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chase of the heathen around them, and of the children of strangers settled under their government; and which individuals, so purchased, with all their descendants, became, by law, the master's property-"his money, in APSOLUTE RIGHT-" for ever." Let us adduce the law itself:

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Jehovah thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt,

יהיה אלהיך : saying, I am indeed

-bond זעבדך ואמתך Both thy * out of the house 'מבית עבדים*

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men and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a

לעלם בהמ * possession ; they shall be

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'YOUR BONDMEN FOR EVER." (Lev. chap. xxv. v. 44-46.) On Mount Sinal, Jehovah said unto Moses, "And if a man smite'' his servant- (bondman or slave)-or DNAN,' his maid (bondmaid or slave)—with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished for HE IS HIS' (silver) MONEY." And again," if a man smite the eye of his servant, (bondman,) or the eye of N' his maid (servant), that it perish, he shall let him Go FREE for his eye's sake." (Exodus, chap xxi. ver. 20, 21, and 26.)

The express law of the Almighty having thus fixed the legal slave as property in absolute right, it follows that such a state of civil society was neither contrary to His law, nor morally wrong in his sight. The bondman thus legally constituted property, the Decalogue, eternal as its author, unchangeable as its judge, guards, along with every other species of property; and this great and unchangeable moral law applies equally to whatever the laws of any country or people, in any age, constitute property, as it did to the Jews. This law, delivered by JEHOVAH from Sinai, amidst earthquake, thunder, and flame, my Anti-colonial opponents will surely acknowledge was

of bondage."* Proceeding, in the Fourth Commandment, to prohibit all work on the Sabbath, the great Lawgiver says-" Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, y' thy bondman, (male slave,) nor

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N' thy bondmaid, (female slave);" and, after prohibiting stealing, the Almighty Lawgiver goes on to state that man shall not covet any thing that is not his own, thus:"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, ;' nor his bondman, ' nor his bondmaid," &c.

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It is considered unnecessary to quote other texts, to shew that the Hebrew words quoted mean slave, and ought to have been so translated. This will be seen by referring to Genesis, chap. xvi. ver. 1-3; chap. xxi. ver. 10-12, and chap. xxx. ver. 3, 4, 9, and 18, and numerous other passages of the sacred volume. The Hebrew verb, ay, signifies to "serve," " to till the ground;" emphatically," to serve thyself of another," &c., and is the word used by Jehovah, Gen. chap. iii. ver. 23, when he drove Adam from Eden, " to till the ground"-to be a slave to the ground, which he and all his posterity have been, and will continue to be, except where some sapient British legislators have, contrary to this law, enacted, that no black man shall till the ground in the western world! The Hebrew verb, 5, from whence the noun,, another name for female slave or bondmaid, WOman of a servile condition," as may be seen in Gen. chap. xxx., above referred to, signifies literally" to depress," humble," subject;" and, with a reference to two remark

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* Or out of the place or the "house of bondmen," as the Hebrew words mean, and are so rendered, Jeremiah, c. xxxiv. ver. 13; and in the margin of our common Bibles, Deuteronomy, chap. vi. ver. 12,

able passages of Scripture, in proof of what has been stated, I shall quit this part of the subject. The first is in Gen. chap. ix. ver. 25, where Noah curses Ham in his youngest son Canaan, thus :-"

Day Tay, cursed, cursed, (or cursed exceedingly,) Canaan; a bondman of bondmen shall he be unto his brethren." The next is in the cxxiii. Psalm, the expressiveness and beauty of which, every one acquainted with Eastern countries, where the same custom and state of society exist at this day, will readily appreciate. "Behold as the eyes y' of bondmen look unto the hands of their masters, and as the eyes of a bondmaid unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that he have mercy upon us."

