African Slave Trade. Under the former belief, however, we legislate, and we accordingly waste our time, our exertions, and our money, and find that personal slavery in Africa, and the African Slave Trade, are increased, not lessened, by the means we have taken to extinguish it.*

This country purchased in Africa, from the established rulers thereof, and took a multitude of African savages to the Colonies, and there placed them as slaves to enlightened and civilized masters, who, under humane laws and regulated authority, teach them industry, moral habits, and civilization, and create wealth for the parent State. Great Britain disbelieves, and is taught to disbe lieve, these facts. Under this belief, she is called upon to legislate; she does so, and the consequences are, that she commits injustice, and goes by arbitrary legislation to reproduce idleness and barbarism amongst a people comparatively industrious and civilized.

In proceeding despotically to abolish personal slavery, Great Britain acts under the belief that the slave population of her colonies are deteriorated and deteriorating, instead of these being, as they are, improved and improving; and she goes further wrong by legislating as if the population in these colonies, both free and bond, were of one colour, of the same ideas and habits, equal in numbers, and, in fact, as if there were no difference whatever amongst them on all these points.

Commencing with savages, nay, with the very refuse, the criminals of savage nations, as this country did when she collected the African slaves

in her colonies, it is clear that ages of progressive improvement must precede the establishment, amongst such a race, of that rational freedom which is established in civilized states. If mankind proceed on other principles when legislating for such a race, they must, and they will, infallibly produce revolution and bloodshed, injustice and ruin.

Admitting that half the population of this country, men of the same colour, were slaves, I ask, could such a state of society be abrogated in a moment by act of Parliament, and the slave and the country benefited by the ruin and the beggary of the master, even admitting that no other political convulsion ensued, and also that the enfranchised people were willing to labour, or that the government were strong enough to compel them to do so? The answer which any thinking mind must give to the question, would be, certainly not!

How much more difficult and dangerous then, my Lord, must it be to abrogate, by act of Parliament, a similar state of society in the Tropical World, where the number of bond to free is as ten to one-where the colour of the skin and the smell of the one race separate the races by almost impassable barriers-where barbarous manners prevail amongst one class, and where, above all, from the ideas, the pursuits, the wants and the inclinations-from the influence of climate and habits amongst the most numerous class-these are disinclined to labour, and more especially disinclined to engage in every species of agricultural labour. These, my Lord, are formidable, and, I fear, insurmountable barriers; at least, they

:

must for a long time be so. Yet the people of this country disbelieve these facts, and, disbelieving them, they proceed to gain their object by a course which is most dangerously wrong.

This country has been deafened with asseverations about the success of voluntary African labour in raising tropical produce. There is not a syllable of truth in any one of the statements put forth. It is not found amongst the enfranchised people of colour in the United States of America, in Hayti, or in Sierra Leone; nor is there, I may say, beyond perhaps a single solitary instance, any such a thing known amongst the whole free coloured population, in the British and other European colonies. Moreover, my Lord, what has become of Mr Buxton's boasted Hindostan Free Labour Company,-capital five millions sterling? Where is it, or what has it accomplished?

When I say the labours of agriculture, I allude to thosé articles of Tropical produce which Europeans seek in exchange for their merchandise, and without the production of which no Tropical colony is of any value to any European nation. Every one knows, and no one denies, that negroes in general will labour to pro cure country provisions necessary to supply their few wants. They did so in Africa; they do so in the colonies; but without coercion, to a certain extent, they will do no more; and it is equally obvious and well known, that such productions are not, and never can be made, articles of barter or exchange in a trade with the nations of Europe.

Even if this nation were able and willing to give full compensation to the colonial proprietors, it would be a most dangerous and impolitic step to take, both as it regards herself and the slaves, to enfranchise them. It would be a fearful loss to this country by the total ruin of the colonies as productive agricultural settlements,-while the ruin of these settlements would inevitably tend to stimulate the production of tropical produce in the colonies of foreign and rival states; and thus .in a double ratio, go to deteriorate the strength and resources of this country. To the slaves themselves the loss would be irremediable, and their return to

idleness and anarchy the certain and inevitable result.

