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LETTER FOURTH.

TO HIS GRACE The Duke of WELLINGTON, &c. &c.

MY LORD DUke,

FROM JAMES MACQUEEN, ESQ.

YOUR Grace has had numerous opportunities to learn that there are many inconsistent and turbulent characters in the world, and how far these, in order to gain any particular object, will depart from the truth. This being the case, I may perhaps stand excused for bringing, in vindication of myself, the following collection to the notice of your Grace, and to the notice of the public.

First in the list, and " the Goliath" of the band, I must mention JAMES STEPHEN, Esq. Master in Chancery.* This gentleman, thinking he had, by his customary way of classing things, a fine opportunity to do me an injury with the powers that be, tells the world in his new anti-colonial volume, p. 197, and after garbling a silly and malicious statement in a Jamaica journal, in order to help out his case, that my labours in defence of the colonies, had been extended to "the Glasgow Courier, Blackwood's Magazine, the Morning Journal, and other ordinary vehicles of his mercenary labours."

Your Whig Attorney-General having, for reasons best known to him. self, extinguished the Morning Journal, Mr Stephen conceived it would be a good opportunity, judging of your Grace's feelings and ideas by his own, to win your ear, and to attach odium to me, by coupling my name and labours with that journal. In this way I appreciate the attack. On this account I notice and reply to it shortly thus: In or for "the Morning Journal, or other ordinary vehicles of mercenary labours," I never wrote a line at any time, nor on any subject; and in the face of the British Empire, I brand the dastardly accusation as a falsehood, a deliberate falsehood. The volume to which I refer, so far as I have yet been able to glance into it, is made up of similar repre

hensible, disingenuous, and disgraceful accusations and matter.

At a meeting of " the Dublin Antislavery Society," held (see Dublin Morning Post, April 14th) in that city on the 8th of April last, an individual named "JOSHUA ABELL," secretary, after adverting to a new establishment" for the culture of potatoes and tobacco in the moon," the only place where African free labour has yet succeeded, proceeded thus:-"But let it be remembered that this same Mr Macqueen receives about L.3000 yearly of that which is robbed from the slaves, in order to bribe him to write against law, justice, and the rights of the British people."

It is time, my Lord Duke, that I should draw upon friend Joshua for this munificent income, which some unconscionable knave of his acquaintance has hitherto withheld from me. I do this without ceremony or courtesy, where neither are due, by branding, as I do, in the face of my coun. try, the statement, in all its parts, as an odious and a positive falsehood, and further, that Joshua Abell, when he made it, knew it to be so.

This paragon of veracity further told his hearers, that the West India Colonies cost this country " altogether ten millions a-year!" The magnitude of this falsehood no one can better appreciate than your Grace. The gross income of Great Britain and Ireland for 1828, the year I can first lay my hands on, was in round numbers L.60,000,000. The expenditure stood thus: L.28,200,000 for the interest and management of the national debt; L.5,300,000, expense of collecting, &c.; L.8,000,000 for the army; L.5,700,000 for the navy; L.1,500,000 for the ordnance; civil list and miscellaneous, L.2,200,000; naval and military pensions, &c. L.1,700,000; miscellaneous,

In my last letter, I shewed that this gentleman and his family and relations received above L. 13,000 of the public money yearly. Hence his anger!

L.2,000,000, leaving aboutL.5,900,000 for the sinking fund, and to make good the reduction of taxation, and all the casualties attending the finances and the expenditure of this great country. (See Finance Accounts, 1829, p. 19.)

Moreover, with regard to the existence of personal slavery in the East Indies, Joshua Abell told his meeting, "that the Anti-slavery Society never denied this point-they merely said, that no sugar was raised by slaves; and Macqueen does not deny this point." Now, "Macqueen" did, and does "deny this point." He shewed also that the Anti-slavery Society did deny it, till the production of the documents called for by themselves, and first noticed by your humble servant, destroyed all their impudent assertions. Macqueen" not only shewed this, but from the report published by the East India Company regarding the cultivation and the production of sugar in India, he further shewed, that every kind of agricultural produce, sugar included, was raised in various districts in India by the labour of personal slaves.

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It would be to insult the memory and the understanding of your Grace and my readers, to return even for a single moment to the official documents previously referred to and produced, in order to establish these facts, but Abell may do so at his lei

sure.