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So much for the authority of the Old Testament upon this question; and, in reference to the authority of the New Testament, I may shortly state, that when Christianity was introduced into the world, half the human race were slaves, and yet we nowhere find its great author, nor any one of his inspired apostles, denouncing this state of society as sinful and criminal, either on the part of nations or individuals. On the contrary, we find, in the writings of the latter, numerous injunctions and positive commandments given unto slaves to be obedient to their masters. In almost every part of the New Testament where the words servant," or servants," occur, it is, in the original, "doulos," "douloi," slave or slaves; and I must, with these observations, leave my Anticolonial opponents, more especially the clerical part of them, to shew how they dare assume an authority which neither the Author of Christianity, nor his immediate and inspired apostles, who never refrained from denouncing that as sinful and criminal which, in the eyes of God and of man, was, in reality, sinful and criminal, have ventured to exercise, or to call upon or instruct any one to assume or to exercise after them. Let me not be mistaken, my Lord Duke; I do not adduce these references because I consider personal slavery in civil society as a preferable state to any other, as my sense

less Anti-colonial enemies state and maintain; but I adduce them to prove all that they assert on these points, in reference to the Holy Scriptures, to be wrong, and by which, and at the expense of truth, they seek to assist and to accelerate the march of injustice.

Christianity, my Lord Duke, so often appealed to by these men, is the religion of the soul, of the closet, not of the debating arena-its empire is not of this world, and it reforms, meliorates, and removes the harsher features of civil society, not by violence, injustice, and bloodshed, but by a reformation of the inward man, whether he be high or low, rich or poor, bond or free. Our modern philanthropists cannot see or understand this great truth, but like their predecessors, the Pharisees of old, they proceed, in their system of reformation, to wash "the outside of the bowl and the platter," while they leave the filthy, unwashed inside to concoct and to bring forward laws and regulations to reform distant countries in every quarter of this globe. Misery, mischief, blood, and ruin have, in every age, attended such conduct, and such results will, in every succeeding age, attend the labours of such one-eyed legislators.

With regard to the laws of man, I observe that personal slavery exists by law in all the colonial possessions of Great Britain, of France, of Spain, of Portugal, of Holland, of Sweden, and of Denmark. In Europe, it exists by law in the dominions of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In Asia, it exists by law in the dominions of Turkey, of Persia, of China; in all Hindostan, and in all the minor states and isles of Asia. It exists by law in ALL AFRICA; for Sierra Leone, planted to teach the rest liberty, is now engaged in carrying on the African Slave Trade! It exists by law in the dominions of the United States of America, of Columbia, and of the Brazils, and other parts of South America. And melancholy as the fact is, still it is the fact, that but a small portion of the habitable globe is free from that state of society; while it is a still more melancholy fact, that more than a moiety of the human race are unfit to be in any other state either with advan

tage to themselves, or the more civilized portions of mankind.

By the act of Parliament, Geo. II. c, 7, and by the confirmed laws of Jamaica, and of every other British colony, slaves are declared assets and inheritance in like manner as real estates are by the laws of England. They are dealt with as such every day in the supreme courts of this kingdom-in the Court of Session, in the Court of Chancery, and before the Privy Council. The records of both Houses of Parliament, all the offices under the British Government at home and abroad, are filled with official acts, decrees, orders, and proclamations, both as relates to Hindostan and other British transmarine possessions, constituting slaves property in absolute right,while our most able lawyers, Brougham, Denman, Lushington, Bosanquet, Adam, &c. &c., have a large and most important portion of their professional labours engaged before the Court of Chancery, and before the Privy Council, in maintaining that they are so. How monstrous, therefore, is it, my Lord Duke, with all these facts before their eyes, both from divine and human records, for men like Mr Jeffrey, Dr Thomson, William Smith, Mr Buxton, and the Caves and the O'Connells of the day, to proclaim and to maintain the contrary!

I recur with reluctance to the African slave trade; but as the legal title to the right of property in the slaves is denied to the West India Colonists, because it is said that they were procured by force and violence, or, in the words of Sir GEORGE MURRAY in the House of Commons, on the 16th of July last, by "injustice and inhumanity;" and this being the case, it becomes necessary to shew how these slaves were "got" by the colonists, and who they were that brought them unto them; and in doing this, I must have recourse to facts disencumbered from the veil with which feeling without judgment has concealed them.

