1823. The West Indian Controversy. elder; so that good order and harmony 'SAMUEL NOTTINGHAM. "In the year 1822 this little colony of years the seasons were so bad, that they themselves, and to acquire the property Now, we would put the question to Now, nothing can be more delightful than the behaviour of these worfeel their excellence, to admire, to thy Quakers; it is impossible not to love them. But for what purpose are stories like this the staple of such a 3 M society's reports? Samuel Nottingham had two dozen negro slaves-he set them all free, and made them a present of the plantation on which they had been living as his bondsmen. A most noble piece of behaviour, surely; and the style in which the thing is done and recorded, just what every human creature must acknowledge to be exquisitely beautiful. But what is the lesson? Had Samuel Nottingham no other property but this plantation, and these negroes? or would he, or could he, have done the same thing with a plantation of fifty times the extent, and slaves to be counted by the hundred or the thousand ?— No such things. And what is the use, then, of throwing such a story as this, (with an undisguised sneer too) in the teeth of those whose whole fortunes, the existence of whose whole families, all whose earthly possessions and means are inseparably connected with a population of negro slaves? All this furnishes just one more illustration of the truth of a remark which some one has made before us, viz. that these societies publish books in order to shew the world how such matters ought NOT to be managed. We cannot conclude better than in the words of Sir George Rose: "I beg leave to offer to those who have lately set the public mind in motion, and have led on the question of emancipation, the expression of a very sincere opinion, that the weal of the negro will be best promoted by a more discriminating vigour of effort in his behalf, than that recently displayed. I have had repeated opportunities of observing with what undistinguishing vehemence the West Indians have been marked out as objects of suspicion and aversion; and this circumstance has been painfully felt by impartial men, as anxious for the happiness of the slave, as they are competent to judge how it can best be promoted. It is singular enough, that when the abuses in the West Indies were at their height, little was said or thought about them; but an overwhelming torrent of invective is now poured down upon the West Indians in the mass, at the time when a very happy alteration has taken place in the manner, in which many of them consider various points which are under a course of, and certainly require, amendment, the effects of which change are in visible operation. I have observed this conduct to wards them to act here already to a certain extent to the disadvantage of the cause of the slave; and there are other modes, in which it is likely so to act elsewhere. It is much to be desired, that the excitement of indignant and resentful feelings; especially in the bosoms of humane and liberal men, should be avoided as much as possible." ** So we had just terminated, when the Glasgow Courier,* containing official accounts of the insurrection in Demerara, was put into our hands. In this particular instance, there can be neither mistaking, nor affecting to mistake. It is not a thing that the two parties can give two opposite accounts of. The debate on Mr Buxton's motion has produced a bloody insurrection among the slaves of one colony-that is certain-how much more may have happened ere this moment, who can tell? Such lessons have been given abundantly long before now-and they have been neglected. It remains to be shewn whether this also is given in vain. It remains to be shewn, whether this Empire is to be harassed with eternal impunity, by the madness of a set of arrogant blockheads-whether our policy is for ever to be thwarted by the rash and headlong machinations of fanatical dupes-whether the thing, the system, this pernicious system of HUMBUG, is to be allowed to go on from week to week, and from year to year, until at length these poor negroes learn to effect as well as to menace, and bathe the whole soil of these colonies in a mingled sea of their own blood and ours. We speak of our blood-it is ours-it is the blood of our brethren that has been shed here, and that must be shed in torrents if these proceedings go on unchecked. But, even now, even in the midst of such feelings as this tale We cannot mention the name of this paper, without taking the opportunity of expressing our sense of the talent and skill, with which it has commented upon this question. We know, indeed, of no other paper in the kingdom, where so large a stock of the requisite species of knowledge is brought to subjects of this nature. The Editor is evidently a thorough master of geographical science; and in the discussion of matters of colonial policy, he exhibits a superiority over his brethren, which all those that read his Journal have at least felt. must be supposed to create in every bosom that is not quite Buxtonized-even now we do not think a bit the less of the poor negroes themselves. This rashness is ruin to their hopes-these madmen-these dupes of vanity, and unconscious dupes of interest-ARE THEIR WORST ENEMIES. Such is our beliefwe have done our duty. THE GLASGOW DINNER. A FRAGMENT. BY MR TICKLER. THE next speaker was from Ireland, with the characteristic name of Lawless. He arose indeed