division.
The word, however, had gone forth all over England, that the Slave should be free. It had not only pervaded Europe, it had reached America; and the West Indians at length perceived that they could no longer resist the voice of the British people, when it spoke the accents of humanity and of justice. The slaves would have met the dawn of the first of August, — the day which all the motions in Parliament and all the prayers of the petitions had fixed, — with perfect quiet, but with a resolute determination to do no work. The peace would not have been broken, but no more would a clod have been turned after that appointed sun had risen. A handful of whites surrounded by myriads of negroes, — now substantially free, and free without a blow, — must have been overwhelmed in an hour after sunrise on that day, had they resisted. The Colonial Legislatures, therefore, now listened to the voice of reason, and they, one after another, emancipated their slaves. The first of August saw not a bondsman, under whatever appellation, in any part of the Western Sea which owns the British rule.
The Mauritius, however, still held out, and on the Mauritius the hand of the Imperial Parliament must and will be laid, to enforce mercy and justice on those to whom mercy and justice have so long called aloud in vain. In truth, if the case for instant emancipation was strong everywhere, it was in no quarter half so strong as in the Mauritius; and the distribution of the grant by Parliament to this Colony was the most unjustifiable, and even incomprehensible. For, elsewhere, there existed at least a title to the slave, over whom an unjust and unchristian law recognised the right of property. But in the Mauritius there was not, nor is there now, one negro to whom a good title is clearly provable. The atrocious conduct of Governors and other functionaries, in conniving at the Slave Trade of Eastern Africa, had filled that Colony with thousands of negroes, every one of whom was carried there by the commission of felony, long after Slave Trading had been declared a capital crime by the law of the land, as by the law of nature it always was. Sir George Murray, when Colonial Secretary of State, had admitted, that at least thirty thousand of the negroes in the settlement were nominally slaves, but in reality free, having been carried thither contrary to law. He understated it by twenty thousand or more: yet on all these negroes, in respect of property, were two millions and more claimed: for all these the compensation money was given and taken, which Parliament had lavishly bestowed. How then was it possible to doubt, that every slave in the Mauritius should receive his freedom, when the only ground alleged for not singling out and liberating this fifty thousand, was the inability to distinguish them from the rest? If ten men are tried for an offence, and it is clear that five are innocent, though you cannot distinguish them from their companions, what jury will hesitate in acquitting the whole, on the ordinary principle of its being better five guilty should escape than five guiltless suffer? The same is still the state of the case in that most criminal settlement,