Every dispassionate person acquainted with the history and state of Africa is aware how African slaves are procured, namely, in wars originating from similar causes to those which induce their civilized Euro

pean brethren to quarrel with each other, and criminals condemned by the laws of their respective states for crimes, such as adultery, murder, robbery, theft, witchcraft, &c. &c. Lander, a late and unsophisticated traveller, tells us expressly, in this way, and in this way only, slaves for the trade carried on by Europeans are procured in Africa; and whenever those prisoners and culprits cannot be sold, they are murdered by wholesale in sacrifices to their bloody deities, or drowned in bands to get clear of them! The late Kenneth Macaulay told us, that all those brought into Sierra Leone and liberated there, were "prisoners taken in war, or the savage natives of barbarous states enslaved for crimes." And a Report, just published by the order of the House of Commons, (Par. Pap. No. 661, Session 1830,) tells us, that the Africans which continue to be landed there, are, upon their arrival, more like "brute beasts" than men! With such the people of Great Britain filled the Antilles, as KING WILLIAM said, “ for the advantage of this nation;" and which refuse population, greatly improved and civilized, the penitent children of British slave-merchants seek to snatch away from those to whom they were sold under the sanction of the laws of their country!

Yes, under the sanction of the laws of their country! In the records of every office under the British Government, you will find the legal history of this trade. The Report of the proceedings of the Committee of the Privy Council in 1789, contains in part first, upwards of fourteen closely-printed folio pages, filled with the enumeration of the mere names and dates of the charters, statutes, orders, and resolutions of the Government and the Legislature, extending over a period of 200 years, establishing, encouraging, and protecting this trade; and against any monopoly of it by any particular part, the nation always fought as fiercely as our free traders of the present day do against every thing that they conceive to be monopoly.

Great Britain established the slave trade in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who personally took a share

in it. The colonies did not then exist. Great Britain encouraged it in the successive reigns of Charles I. Charles II. and James II. by every means that could be devised. King Charles I. in the seventh year of his reign, granted to Sir Richard Young, Sir Kenelm Digby, and sundry merchants, the sole enjoyment of the trade to Guinea, Benin, and Angola, between Cape Blanco and the Cape of Good Hope, for thirty-one years; and for that purpose erected them by charter into a company. In 1651, the Parliament granted a charter to carry on this trade for five years, TO THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, who erected two new forts. In 1662, Charles II. granted, by letters patent, an exclusive right of trade to Queen Catherine, Mary the Queen Dowager, the Duke of York, and several others, as a Company of royal adventurers, to SUPPLY THE WEST INDIA planters with 3000 slaves annually! This Company, reduced by war and interloping traders, surrendered their charter, in 1672, for the sum of L.34,000. The last charter granted was in the 24th year of Charles II., and which charter extended to the term of 1000 years. The Company was incorporated under the name of the Royal African Company. This Company was supported, shifted, and changed in various ways till our own times, when it was abolished and swallowed by that devourer of every thing, Sierra Leone, in which the slave trade is at present revived, and carried on to a great extent!

But it was William III. who outdid them all. With Lord Somers for his minister, he declared the African slave trade "to be highly beneficial to the nation;" not merely as it connected itself with the Colonies, but as a general trade. For this purpose the Assiento treaty was concluded in 1713, in which Great Britain bound herself to supply the Spanish Colonies with 144,000 slaves, at the rate of 4800 per annum. With this treaty the British Colonies had nothing to do. From that period till our own times the national history is full of grants and measures for the encouragement and protection of this as a national trade, even to the regulation of the tonnage of the vessels employed in carrying it on.

During the latter part of last cen

tury, the Colonies, both in the United States of America and in the West Indies, again and again called out for a suppression of the trade, but were, as often as they did so, told, in the most dictatorial language, that the trade, being greatly for the advantage of the nation, must be continued. The land, in almost all the West India islands, was granted by Government to be cultivated by slaves, under the penalty of forfeiture if it was not. Amongst the last acts, if not the very last act, which Mr Huskisson, as colonial secretary, did, was to settle the titles of estates in Trinidad, which was disturbed by the penalty of forfeiture having been threatened, because the terms of the grants had not been complied with, as to the number of slaves placed upon different properties, while, to this hour, the orders of the British Government to the governors of all our Colonial possessions, commanding them to protect and to encourage the slave trade, stand, I believe, unrepealed!

