in Jamaica should not be as effectually protected from the oppressions, and exactions, and cruelties of the whites, by an act of parliament, as, in Demerara or Trinidad, by an order in council. Of this we feel confident, and that confidence is not a little increased by the tenor of Lord Seaford's speech, that without parliamentary interference, all hope of the fulfilment of the pledges of 1823 must be abandoned. The West India committee, with Lord Seaford at their head, choose to put it forth to the public, and require it to be believed on their word, and without a single attempt at proof, nay, in opposition to the most conclusive evidence-the returns on the table of parliament, and the whole tenor of the correspondence of the colonial secretary of state, with the colonial authorities, that the spirit, though not the detail of almost every one of the recommendations of the Government has been adopted by every one of the legislatures. The hardihood of unsupported and unwarranted assertion can go no farther than this.*

4. But there remains a still heavier charge against the abolitionists. They have calumniated, his Lordship tells us, the character of the colonists. Acts of individual cruelty have been collected and detailed to inflame the public feeling. The general state of colonial morals and manners has been misrepresented, while the testimony in favour of the whites has been set aside; and thus has hostility been excited to all plans of reform among the colonists, who, he assures us, are the only instruments of reform. In short, the non-improvement of the condition of the slaves, and the prolongation of their bondage, is the work not of the planters, but of the abolitionists.-This is ludicrous enough; but it is not new. It has been one of the main weapons of colonial controversy from the year 1787 to the present day. Every thing alleged against cruelty, oppression, and injustice, in the case of the slave trade, was, with all the West Indians of that day, as of every succeeding day, just as it now is in the parliamentary report of Lord Seaford's speech;-calumny and falsehood, a vilifying and traducing of character. And so it ever will and must be. For in what terms, we ask, are we to tell the world of that dreadful state of law in Jamaica which enacts that "In order to restrain arbitrary punishments—such is the preamble in all the successive acts;-In order to restrain arbitrary punishments," every driver or quasi driver may inflict ten lashes, and every owner, attorney, guardian, executor, administrator, or overseer, may inflict thirty-nine lashes of the cart-whip on the bare body of any man, woman, or child, without being required, by law, to assign the slightest reason, or being liable, in law, to one question, for so doing;-in what terms, we ask again, are we to tell parliament and the country of this dreadful state of law in Jamaica, so as to avoid appearing, to the sensitive minds of Lord Seaford and his West Indian brethren, to be traducing and vilifying their characters? We do not say, because we do not know, that on every estate, every driver, or every overseer, is constantly exercising the power he possesses of lacerating the slaves under him; but we do say he has that power and

*See Slave Colonies of Great Britain; and Anti-Slavery Reporter, Nos. 11, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, &c.

may exercise it, and (seeing what human nature is) he doubtless often does exercise it; and we further say, that the planters of Jamaica have not only refused to protect the slave by law from such torture, but that their indignation-(we regret that Lord Seaford should, in any measure, have seemed to participate in the feeling) is directed against those who dare to denounce the cart-whip as an object of reprobation.

It were easy to take one law after another, and in the same way to shew what is, in truth, the calumny of which we have been guilty, and which has so strongly excited Lord Seaford's ire, not against the framers and favourers of such atrocious enactments, but against those who hold them forth in their true and proper colours. But we forbear.— If any one wishes to obtain a just view of West India society, or of West India manners and morals, let him take it, not from the pages of the abolitionists; but let him take it from any and every week's Jamaica Gazette; let him take it from writers who are themselves West Indians; from the returns furnished by the colonial authorities; from the successive reports and addresses of the Jamaica assembly from 1788 downwards to the present day; from the solemn, and deliberate, and recent enactments of the Jamaica and other colonial legislatures; and from the very apologies and defences they make of their system. It is utter folly and drivelling to imagine that any great fabric of crime, and oppression, like slavery, especially if it minister to the cupidity of multitudes, and is attended with the gratifying exercise of that power which is so dear to the corrupt heart of man, can be overthrown without a full and unsparing exposure. It has been our object to expose it in

its true colours: we have done so, and shall continue to do so. But we absolutely repel the insinuation that we have calumniated individuals, much more calumniated slavery, if that were possible. All our pages are open to Lord Seaford. We challenge him to point out the passages in them on which he rests (we will not say, in the words of his Lordship, his calumny, but) his charge against us. We boldly and unequivocally deny its truth, and if he will condescend to make it more specific, we pledge ourselves not simply to deny, but to refute it. All the plausible ingenuity which he has so often employed to varnish over this bad system, if called again into full operation, will only serve, we feel persuaded, to make the triumph of the cause the nation has espoused, more complete; for it is the cause of truth, of humanity, and of justice; the cause of Him who has commanded us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to do unto our fellow-men as we would they should do unto us; of Him who regards with the same benignity, and has redeemed with the same costly sacrifice, the black and the white, the bond and the free, the whip-galled slave, and the master whose sumptuous table and splendid equipage, and magnificent establishments and dignified station, are the fruit of that slave's misery and degradation.