et potus, et exlex, and poured forth a flood of Irish oratory, on the usual topics which afford flowers and figures to the oppressed people of that pacific land. Being himself a gentleman of the press, conducting a paper which circulates a few quires in and about Belfast, he was particularly vociferous on the advantages mankind in general, and Ireland in particular, derive from the freedom of that engine. Of the universal Whig passion for the freedom of the press, I have spoken already; but people who do not look at the actual state of the thing in Ireland, contenting themselves with taking bawling for facts, may not be aware how admirably a panegyric on this favourite subject comes from a man of Mr Lawless's Irish faction. In Ireland, as in England, the factious press had it all their own way for a long time. There was to be seen little talent in their newspaper world, but that little was active in traducing the institutions of the country. Besides, they had firm aid from abroad.-Tom Moore sung over the miseries of Ireland-Jeffrey and Co. howled over them; and all together, they contrived to cover the loyal men and the Protestants of Ireland with the imputation of bigotry and tyranny, just in the same way as the same agency covered us Tories with the imputed disgrace of being patrons of slavery, and victims of blockheadism. At last, however, the prestige began to wear away, and then in Ireland the real nature of the affection" the friends of liberty all over the world" entertained for the press, shone forth in its true colours. Your readers, Christopher, would feel little entertainment in puzzling through the petty details of the provincial press of Ireland, which * is even lower than our newspaper world in Scotland ;* suffice it to say, that, to go no farther back than this very year, the Coryphæus of Irish demagogues, Mr O'Connel, employed his own clerk to act as prosecutor on behalf of the Roman Catholic clergy, in a libel action against the Evening Mail, for a series of general reflections, implicating no individual whatever, directly or indirectly-that the same gentleman advised an action against the same print, for copying a paragraph from a Cork paper, which it quoted-that he laid the venue of action against that Cork paper, in a county (Kerry) over which he has most considerable influence, and of which a near relation of his own is Sub-Sheriff, and had the striking of the jury-and they add, that when two fellows, one of them, by the way, son of the magna mater of Whiggery, fell on and beat, in his own house, a defenceless man, the editor of an illiberal paper, the whole of the liberal press chuckled with joy, and applauded the heroic feat. You perceive that the same people act in the same way on both sides of the water. Loud are they in praise of the press, when it is in their own hands, but, when turned against their own sacred persons, as loud in its reprehension. Lawless, of course, produced the six millions of enslaved loyalists in Ireland-the number is always on the move forward-and the atrocities of the disloyal Orange faction. It may be safely conceded to such arguers, that the Roman Catholic population is the majority in Ireland ;-but how is that majority composed?-Precisely of the most ignorant, benighted, savage, and brutal peasantry in the world. In intellect, in education, in everything which marks the civilized being, the Protestants are ten to one, as they are Scarcely possible.-C. N. fifty to one in wealth and prosperity. Lawless well knows that no legislative enactment at least no legislative enactment in the contemplation of the party he was addressing—could reach the millions about whom he was sputtering. An important change must take place in the frame of Irish society before anything can be done which will raise them to the level of a civilized population; and that change will not be effected by putting down the Protestant Church, and substituting the Roman Catholic in its room, as his friends are fondly hoping. That would indeed be a sad retrograde movement. Do not think I am too harsh in the character I am giving of the Irish peasantry. They are at present, in the south of Ireland, (where they are exclusively Roman Catholics, the north, which is tinged with the much abused colour of orange, being quiet,) engaged in a system of assassination and arson, which would disgrace the Cherokees. It is scarcely a month since a Mr Franks was shot in his own parlour, the skull of his wife shattered by a crowbar while she clung to the arms of her son, the head of the son smashed to pieces by the same instrument, and his body pierced by a pitch-fork, which was passed from hand to hand between nearly a hundred peasants, in order that each might participate in insulting the lifeless body, while a fellow, who was left outside as guard, whistled and danced a hornpipe for joy. The crime this family was guilty of was this-the son had been evidence in a criminal prosecution against a man convicted of extorting fire-arms, to be employed in carrying on the system which produces these results. Such are the millions for whose ascendancy Mr Lawless is preaching. It is only insulting our understandings to appeal to this numerical argument. Let the question of Roman Catholic emancipation be argued on its own merits. If it be unjust to keep Roman Catholics from power, it is no matter whether the injustice affect a thousand or a million; it should not disgrace our statute-book for a