At the Dublin meeting in question, Mr O'CONNELL, after vomiting forth a prodigious quantity of blarney as senseless as the adoration of a wafer or the worship of an image, proceeded thus to demolish the anti-colonial battery which himself and friend Abell had raised:

"There was one thing which filled him with melancholy; It was thisthe slave owner in the British House of Commons, was, in general, a liberal and enlightened statesman in all questions of general and national policy. He generally voted against every job and every oppressive law, whilst, on the contrary, the advocates of negro emancipation in that House were, IN GENERAL, THE SUPPORTERS of every bad measure of domestic policy and of ministerial profligacy!" The records of the Treasury, and

of every other department and office and place under the British government, or within the sphere of its influence, if produced, will, I am informed, attest the fact, that there is scarcely one interested job by which influence or emolument could, during the last forty years, be wrung from the country, in which the leaders of the anti-colonial or Wilberforce party have not for themselves, or their friends and their dependents, been engaged. The fact is notorious; and the day, my Lord Duke, is not distant, when it is hoped that some honest British senator will tear to pieces the veil which has for so many years concealed the imbecility of government, and the dark doings -the boldness and the venality, and the sordid pursuits, of that "mercenary" party, as poor in numbers, as its members in general are deficient in honesty, in plain dealing, in justice, in judgment, and in truth.

I leaye Joshua Abell and his antislavery associates to reply to, or to refute, if they can, the above statements, simply and shortly observing to "the supporters of every bad measure of domestic policy and ministerial profligacy," that no measure can be worse or so profligate as to take away by force and injustice the lawful property of "British people."

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At some anti-slavery collection held about Carshalton, Surrey, about eighteen months ago, a reverend gentleman named King, told, as I am informed, his gaping hearers, that your humble servant was the archenemy of mankind." If I was to act towards this gentleman as he has chosen to act towards me, I might recriminate by remarking, what a blockhead of a Parson he must be who could utter this as Gospel; but upon enquiry, I find that Mr King is an honest but hot-tempered man, and on colonial subjects misled by " the arch-enemy," therefore I leave him to ruminate upon the falsehood and the injustice of his accusation, and recommend him in future to enquire before he proceeds so rashly to asperse and to condemn.

Some months ago, this country was stunned with the annunciation of "a glorious revolution in France," and presently after, we saw, as notified in the Morning Chronicle of the 4th

August, at the head of the subscription list, by special desire, "T. P. THOMSON, Lieutenant-Colonel, halfpay, three months' half-pay," L.52, 12s., "for the relief of those who had been murdered by the Bourbons!"

My Lord Duke, these are inquisitive times, and being so, I may be permitted to ask, is this " T. P. Thomson, Lieutenant-Colonel, halfpay," the individual who was eight years in India, " above the rank of a common soldier," and who wrote the atrocious article in the Westminster Review, recommending the robbery and massacre of his fellow-subjects in the West Indies? I have a right to make this enquiry, because the above Colonel is a portion of that "dead weight" to whom halfpay was granted, not for rearing up the tri-coloured flag, but for putting it down. Some British legislator will, I trust, enquire, if the head of his Majesty's Treasury does not, where this man earned the laurels which entitled him to receive halfpay, or any pay, and, moreover, to find out how he came to learn the principles of liberty, while engaged in enslaving Hindoos.

A very remarkable circumstance, disclosing the inconsistency and hy pocritical obliquity of the human mind as connected with the subject of West India property, occurred in a neighbouring town, (Paisley,) where Mr CARLISLE, late provost of the town, and Dr BURNS, established minister of the Abbey Church there, lately figured, the former as chairman of an anti-slavery meeting, and the latter a violent speaker, each clamouring for the annihilation of colonial property in slaves, as a most sinful and criminal thing for either nations or individuals to hold or to be connected with. Some time ago, JoHN PARK and MARGARET HUTCHISON of Paisley left, as the deed of trust will shew, one West India estate, and a mortgage upon another, having on both at least 250 slaves, in legacies and endowments. Mr Carlisle and the other trustees sold the estate, the mortgage, and the slaves. Out of the proceeds Mr Carlisle got one large legacy, and Mr Ninian Hodgart, another trustee, another large legacy. Hutchison's Charity School, at present chiefly under the superintendence of the parochial clergy of Paisley, and Dr BURNS, I presume,

amongst the rest, was established and endowed with L.1500, as directed by the benevolent testators, and carried into effect by Mr Carlisle and his co-trustees from the proceeds of the sale of the estates and slaves mentioned! Mr Carlisle, therefore, should remain silent till he regorges his "LARGE LEGACY" with interest.