Lord Seaford has strangely fancied that we have been anxious to press into our service every instance of cruelty which the criminal calendars of the colonies may furnish, in order to serve the purposes of inflammation against the persons and characters of the colonists. He has miserably miscalculated and underrated our object. It has been to illustrate the real natureof colonial bondage, and the total destitution of

legal protection enjoyed by the slave under the existing system, and not to excite odium against individuals, that particular instances of atrocity have been referred to:-it has been done to illustrate principles, not to inflame the passions. To take an example:

In the memorable report of the fiscal of Berbice, of the details of which Lord Seaford himself has spoken in proper terms of disgust and abhorrence, there occurs the following statement:

Complaint of the woman Minkie, belonging to Thomas C. Jones. 'Mr. Jones took me out of the barracks on Tuesday. He sent me to Mr. Henery; he would not buy me. He sent me to another gentleman. Both said my master asked too much money for me, and sent me back. I begged for a pass to look for an owner. me down, and cut my He said no, he would put stakes, and Chance flogged me with a cart-whip. I was then laid down, and tied to three ging. I have marks of severe punishment visible on me; old and I got a severe flogrecent floggings, all inflicted by Jones.' She, exhibits her which are covered with a plaster by order of the doctor, and apparently lacerated to that degree, that the Court judged it expedient not to uncover it. Mr. Jones being called upon, said he had flogged her, and also broken her mouth for her insolence. He had had thirty-nine laid on her, and they were well inflicted. When he sent for her he had no intention of flogging her, but, after sending her to three persons for sale and not succeeding, he told her she had often deserved a flogging. He then directed her to be flogged, and that it should be well laid on, which was done."-Berbice Fiscal's First Report, p. 14.

In the Fiscal's second Report, still more memorable, if possible, than the first, because it sometimes adds, to the atrocities of the simple details of the facts of some of the cases, their judicial results, we have the conclusion of this matter,---the legal issue of Minkie's complaint. The Fiscal had referred it, along with his minutes of evidence, to the judgment of the Court of Policy; and this is the account of their decision: "His Honour, the President, and the Court, were highly indignant at the treatment of this female. No evidence, however, could be obtained to convict Mr. Jones of having inflicted a severer punishment than that prescribed by law, although the Court were fully satisfied that the unfortunate female slave had been flogged in a severe and cruel manner, and to her sufferings, by her master's own confession, was added the breaking of her mouth in a most brutal manner," p. 10. And what was the final proceeding of his Honour the President, and the Court? They directed Mr. Jones the master to take this wretched woman Minkie from the custody of the under-sheriff on payment of the fees. She was returned into the unlimited power, and placed at the absolute disposal, of this merciless tyrant, without the slightest guarantee against the renewal of the same barbarous treatment. tale as it stands on the Records of the Fiscal of Berbice.

Such is the

We have no doubt that Lord Seaford is as much shocked with that tale as any member of the Anti-Slavery Committee. He is greatly mistaken, however, if he supposes that the reason for having produced it before the public was to excite horror against individuals. Who is Mr. Thomas C. Jones? Who cares for him? Or what is the value of his character? And as for all the other parties in the transaction, they appear

to have acted with feeling and propriety. What could they do more? The law acquitted Mr. Jones. In the view of the Berbice code, (and that of Jamaica is, in this respect, the same,) he had done nothing wrong. He had only exercised the power which that merciful and considerate law gives to every ruffian, not himself a slave, of inflicting thirty-nine lacerations of the cart-whip on the bare and quivering limbs of a wretched female; nay, we see him insolently bearding the Supreme Court of Justice in the colony, with his daring avowal of the deed, and his exultation in it; and demanding to have the wretched sufferer given up to him as his property; while the President and his associates have no alternative but to restore this poor helpless, unprotected female, to his blows and stripes, and ruffian violence. Nor is it merely the state of the law, as regulating the master's tremendous power, which is here illustrated, but the effect of that most cherished inheritance of the planters, from the touch of which they so sensitively shrink that it is like touching the apple of the eye, (a feeling in which even Lord Seaford sympathizes,) we mean the SACRED right of property in their fellow-men, in men made like themselves in the image of God, redeemed like them by the blood of Christ, and heirs like them of immortality.