It belongs to the wisdom of the present day to propose to civilize and to instruct savages, and to teach them morality and religion by pampering and making them as idle as possible. It belongs to the philanthropy of the present hour to cry that no slave can commit a crime, and to weep at the report of the infliction of a few stripes upon him, when he deserves them; while their own countrymen receive ten times more for less offences; and while their own vagrant laws condemn to work-houses, tread-mills, stocks and jougs, the idle and the dissolute among them; and it peculiarly belongs to the anti-colonial wisdom of this age to destroy L.140,000,000 of property, in order to improve a people and to enrich a country; and to maintain that the half savages in the Torrid Zone, where the spontaneous productions of nature can supply their fed wants, will readily perform voluntary labour, while they see, or they may see, under their own eyes, hundreds of thousands of men and women following their respective callings of swindlers, thieves, and prostitutes, merely because they abhor labour, and will not labour.

The anti-colonists, my Lord, may say and assert what they will, but civilisation never can advance in our colonies if the authority of the European master is withdrawn, and protection to his interest and his property is refused or neglected. If Africans are left to themselves, they can neither civilize themselves nor rule each other with safety. They are deficient in the knowledge or judgment necessary to do either. The greater the number of slaves that are enfranchised by arbitrary and compulsory laws, the more extensive will be the idleness, poverty, misery, and crime, which will be produced in the Colonies, unless something effectual is done, by the hand of power, to induce or to oblige these enfranchised blacks to engage in agricultural labour, by which labour only they can rear exchangeable produce fit for the European trade, in order to obtain the necessaries and the luxuries of life. Unless they do so, they must remain as they are-poor, idle, and ignorant a nuisance to the commu

nity, or a burden upon it. The proprietors of estates and slaves are surely not to be compelled, or to be taxed, to support and instruct these people. Who, then, is to pay for it? for they neither will nor can do it themselves? It is here, it is amongst this class, my Lord, that the authority of the British Government ought to begin improvement by commanding industry. First induce this class to labour in agriculture for such wages as the proprietor can afford to give, and a nucleus of free labour is at once established; which, increasing in number and industry, would supply the place of the slaves gradually emancipated. Accomplish this, my Lord, and you will quickly find that, when the colonial proprietor can obtain a supply of labourers for such wages as he can afford to give, he is not more, nay less, attached to personal slavery than his ungrateful countrymen, who so cruelly vilify and defame him, and clamour so loudly against the system. Do this, my Lord; reform the laws and the courts of justice in the Colonies; make governors, judges, and crown lawyers independent and honest, and all men in these possessions, speak the truth of them; protect and encourage all those individuals who do so; free the march and administration of justice from ignorance, error, and the influence of local feuds and prejudices, and give to the British colonial agricultural proprietor protection and profit, and you will have little more to do in order to extinguish personal slavery in the Colonies; but, unless all these things are done, and wisely done, Great Britain can only extinguish personal slavery in her Colonies by the total ruin of every individual in them.

The improvement and civilisation of the slave must not only be retarded, but in fact be wholly prevented, by the degradation and ruin of the master. Yet it is in this way the anti-colonists seek to accomplish their object, and it is with regret and sorrow I state, that government appear to follow too closely in their footsteps. Hence, every thing that can really improve the slave, through the prosperity of the master, is wholly lost sight of, as unworthy of consideration. The judicial establishments in the colonies have got into the most dreadful disorder. Property,