Has your Grace been told of the conduct of Mr Smith, a custom-house officer in Jamaica? This gentleman has an anti-colonial brother in the established church in Ireland. At the request, and from instructions furnished by the latter, Mr Smith transmitted a long account of cruelties and oppression exercised within his own knowledge upon the slaves in Jamaica. This letter the reverend clergyman receives and adds to, and interlards it with the worst passages from Mr Stephen's first volume on "Colonial Slavery," and prints the whole in the Irish and English journals as the letter which he had received from Jamaica! This made-up letter went to Jamaica. Astonishment and indignation filled the minds of the people of that colony. Mr Smith was called before the assembly, and on his oath declared how far the letter had been extended, and also that what he had written regarding the treatment of the slaves in Jamaica was altoge ther untrue! Has this officer been dismissed from the place he holds? Is such a system to be tolerated for ever?

It may be as irksome to your Grace to read, as it is to me to write, about individuals like these, but as the anticolonial chieftains in Aldermanbury Street employ such individuals as their tools, it becomes necessary to notice them. Leaving, however, the smaller anti-colonial fry, I proceed to notice the labours of those who, being more confident and ferocious than their fellows, think that they are beings superior to, and wiser than, the rest of mankind.

Your Grace has heard of Mr OTWAY CAVE, a fraction of those dangerous political materials which you had to watch and to manage in conducting the affairs of this country. This exsenator was ousted at the last election for Leicester, although he was drawn into and through that town by a cavalcade of free labour Ladies, instead of horses! Mr Lovell, the mayor, informs us (see Leicester He

rald, Sept. 1, an able and honest journal) that they were "only able to draw L.2450 from Mr Cave towards an account of many thousands due from him"-for " expenses incurred in taking up freedoms," that is, buying the bodies and the souls of Englishmen! The newspapers also inform us that he has lately been dismissed from the commission of the peace in a county-not surely for preaching righteousness or building churches. This Otway Cave, in his senatorial capacity in the House of Commons, June 14, (see London Courier,) spoke thus:

"He called upon any lawyer, if he could, to point out to him the statute by which slavery was established in any part of the British dominions; it existed not by law, but by connivance." "He maintained, that, under the existing law, the West India proprietors possessed no legal property in their slaves."-" To say that the slave had not a right to resist the man who oppressed him, was a doctrine too monstrous for any man of common sense to assert. The right was as clear as the right of resistance in the beasts of the field."—"They would be justified in the eyes of God and man in using their best efforts to shake off the yoke by which they are now oppressed."

The West India proprietors and their slaves not being either oppressors or oppressed, nor "beasts of the field," are guided in their relations to each other by different principles from those which animate Mr Cave, whose reasoning, if it was good for any thing, would entitle every Colonist to knock him on the head like a wild beast, in their "efforts to shake off the yoke by which they are now oppressed" by the real oppressor; but quitting this fiery and senseless legislator, I have to observe, that Otway's language and reasoning have become the prominent matter of every anti-colonial pamphlet since published, and of every anti-colonial meeting since held, while a stiff-necked senator in the British senate, Mr William Smith, a leading lawyer at the Scotch bar, Mr Jeffrey, and a leading divine in the Scotch church, Dr Thomson,

have condescended to preach from Otway's text, with inferences, each peculiar to himself.