From 1729 to 1788, the Legislature granted L.593,113, 2s. 7d. in order to protect and to encourage this trade; and, by act 25 George II., L.112,162, 3s. 3d. additional was granted as a compensation to the old company; and the same official authority,-Report Privy Council 1789, Part First,

The

continues to tell us about the advantages which the nation in general derived from the trade. John Sholbred, secretary to the African Company, informed the Lords thus: "In its immediate effect it employs about 150 sail of shipping, which carry annually from this country upwards of a million of property, the greatest part of our manufactures.' Bristol delegates, headed by Mr Penney, state: "The African trade constitutes a very important part of the British commerce, annually employing at least 200 ships, with valuable cargoes." The exports from Bristol to Africa were, yearly, L.210,000; the imports, L.15,000, in 30 ships, 4195 tons. According to a Liverpool advocate, the exports from Liverpool to Africa were, in 1787, L.800,000; and the value of negroes purchased by that investment amounted to one million sterling annually, yielding yearly a very large profit. General Tarlton and other Lis

verpool delegates stated the trade thus:

Exports by the Cus

tom-house books, L.390,222 0 0 Real value 436,784 0 0

Imports, exclusive of slaves to the Colonies, L.120,000, in 80 ships, 14,028 tons. Mr Samuel Taylor, the deputy from Manchester, stated the Manchester African trade to be: Exports, L.200,000 annually; of which L.180,000" are for the purpose of negroes only. This manufacture employs immediately about 18,000 men, women, and children." In this way, the manufacturers employ L.300,000 capital, besides a still greater capital in furnishing annually L.300,000 exports to the West Indies, which employ a still greater number of hands" than the trade to Africa. According to the Custom-house returns, the British trade to Africa, in 1786, stood thus: Exports, in 146 ships, 21,483 tons; British manufactures, L.583,025, 12s. 7d. ; India goods, L.176,076, 8s. 5d.; and foreign manufactures, L.129,609, 1s. 10ď.; total, L.888,738, 14s. 4d.; Imports, L.117,683, 1s. Id., exclusive of African produce, by way of the Colonies, and of the slaves to the Colonies.

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The trade, therefore, was most unquestionably a national trade. It was, moreover, wholly British, not Colonial; and, as nations never die, so the present generation cannot justly get clear of the consequences of the legal acts of their forefathers; nor can they, without being guilty of the most wanton injustice and robbery, take away from the Colonists that property which they and their forefathers sold and guaranteed to them, until they have paid down a full and fair compensation. The quota of Manchester, which purchased about 18,000 annually, will, for a century and a half, amount to no trifle; Liverpool and Bristol still larger sums; and Buxton's purse must refund the value of those sold by Hanbury, and taken as an inheritance by his heirs after him, independent of the compensation to be given to the slaves themselves for the injury which they have sustained by the arbitrary conduct of the people of Great Britain!!

The official report of 1789, already referred to, enables us to fix the

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Including the Cape of Good Hope and the Mauritius, and excluding India, the number of slaves now in the Colonies is nearly double, while the value of the property in buildings and machinery is greatly increased; and, therefore, the value of Colonial property now must be double, or L.140,000,000, exclusive of the British shipping employed in the trade, and which, with all property in warehouses, and buildings in harbours here, amounting to many millions more, must sink or swim with the fate of the Colonies. Where is the wildest Anti-colonist who will be bold enough to say, that this nation can either pay this enormous sum, or withstand the shock which would follow the destruction of it?

When the British government, after the revolts in the colonies, first purchased slaves to form the West India regiments, they paid the proprietors at the rate of L.80 sterling for each; and when our government reimbursed the people of the United States, for the slaves encouraged by our naval commanders to leave America, they paid at the rate of L.70 to L.107 sterling for their value, according to the cultivation in the state from which they had been inveigled away. The British public cannot offer to British subjects less for their slaves than the British nation paid a foreign nation for their slaves, encouraged, contrary to the laws of nations, to run away. Paid at this rate, I leave the British Treasury to calculate the cash which would be required.

We are confidently told, that the existence of personal slavery amongst any people, degrades and debases alike the nation and the individuals. Where is the understanding of my countrymen supposed to be fled to? Does history say this? Is the Creole

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