Enough, that a handful of slave-owners are scattered among myriads of slaves.-Enough, that, in their nearest neighbourhood a commonwealth of those slaves is now seated triumphant upon the ruined tyranny of their slaughtered masters.-Enough, that, exposed to this frightful enemy from within and without, the planters are cut off from all help by the ocean. But to odds so fearful these deluded men must needs add new perils absolutely overwhelming. By a bond which nature has drawn with her own hand, and both hemispheres have witnessed, they find leagued against them every shade of the African race, every description of those swarthy hordes, from the peaceful Eboe to the fiery Koromantyn; and they must now combine in the same hatred the Christians of the old world with the Pagans of the new. Barely able to restrain the natural love of freedom, they must mingle it with the enthusiasm of religion; vainly imagining that spiritual thraldom will make personal subjection more bearable-wildly hoping to bridle the strongest of the passions, in union and in excess, the desire of liberty irritated by despair, and the fervour of religious zeal by persecution exasperated to frenzy. But I call upon Parliament to rescue the West Indies from the horrors of such a policy-to deliver those misguided men from their own hands. I call upon you to interpose while it is yet time to save the West Indies; first of all, the negroes, the most numerous class of our fellow-subjects, and entitled beyond every other by a claim which every honourable mind will most readily admit,—their countless wrongs, borne with such forbearance, such meekness, while the most dreadful retaliation was within their grasp next, their masters, whose short-sighted violence is, indeed, hurtful to their slaves, but to themselves is fraught with fearful and speedy destruction, if you do not at once make your voice heard, and your authority felt, where both have been so long despised. Ibid. Algernon Sydney. In Sydney's case, another ground of objection at the trial, and of reprobation ever afterwards, was the seizure and production of his private manuscript, which he described, in eloquent and touching terms, as containing "sacred truths and hints that came into his mind, and were designed for the cultivation of his understanding, not intended as yet to be made public." Recollect the seizure and production of the missionary's journal; to which the same objection and reprobation is applicable, with this only difference, that Sydney avowed the intention of eventually publishing his discourse, while Mr. Smith's papers were prepared to meet no mortal eye but his own. In how many other particulars do these two memorable trials agree? The preamble of the Act rescinding the attainder seems almost to describe the proceedings at the court of Demerara. Admission of hearsay evidence; allowing matters to be law for one party, and refusing to the other the benefit of the same law; wrest ing the evidence against the prisoners; permitting proof by comparison of hands-all these enormities are to be found in both cases. But, Sir, the demeanour of the judges after the close of the proceedings, I grieve to say, completes the parallel. The chief justice who presided, and whom a profligate Government made the instrument of Sydney's destruction, it is stated in our most common books -Collins, and I believe also Rapin-" when he allowed the account of the trial to be published, carefully made such alterations and suppressions as might show his own conduct in a more favourable light.' That judge was Jeffries, of immortal memory! who will be known to all ages as the chief-not certainly of inexperienced men, for he was an accomplished lawyer, and of undoubted capacity-but as the chief and head of unjust and cruel and corrupt judges. There, in that place, shall Jeffries stand hateful to all posterity while England stands; but there he would not have stood, and his name might have come down to us with far other and less appropriate distinction, if our forefathers who sat in this House had consented to fritter away the expression of their honest indignation, to mitigate the severity of that record which should carry their hatred of injustice to their children's children-if, instead of deeming it their most sacred duty, their highest glory, to speak the truth of privileged oppressors, careless whom it might strike, or whom offend, they had only studied how to give the least annoyance, to choose the most courtly language, to hold the kindest and most conciliating tone towards men who showed not a gleam of kindness, conciliation, courtesy, no, nor bare justice, nor any semblance or form of justice; when they had a victim under their dominion. Ibid Mr. Smith a Martyr. The right honourable gentleman seems much disposed to quarrel with the title of martyr which has been given to Mr. Smith. For my own part, I have no fault to find with it; because I deem that man to deserve the name, as in