We shall be probably told again, as we have been told before, to admire the lenity of the slave code of Jamaica, which is so anxious to restrain arbitrary punishments, that it permits no man to inflict, at his own discretion, more than thirty-nine lacerations of the cart-whip at a time; and we may be called, therefore, to express our thankfulness, as has of late been so emphatically done in the House of Lords, that Jamaica has done so much, rather than to complain that she has done so little. We, however, cannot concur with any noble Lord in that view of the subject. The Assembly of Barbadoes, and they are plain spoken men, deride the disingenuousness of affecting squeamishly to limit the number of the stripes, for, they tell us, it is far better to leave every man to give as many as he pleases, because such is the power of this instrument, that "in the hands of a relentless executioner, a given number of stripes may, under the sanction of the law, be so inflicted as to amount to an act of cruelty." Indeed, as is well known, even a few stripes may do so. And what says Mr. Barrett, one of the members of the Jamaica Assembly, himself a planter, of this instrument, which that Assembly maintains in its plenitude of operation, not only as a regular mode of arbitrarily punishing men and women for whatever an overseer, in his discretion, or caprice, or passion, or drunkenness, may deem to be an offence; but as the stimulus, the quickener of the labour in the field, both of men and women? He calls it "the fellow of the rack and the thumbscrew"-and he affirms, "that thirty-nine lashes of this horrid instrument can be made more grievous than five hundred lashes with a cat."

But the sheet is full, and we must lay down the cart-whip which Lord Seaford has compelled us to take up in our own defence, reserving the counsel we had meant to give him, for another occasion.

London: Bagster and Thoms, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close.

MONTHLY REPORTER.

No. 41.]

FOR OCTOBER, 1828. [No. 17. Vol. ii.

The "ANTI-SLAVERY MONTHLY REPORTER" will be ready for delivery on the first day of every month. Copies will be forwarded at the request of any AntiSlavery Society, at the rate of four shillings per hundred, when not exceeding half a sheet, and in proportion, when it exceeds that quantity. All persons wishing to receive a regular supply are requested to make application to the Secretary, at the Society's office, No. 18, Aldermanbury, and mention the conveyance by which they may be most conveniently sent. Single Copies may be had of all booksellers and newsmen, at the rate of 1d. per half-sheet of eight pages, or 2d. per sheet of sixteen pages.

STATE OF RELIGION AMONG THE SLAVES IN THE WEST INDIES; REPORT OF SOCIETY FOR THE CONVERSION, INSTRUCTION, AND EDUCATION OF NEGRO SLAVES-BERMUDIAN SLAVES-EAST INDIA SLAVERY.

PURSUANT to the intention expressed in a former number, we shall now proceed to make some observations on a recently published Report on the state of religion among the slaves in our colonies. These observations may be found to apply, although in degrees very greatly varying, to more than one society, professing to be employed in instructing and educating the slaves. They will refer, however, more directly and immediately to a Society, entitled "The Incorporated Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West India Islands," whose Report for 1827, forming a volume of 240 pages, has lately reached us. This Report particularly claims attention, as the Society from which it proceeds has obtained the special patronage of the West India Bishops and Clergy, and of many distinguished Planters, and professes to extend its Christian efforts over the whole range of our West India possessions, thus taking the lead in the great work of evangelizing the slave population.

This Society was first incorporated in 1795, under the management of trustees, at the head of whom was placed the late Bishop Porteus, who had succeeded in obtaining, by a suit in Chancery, the appropriation to this, its original purpose, of a large bequest of that eminent Christian philosopher the Honourable Robert Boyle. In the year 1823, its form was materially changed, and its operations enlarged; and donations and annual subscriptions were solicited from the public at home and abroad, in order to promote more effectually the spiritual interests of the slave population, which had just then become the object of revived and intense interest. To give new vigour and activity to its operations, a Board of Governors was appointed, consisting not only of the former Trustees, but of several distinguished Prelates and Statesmen, and among them the two West Indian Bishops, to whom were