In the House of Commons, June 16, (I quote from the Mirror of Parliament,) Mr Smith said: "It is one thing to claim a property in a man's person, and another to claim a right to his labour, enforcible by law. The first, I maintain, is FORBIDDEN ALIKE BY THE LAW OF GOD and man

by the former ever since the creation of the world." At the Edinburgh anti-slavery meeting, held in October last, Mr Jeffrey took the same course, thus: "In the courts both of England and Scotland, it had been ruled that man had no right in property of man;" and he confidently asked, "Had he (God) given him a right of property over his fellow man?" It is easy to ask a question with legal quibble, but not so easy or convenient to solve it. Dr Thomson, the divine, takes the same ground, and demands " immediate" emancipation, reckless of the consequences. They were afraid," said he, "of He would shedding a little blood. deprecate as much as any man the shedding of blood, but he would rather that a GREAT DEAL WAS SHED, if necessary, than that 800,000 individuals should remain in the hopeless bondage of West India slavery, which was an infinitely greater evil than all that COULD BE SUFFERED by their opponents"-" he would break the fetters of the slaves; and if it should be on those who resisted their emancipation, let their blood be upon their own heads."

At a subsequent meeting, the same divine held still more bloodthirsty language; and, as it was gloried in and applauded by ladies and gentlemen in Edinburgh, so your Grace and the ill-fated Colonists may rest assured that the precept and the principle will be acted upon. Let a great deal" of blood flow to accomplish our object, is the doctrine of a Christian divine, and the recommendation of British legislators, and no one either in the colonies or in this country can possibly misunderstand the object or the import* of such declarations.

In his intemperate course, Dr Thomson has been followed by a minor member of the Scotch church, namely, Dr P. Macfarlane of St Enoch's Church, Glasgow. This gentleman is, I am told, setting his face upon removal to Edinburgh, by way of

The miserable quibble which Mr Smith raises about the right of property in person and the right of property in labour, as if the person could be separated from the labour, or the labour from the person, is utterly contemptible and unworthy of notice. But for the better elucidation of the points at issue, it becomes necessary to shew the course which the Anti-colonists have, during the last thirty years, pursued. First, they laboured to calumniate and to destroy the characters of the Colonists, by falsely charging them with general cruelty to their slaves. This effected, they, secondly, proceeded to inculcate the doctrine, that to be the masters of slaves was contrary to the laws of God, and a crime in his sight. This object effected amongst the credulous and unthinking, they next proceeded, thirdly, to maintain that, by the laws of this country, the Colonists had no right of property in their slaves, and, consequently, that these slaves might be forcibly and lawfully taken from them. This has been the course pursued against the defenceless Colonies, and with what success, let an agitated and a deluded country, and a government intimidated and trembling, as it is at this day, bear witness.

But let us proceed to bring to the test of truth and facts the assertions, that a state of personal slavery is contrary to the laws, " both of God and man," and a crime in the eyes of both.

What God it is whose laws Mr W. Smith refers to, I know not, and leave him to say. Some men never look above or beyond a Prime Minister for any Deity; but the God whose word and whose laws I am about to refer to, is THE GOD who made the world and man upon it; and although the point may not be credited in certain corners of Aldermanbury Street and Downing Street, still I must maintain that these are au thorities infinitely superior to either Mr Smith, Dr Thomson, or the AntiSlavery Report.

Amongst the Hebrews, God's cho

sen people, personal slavery always existed; while, it may be observed, that the laws of Moses merely regulated a state of society which had previously existed in every country, as may be seen by looking into the history of Abraham, and the people and princes contemporary with him. Slavery amongst the Hebrews was of two kinds, temporary and perpetual. The first state was the servi tude of Hebrew to Hebrew, and which was limited to the year of Jubilee following the commencement of his bondage, on which year he was dismissed free; but if his master had given him a female slave to wife, he could not take this wife nor the children by her with him. They remained the property of the master. So strongly did the Hebrew legislator and law guard property in right of inheritance, that the indissoluble ceremony of marriage was, I believe, never performed to slaves: but the union which took place betwixt them was that concubinage which existed amongst the Jews, not in itself immoral, but which, in law, gave no legal right to the children to inherit any property in absolute right.

Let me quote the law, the words and command of JEHOVAH himself from Mount Sinai :

"If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve : and in the seventh, he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons and daughters; the wife and her children shall be her mas

ter's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall SERVE HIM FOR EVER!" (Exodus, chap. xxi. ver. 2-6); that is, he shall be his bondman for ever."

- זעבדו לעלם

Perpetual servitude amongst the Hebrews was restricted to the pur

promotion; and, like others, he pursues the destruction of our colonies as the steppingstone to popularity, and to Dr Thomson's favour and assistance.

VOL. XXIX. NO. CLXXVI,

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