moment in either case. If it be necessary to keep them out, their numbers are nothing at all to the justice of the business-it is only an argument to expediency, or, in other words, to our fears-an argument, Christopher, which we have at all times, through good report and evil, treated with the bitterness of scorn, by whomsoever, or in whatsoever cause, it may be advanced. As for the Orangemen, he must be wilfully blind who does not see that they are forced into union by fear. Nobody likes domiciliary visits from gentlemen furnished with sledge-hammers to extract his brains. The very secrecy of their meetings the mere fact of their having private signs and symbols to know one another by-is a proof of their being apprehensive, not of their being domineering. Their atrocities are confined to putting tawdry ribbons, in most vile bad taste, upon a paltry statue (a piece of tom-foolery always disapproved of by their leaders, Sir Abraham Bradley King for instance,* after it was made matter of offence, and now given up)—and toasting the memory of William III. That this toast should excite Whig indignation, is strange; and stranger still, that the Orangemen should be accused of insulting intrusion on the feelings of their countrymen, when they themselves are to be refused the poor privilege of giving as a toast the memory of him who may justly be deemed the founder of the dynasty now occupying the throne. What would the Whigs say, if the Whig Clubs were prohibited from giving the memory of Charles James Fox, because, though acceptable to them, it stinks in the nostrils of all the honest men in the kingdom? Then indeed would we have the nose of Brougham twitched in tenfold fury, in defiance of us and all our works. Observe, I am not giving any opinion whatever as to the expediency, or inexpediency of Orange Associa tions. I am too far from the spot, and the accounts from Ireland are too contradictory, and too fierce, for me to Not to break my sentence above, I throw into a note, the fact that this offensive ceremony of dressing the statue in College-Green, Dublin, was a regular state ceremony, at which the Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Mayor, the Chancellor, &c. assisted in much pomp and procession, without exciting a complaint from the Roman Catholics, for a long series of years until it was made a question of by the Duke of Bedford God bless the wise statesman!-who refused to join. It has ever since been a bone of contention, but was gradually falling into the hands of the mere rabble, and would certainly have died of itself in a year or two. hazard any very decisive assertion on low. Nor am I giving my opinion against Roman Catholic emancipation. I hope and trust the time will come, when the privileges and immunities of the state will be open to all; but I hope and trust also, that those privileges and immunities will never be opened to any one who will make use of them to wage war on the glorious institutions of the country. If we could be satisfied that the Roman Catholic priesthood would be content to remain in obedience to the laws of the land-to submit, as every other sectarian body submits, to the paramount authority of the Established Church, and make no efforts to put themselves up as the dominant religion of any part of the kingdom, I am quite sure there would not be a word against what is modestly called Catholic claims, spoken by one of us in or out of Parliament. No man of common sense could imagine that a general would betray his duty, because he believed in the infallibility of the Pope, or any other old woman; or that a judge would violate the laws he was administering, for the same reason; and as for Parliament, you know, North, what my opinion always has been on that point. I never feared the efforts of any demagogue fellow within those walls. I sincerely rejoiced in the election of Waithman, for instance, for I knew the Midas ears, which were taken by the jobbernowled corporators for horns of offence, powerful as those of the bulls of Bashan to batter down borough-mongery, would be found out in half an hour, when brought into company with the flower of England's gentlemen; and, accordingly, it was soon discovered, that he was, as Cobbett called him, a water bladder, from which nothing could come, because nothing was in it. So would it be with O'Connell and his compeers. A sentence from Canning would dispose of the first dozen of them for life. Tragedy-man Shiel would sit down in happy obscurity with Comedy-man Twiss. Fingals and Frenches, and the other sage nobility, would range with the Albemarles, the Nugents, and the rest of the rubbish of the House of Lords. It always makes me laugh when I think of such people sitting in the same house with Eldon, or Stowell, or Liverpool, or Wellington; ay, or even the remains of Erskine,* dilapidated as they are. But I fear that these concessions would only pave the way to the demand of Roman Catholic ascendancy in Ireland. I know it is an object earnestly desired by some of their velvet-pawed petitioners to Parliament. Look, for example, at the amazing insolence of the language addressed daily by priestlings in Ireland, to that great theologian, and most exemplary man, the Archbishop of Dublin, and you canAnd if we admit not doubt the fact. the arguments now relied on to be valid, we cannot resist it. If the simple fact, that a barbarous people outnumbers the intellect of Ireland, be Ay, Tim, or BYRON.-C. N. |