OCR Text |
Show 20 interest of the parties. Else, I li:now not how, in our world, any good would ever get done. It was shown to the plan ters that they, as well as the nrgrocs, were slaves; that though they paid no wages, they got \'cry poor work i that their estates were rui ning them, under the f111cst clima te; and that they needed the sere rest monopoly laws at home to J;eep them from bankruptcy. The oppression of the slave recoiled 011 them. They were full of vices; their children were lurnps of pride, sloth, sensua lity and rottenness. rrhe position of woman was nearly as Uad as it could be, and, like other robbers, they could not sleep in secu rity. ·Many plante rs have said , since the emancipation, that, before that day, they were the greatest slaves on the estates. Slavery is no schola r, no im prover; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it docs not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book, or a preacher who has the absurd whim of say ing what he thinks; it does not increase the white population ; it does not improve the soil; e \'e rything goes to decay. For these reasons, the islands proved bud customers to E ngland . It was very easy for manufacturers less shrewd than those of Bi.rmin~ham and Manchester to see, that if the state of tlungs m the islands was altered, if the slaves had wages, the slav es would be clothed, would build houses, would fill them with tools, with pottery, with crockery, with hardware; and negro women Jove fine clothes as well as while wome u. In every naked negro of those thou sands, they saw a future c ustomer. Meantime, they saw further, that the slave-trade, by keeping in barbarism the whole coast of eastern Africa, deprives them of countncs and nations of customers, if once freedom and civility, and European manne rs could get a foothold the re. But the trade could not be aboli shed, whilst this hungry West Indian market, with an appetite like the g rave, cried, More, more, bring me a hundred a day;" they could not expect 21 any mitigation in the madness of the poor African wa rchiefs. These considera tions opened the eyes of the dullest in Brita in. More than this, the West Indian es ta te wns owned or mortgaged in Englnn d, and the owner nnU the mortgagee had very plain intimations that the feeling of English liberty was gaining every hour new mass and velocity, and the hostility to such as resisted it, would be fatal. T he House of Commons would destroy the protection of island produce, and in terfe re on English polilics in the island legislation: so tl•cy hastened to make the bes t of their position, and accepted the oil I. These considerations, I doubt not, had the ir weight, the interest of trade, the interest of tlw revenue. and, moreover, the good fame of the action. It was inevitaole tha t men should feel these motives. But they do not appear to have had an excess ive or unreasonable weirrht. On reviewing this history, I think the whole transactio~1 reflects infinite honor on the people and parliament of England. It was a stately spectacle, to sec the ca use of human ri rrhts argued with so much patience and generosity, and :ith such a mass of evidence before that powerful people. It is a creditable in cident in the history, that when, in 178!), the first privy-council report of evidence on the trade, a bull<y folio, (embodying all the facts wl•ich the London Committee had been engaged for years in co llecting, and all the examinations before the counci l,) was presented to the House of Commons, a late day being named for the discussion, in order to g ive n1cmbers tim e, _~~ r. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the prime minister, and other ge ntlemen, took advantage of the postponement, to retire into the country, to read the repo rt. For months and years the bill was dcoatcd , with some consciousness of th e extent of its relations by the first citizens of England, the foremas~ men of the earth; every argument was weighed, every particle of evidence was sifted, and laid in the scale; and, |