a man, who is just himself, deny the resource of public justice to those beneath him? How can the Christian, who prays for the improvement of all mankind, block up the inlets to the spiritual regeneration of the colored men around his house? Why should he wish to do so? What does he fear? Insurrections? It is not knowledge, but uncertainty, which does and will beget commotion; it is not Reading and Writing, but the forbidden desire of Reading and Writing; not the Light, but glimpses of the Light withholden from them, which inflict the torments and inspire the frenzy of Tantalus. The planters do too much or too little in this matter. If they will not enlarge the sphere of civil action nor add to the catalogue of civil privileges in favor of the slave, then they do too much for their own safety in permitting any improvement in the intellectual qualities of the negro population. If they will educate the slave, then they do too little for their own safety in persisting to debar him from those privileges to which he will soon feel that he has acquired an equitable right. Nothing but the moral superiority of the whites can possibly keep in subjection the physical superiority of the blacks; for if the negros were all as well informed as the whites, it is not all the troops and ships Y in the West Indies that could insure their servitude for a day. I assume the education or something like the education of the slaves to be now a point beyond the control of the colonists, and taking it therefore as a fact in life and progress, I perceive a great and hazardous inconsistency in some of the opinions of the most benevolent amongst the Planters. For it will be impossible to circumscribe the educated slave within his present bounds; those limits will not contain his dilated form. It will be impossible to march the negros on the road of knowledge and compel them to stand at ease within the old entrenchments of ignorance. There is a natural connection between moral refinement and political amelioration; they can be divorced by violence alone and they bear in their essences a mutual and indestructible tendency to an equilibrium. I exhort the colonists to consider their situation, the merits of the question, the state of national opinion, the relative strength of the parties. Let them not stand too nicely on the theory of their independence; well compacted as it may appear, it could never sustain collision with a mighty opposite. If Great Britain should be once provoked to anger, the rights of the colonists would be burst. like the withs on the arms of the Nazarite, and be consumed before the kindling of her displeasure like tow in the fire. There is but one way by which the interference of Parliament may be avoided, and that is by anticipating it. If the colonists prize their independence, let them not hazard it by opposing, but insure it by themselves executing, that which will otherwise infallibly be done for them. This is no question for scholastic dispute, or for conference between the Houses; the planters must look at it as men of business, and take thought, not so much of what ought to, as of what will, be done; not so much of nonsuiting a plaintiff, as of resisting a forcible entry. The British Government asks nothing dangerous, nothing which may not be granted with the most apparent advantage to the planters themselves. It asks for substantial education and substantial protection of the slaves, and a smooth road towards ultimate emancipation. My solemn opinion is that so far from these three demands being pregnant with hazard, the very existence of the colonies depends upon their being heartily admitted. If the philosophy of man, and past and present experience do not deceive us, it may be confidently predicted that the West Indian Islands CANNOT continue for twenty years longer in the state in which they now are. There are mementos of insecurity on the right hand and on the left, and many deep thoughts will rise unbidden in a statesman's mind when he muses on the prophecy of Berkeley. Westward the course of Empire takes its way; The four first acts already past— A fifth shall close the drama with the day ;- THE END. On the 8th August, ten turtles, a negro youth and myself embarked on board the good ship Fortitude laden with slave-grown sugar and molasses and bound to London. With many a thought on the bright eyes of St. George and the graceful form of Uptonia, with many a hearty squeeze of the hand from kind men and true, and many a good-bye from my black, brown and copper-colored fellow subjects, I bade an eternal farewell to Barbados. In it I ate, drank, laughed, danced and perspired as much as ever I expect to do again in the short remainder of my life. We weighed anchor. at one p. m., the wind gently blowing us along from the south, the sun right over the masthead, and the sea as blue as the unclouded ether. The night closed in when we were off the northern end of the island; the next morning and for six weeks afterwards it was nil nisi pontus et aer. |