former times he would have reaped the honours, of martyrdom, who willingly suffers for conscience; whether I agree with him or not in his tenets, I respect his sincerity, I admire his zeal; and when through that zeal a Christian minister has been brought to die the death, I would have his name honoured and holden in everlasting remembrance. His blood cries from the ground, but not for vengeance! He expired, not imprecating curses upon his enemies, but praying for those who had brought him to an untimely grave. It cries aloud for justice to his memory, and for protection to those who shall tread in his footsteps, and-tempering their enthusiasm by discretion, uniting with their zeal, knowledge, forbearance, with firmness, patience to avoid giving offence, with courage to meet oppression, and to resist when the powers of endurance are exhausted-shall prove themselves worthy to follow him, and worthy of the cause for which he suffered. If theirs is a holy duty, it is ours to shield them, in discharging it, from that in justice which has persecuted the living and blasted the memory of the dead. Danger from persecuting the Slaves. Ibid. Sir, it behoves this House to give a memorable lesson to the men who have so demeaned themselves. Speeches in a debate will be of little avail. Arguments on either side neutralize each other. Plain speaking on the one part, met by ambiguous expressionshalf censure, half acquittal, betraying the wish to give up, but with an attempt at an equivocal defence-will carry out to the West Indies a motly aspect; conveying no definite or intelligible expressions, incapable of commanding respect, and leaving it extremely doubtful whether those things which all men are agreed in reprobating have actually been disapproved of or not. Upon this occasion, most eminently, a discussion is nothing unless. followed up by a vote to promulgate with authority what is admitted to be universally felt. That vote is called for, in tenderness to the West Indians themselves in fairness to those other colonies which have not shared the guilt of Demerara. Out of a just regard to the interests of the West Indian body, who, I rejoice to say, have kept aloof from this question, as if, desirous to escape the shame, they bore no part in the crime, this lesson must now be taught by the voice of Parliament-that the mother country will at length make her authority respected that the rights of property are sacred, but the rules of justice are paramount and inviolable-that the claims of the slaveowner are admitted, but the dominion of Parliament indisputablethat we are sovereign alike over the white and the black; and though we may for a season, and out of regard for the interests of both, suffer men to hold property in their fellow-creatures, we never, for even an instant of time, forgot that they are men, and the fellow-subjects of their masters-that, if those masters still hold the same perverse course-if, taught by no experience, warned by no auguries, scared by no menaces from Parliament, or from the Crown administering those powers which Parliament invoked it to put forth-but, blind alike to the duties, the interests, and the perils of their situation, they rush headlong through infamy to destruction; breaking promise after promise made to delude us; leaving pledge after pledge unredeemed, extorted by the pressure of the passing occasion; or only, by laws passed to be a dead letter, for ever giving such an elusory performance as adds mockery to breach of faith; yet a little delay; yet a little longer of this unbearable trifling with the commands of the parent state, and sne will stretch out her arm, in mercy, not in anger, to those deluded men themselves; exert at last her undeniable authority; vindicate the just rights, and restore the tarnished honour of the English name! Ibid. The Tories adopting Free Trade. The principles-let it be said in Parliament, and be heard with rejoicing and edification throughout the country-the principles are at an end which have so long hampered the industry and cramped the energy of the people of England. Those doctrines of narrow, shop-keeping, huxtering policy, which wise men have for many years treated with contempt, both at home and abroad, but which for ages have been reverenced by the ignorant as the only base upon which commercial prosperity could be firmly established -those doctrines which, for two generations back, have been the topic of unqualified scorn, and the theme of unmixed reprobation, with writers of enlightened understanding, but which have been regularly defended by each successive minister during that period as the real foundation of national greatness-those doctrines, I am happy to say, are now exploded for ever, and can never more be advanced to obstruct the welfare and prosperity of the country. For years the House has been told that it is either a wild chimera or a dangerous innovation to talk of the doctrines of a free trade, and of the right of