and the interests of the European creditor, are torn to pieces by legal chicanery and ignorance. The most flagrant violations of law and justice are rendered secure by the support which the violators can readily obtain from the powerful anti-colonial party in this country, by pretending affection for the slave, and by furnishing tales of fictitious woe, to assist anti-colonial misrepresentation. The master, calumniated and reviled beyond all precedent, the produce of his property rendered valueless, and that property itself threatened to be taken away by the anti-colonists, and shattered by the proceedings of their creatures, go to prevent improvement; and for the want of funds and means, not of inclination, every thing is left to languish in the colonies; while violent sectarians, and liberalised churchmen, contrary, I am certain, to the wishes and instructions of the societies in this country which employ them, proceed, under the patronage and support which they are sure to obtain from the reckless anti-colonists, to undermine the principles of the established church in matters of faith, and the authority of the masters in matters of power and policy, in order that the whole direction of the slave population may be thrown into their hands-thus sowing dissension, and engendering strife, amongst and between all classes of the population in the colonies.

These, and more and worse than these, my Lord, are evils notorious and undeniable, which are spread and daily spreading in the colonies, and which, it would appear, are rather encouraged than discountenancedby the government. How, or where, are the colonists to obtain the pecuniary means to forward the instruction of their slaves, while the produce of their lands does not nearly pay the expenses of raising it? And where are they to obtain credit to aid them, when they and the world are told, that their property is an illegal and an "accursed thing," and, as such, ought to be swept away? Moreover, while the master is anxious to extend to his bondmen the benefits of the faith in which he has been instructed, is it reasonable to require of the master, that he shall be compelled to permit his slave to be instructed in a different creed?

He merely prefers the Established Church to the unsteady conventicle. To remedy the evils pointed out, and to fix the necessary remedies on a sure foundation, you must, my Lord, have, first, a strict and impartial enquiry, by honest and unprejudiced men, into the actual state of the society which exists in the colonies; and, secondly, that enquiry must be gone into, without the assistance or admission into it of men who proclaim the robbery of the colonies as a Christian duty; and also free from the chains, the terrors, and the persecutions, which the anti-colonists have been permitted to place upon, and to carry on against every honest man who dared to oppose their schemes, their objects, and their interests.

The laws for the government of the slaves in our colonies, even if they were emancipated, must, as emanating from this country, always be arbitrary and despotic; and while they are slaves, it is obvious they must also be governed by laws, different in power, though not in spirit, from the laws which are enacted to govern the free population of this country.

It is not, my Lord, slavery in the abstract that I defend; but it is the circumstances, the acts, and the deeds, which the anti-colonists assert occur, and are committed under the system, which I have disputed, denied, and refuted. The anti-colonists assert, that the West India colonists obtained their slaves contrary to the laws of the African states, and contrary to the laws of this country, and that personal slavery in any part of our empire was also contrary to the laws of Great Britain. They assert that personal slavery is contrary to the laws of God, and a crime in his sight. They state that the slaves in our colonies are not recognised as having any rights in the eye of any law. They assert, that they enjoy no protection, and are treated with systematic and unrelenting cruelty, ill fed, and overworked. They assert, that the slaves decrease in numbers from these causes, and they adduce particular instances of severity and cruelty as the general rule. They assert that the slaves in our colonies are deteriorated in moral habits, feelings, and industry, from the state they are in. They assert that emancipated slaves in our

colonies produced by their labour exportable produce, and they denied that there were any personal slaves in Hindostan, &c. &c.

From the laws of God, the laws of my country, the laws of the colonies; from authentic facts, proofs, and references, which cannot be gainsayed, I shewed that there was not a syllable of truth in any one of their statements; and for doing this I have been loaded with many insulting epithets by Mr Stephen and his associates. Let the public judge between us. Truth and honesty will prevail over falsehood, dishonesty, and hypocrisy; and neither misrepresentation, calumny, nor reproach, can turn me from my purpose, nor make me forsake the path which I have chosen, and which I know to be straight-forward, correct, and honest.