men to employ their capital and their industry according to their interests, their wishes-ay, or even according to their caprices. At one time, when it pleased the ministry to view them with contempt, these doctrines were described as a visionary code, specious in theory, but impossible in practice; and at another, when it pleased it to excite alarm against them, they were viewed with as much detestation and abhorrence, as if they had been a leaf taken out of that book which some men think they can never enough detest and abhor-I mean "The Rights of Man," by Thomas Paine. I have myself heard them treated as idle chimeras by one set of ministers, and as jacobinical innovations by another, just as it was the fashion of the day to treat them as objects of contempt or abhorrence; and yet I, who have seen them first contemned and then abhorred, have now the happiness to say that they have reached the consummation of their glory, not merely in being adopted by ministers, but in being publicly recognised, not only in the speech which has just been delivered to us from a high quarter, but also in the addresses which are going to be returned to it by both Houses of Parliament. Address on the King's Speech, Feb. 3, 1825, Calls of Ireland. Is the voice of Ireland never to be listened to? Is it in Ireland alone that sound policy is to be overlooked; and that, too, where one-half of the empire, or thereabouts, is concerned; where a great population is oppressed by a continuance of matchless impolicy, and worse injustice,-where a state of things prevails, which puts to imminent peril the responsibility of any British minister who suffers a large portion of the King's subjects to remain in jeopardy, because he withdraws from the adjustment of a question which, ere long, must be definitely settled. I hope that, upon the state of Ireland, we are not to be met by any crooked policy of expediency. I hope the time is now past when we are to be told, "O, touch not such a topic, it is too delicate, there are too many, and too irreconcileable, and too various opinions, afloat upon it: we must leave that alone-it is too harrassing and complicated to be mooted. All other difficulties you will find us ready to meet and overcome, but, by common consent, we have arranged to steer clear of this question: the fact is, what can we do with it?-we have not two members who think alike upon this topic." Is this the way, I ask, in which the government of this country is to be conducted? Can we tolerate this exception from the general policy, in the case of a country so inseparably identified with our interests, when we have an absolute right to have upon it the undivided opinion, clearly expressed, of an intelligible and distinct cabinet ? It is worse than idle to say that the condition of Ireland is the only question on which a cabinet might be divided. We have proof that there are too many opinions in which they are far from concurring. It was no later than last session that the House witnessed-the country witnessed-one honourable colleague introducing in this House a change in the silk-laws; and witnessed also the same measure thrown out in the upper House by another noble colleague; upheld also in that object by other members of the same administration. We have seen, also, measures since adopted by all the members of that cabinet, which once were designated by some of its members as jacobinical, when they were suggested by those around me; carried, I will say, by the wisdom and manliness of the right honourable gentleman opposite; * because, backed as he is by public opinion on this question-backed as he is by the honourable friends who fill the benches around me, and on which he would have triumphed, even had he been obliged to have left office on such grounds. Is he not bound, then, to follow up his principles ? Is Ireland, I again ask, bound as we are to that near, that intimate connexion, on whose peace and security such momentous interests hang, on which so much danger stares us in the very front-dangers, I would say, growing out of our own neglect, and on which we are probably on the verge of a great crisis-never to be approached? Sir, it can no longer be said, or insinuated, that scruples exist in a certain quarter, which destroy all hope of giving to the Catholics. the relief which they seek. Such language, indeed, I always held to be most unconstitutional, most unjustifiable, most factious. It was language of which even the ministers of Charles II. would have been ashamed. It was language which, in the better times that preceded the reign of Charles H., would have brought the minister who dared to utter it to the block. [Hear! hear! from Mr. W. Lamb.] I should like to hear my honourable friend, who by his cheers challenges the justice of that observation, refute it. Accomplished as my honourable friend is in constitutional knowledge, having examined every opinon respecting it-for-I am sure no man Mr. Secretary Canning. |