Turn to this important colonial question, my Lord, as a national question; take it up and regulate it, not according to the interests of individuals, or parties, but according to the principles of justice, and of the great interests of the nation. Unite the interests of our whole colonial possessions, east, west, north, and south, in one connecting chain, and bind the whole to the mother country by the indissoluble link of justice and protection. While you throw behind your back the interested clamours of East India partisans, and the childish and dangerous schemes of the anti-colonial enthu siasts, trample, at the same time, below your feet the mean and miserable intrigues for popularity, place, power, and individual gain, which too often appear amongst the West India interests in this country, and which lead them, in some instances, even to support the mad schemes of their enemies, and to surrender for political favour, and fancied advantages, the independence of colonial rights, and security of colonial property; and which political intrigues and party jealousies, have done them more injury than the efforts of all their open enemies. Tread all these, my Lord, below your feet, and then all our colonies will be united and protected, flourish and be happy, and with their prosperity the best interests of the mother country must also inevitably be increased and flourish. I am, &c.

JAMES MACQUEEN.
Glasgow, 5th Feb. 1881.

Our readers will remember, that in opposing what was called Catholic Emancipation, we took no narrow, or abstract grounds. Respecting highly many of its more distinguished opponents, we yet deeply regret ted in private the line of argument they adopted, and we, in silence, avoided what we thought a capital error in them. In consequence, we rested not on the Coronation Oath, or the Protestantism of the Constitution, and we called for no perpetual exclusion; putting other things aside, we argued the matter on right and expediency, with reference to the actual condition of Ireland. We insisted that emancipation ought to be delayed until it could be granted with safety-that it ought to be preceded by the destruction of the despotism of the Catholic priests-the reconstruction of Irish society by means of the removal of surplus inhabitants-the introduction of poorlaws, &c.—the proper repair and purgation of the Established Churchthe production of due obedience to law the formation of a balance of Protestants in the Catholic parts of the country-the restoration of its legitimate political influence to Protestant property, &c. &c. While we thus strenuously maintained that power ought not to be conceded until the essential qualifications and safeguards for preventing its abuse, should be created, we laboured to make the agitation of the question a means of spurring Protestant and Catholic, ruler and subject, into cooperation for civilizing, pacifying, and enriching Ireland. On the confessions of the demagogues, we predicted that the Duke of Wellington's "great measure" would only add to evil, and clear the field for the introduction of infinitely more dangerous questions.

Experiment has refuted us as little on this, as it has done on other matters; we stand not among those whom it has covered with contempt and infamy.

Our opponents, the Cabinet, Parliamentary, Review, and Newspaper, sages-the monopolists of knowledge -the great "Taught"-the only "liberal and enlightened"-the exclu

sive proprietors of talent, wisdom, and honesty, of course acted differently. They could not deign to see any thing, save abstract principle and generality; for people so perfect as themselves to look at vulgar fact and circumstance, men and things, at the actual condition of Ireland and the empire, was a matter not to be thought of. On their wild abstract generalities, they protested that unconditional emancipation would be an infallible nostrum for every Irish maladywould destroy the power of O'Connell and the demagogues-annihilate the political influence of the Catholic priests-extinguish the strife between Protestant and Catholic-convert the Catholics to Protestantismreplace tenant under the control of landlord-fill Ireland with British capital-reduce the army-create in two years a clear sinking fund of ten millions-bestow incalculable benefits on the Established Church-indissolubly unite Ireland with Britain

overwhelm Ireland with prosperity-and produce we know not how many other similar benefits. The Irish black and grey horses were to draw together at so furious a rate on the uphill road of wealth, as to completely distance the slow, heavy Engfish ones. The English national team was to be put in no small danger of being run over by that of the sister island.

In what condition has experiment placed these sages? These self-same identical people are proclaiming that emancipation has created a new Catholic Question infinitely more mischievous and dangerous than the old one-has only emancipated the Catholics from the disabilities which restricted them from attempting to dismember the empire. According to their asseverations, the power of the demagogues and priests is even more irresistible than ever-in so far as Protestant and Catholic have been reconciled, they have been combined in guilt, convulsion, and rebellion-the religious labours of Protestantism are suspended, and it is put in peril of extermination-the influence of the landlord is farther destroyed-not only is British capital still excluded, but Irish is in course of