manager's ill-treatment: the manager to be discharged. (E. pp. 18-20).

In this return no part of the evidence is given; we are left to conjecture what it may have been the particular details are throughout suppressed; nor is even the nature and extent of the punishment specified. Such a record is, in fact, of no use whatever. It affords not the slightest means of judging of the equity of the proceeding; excepting that the very sententious brevity with which the entries are made excites a suspicion of a very summary mode of administering justice. One thing is clear, namely, that the general course of the Fiscal's administration is calculated to discourage all representation of harsh usage on the part of the slaves, except perhaps in the very grossest cases. But facts are wanting; and an exposition of the facts of each case ought to be peremptorily required it is only in this way that we can get at the real nature of the slave system, in its practical operation. If we had not obtained the particulars of the trials of the alleged insurgents in Demerara and Jamaica, we should not have suspected half of the gross perversions of justice which take place in the colonial judicatories, in the name and by the authority of the King. In this country, we all feel how essential publicity and the controul of public opinion are to the ends of justice how much more are these required in the West Indies! "If it be asked," said the murdered Missionary Smith, in speaking of the cruel treatment of the slaves in Demerara—“If it be asked, Are there not authorities to whom the injured slaves can appeal for redress? The answer is in the affirmative. But many of the legally constituted authorities are themselves owners of plantations, following the same system, and perhaps, by means of their managers, practising the same abuses on their slaves. Judging from their conduct, it would seem that some of them consider it a greater crime for the Negroes to complain of their wrongs, than for the master to inflict them. The complainants are almost sure to be flogged, and frequently before the complaint is investigated, if listening to the exculpatory tale of the master can be called investigation; and even when the cause is so evidently on the side of the complainant that -it can neither be denied nor evaded, the decision is so studi

ously concealed from them that they scarcely know whether the law is to protect the oppressed, or to indemnify the oppressor; nor can they always solve this problem from the result." How painfully do this statement of Mr. Smith and the return of Mr. Fiscal Herbert illustrate each other!

The attention of the government of Demarara having been called, by Lord Bathurst, to the subject of a reform of the slave code of that colony, frequent discussions have taken place upon it, hitherto, however, without leading to any satisfactory result. It may be useful, nevertheless, to trace the progress of these discussions.

Sir B. D'Urban, the Governor, professing to draw his information from the planters, states his opinion, in May 1824, to be that the Negro mind is still" agitated, jealous, and suspicious." Many of the slaves are described to me as remarkably well informed upon all that passes in England and in the colonies, interesting to their views and condition: many of them read, most of them well understand what is read or repeated to them; they are (naturally enough) inquisitive, and anxious to learn whatever relates to them; and unquestionably they continue to procure very early information of all discussions in Parliament, in the newspapers and in the public prints." A.p.193.)-Such a statement as this proves unquestionably to what a degree the Governor has been made the dupe of false information, and will serve sufficiently to explain much in his communications, which would otherwise not have been explicable. It is somewhat surprising, so much depending upon accuracy, that the Governor should not himself have insisted on having these well-informed and erudite Negroes, these masters of intelligence from Europe, brought at once into his presence, and examined. He would then have ascertained the depth of the delusion which had been practised upon him, by those in whose descriptions he confided *.

• The want of knowledge, the barbarism, and the total incivilization of the slaves, have hitherto formed one great plea for keeping them in slavery. When it suits the varying purposes of the planters, the same men are acute, intelligent, penetrating, and capable of surmounting difficulties of the most formidable kind in the pursuit of information.

F

Under the same influence, doubtless, which had been thus employed to delude him as to the state of intelligence among the slaves, he proceeds, in a letter of the 25th of June 1824, (A. p. 196), to use the arguments of the planters for departing, in the reform of their code, from the Trinidad model. To this letter, on the 20th of November 1824 Lord Bathurst replies at considerable length, and in most respects very satisfactorily. (A. pp. 219-226.) He notices, in their order, the various provisions of the law framed by the Court of Policy which he says must be amended, and the various omissions which must be supplied, before that law can be promulgated. The principle of forbidding the person entrusted with the office of Protector to possess plantation slaves, must be adhered to. It would have been well to have added domestic slaves also.

It must be kept in mind, and expressed in the law," that the total abolition of Sunday markets is contemplated, as soon as the measures shall have taken effect which are designed to remove the causes of its temporary inexpediency *."

The employment of slaves on the Sunday is prohibited in the Trinidad order: a close adherence to its rules is required in the present instance.

The offence of carrying a whip in the field must be punished, not only by mulct, but, as in the Trinidad order, by fine and imprisonment.

It is absolutely necessary to retain the provision which requires witnesses of the punishments inflicted on slaves.

The abolition of the punishment of females by the whip, is an enactment of which no qualification can be admitted, as relates to adults.

If a slave, when produced in court, shall exhibit traces of recent flogging, and shall state probable grounds for believing the punishment to have been unlawfully inflicted, the owner must be required to disprove the allegation, otherwise he must be convicted of the offence.

* The reasons are given in the Appendix to the Second Report of the Anti-slavery Society (p. 72) for conceiving that this delay in the abolition of Sunday markets was altogether uncalled for, and not justified by any one of the reasons on which it is founded.

The record of punishments must be kept, and the returns made once in every half year, on oath, as in Trinidad.

The draft of the Court of Policy having been silent on the subject of the evidence of slaves, on the ground that such evidence is by the Dutch law admissible in all cases, Lord Bathurst requires that the omission should be supplied, and the course pursued in the Trinidad order adhered to.

"The marriages of slaves are proposed," says his Lordship, "to be regulated by provisions substituted for those of the Order in Council for Trinidad, but which will, I am sure, upon consideration, appear so inadequate, (and one part of that proposition is, in truth, so open to ridicule) that I am persuaded the Court of Policy will at once acknowledge the expediency of a stricter conformity to the Order in Council."

A strict adherence to the Trinidad Order in Council is also necessary in regard to the acquisition and disposal of property by slaves. Lord Bathurst approves of the proposed prohibition of slaves possessing fire-arms and ammunition; but sees no sufficient reason for not allowing them to possess the exportable produce of the colony*.

Lord Bathurst wholly disapproves of that existing law of

*The part of the draft to which Lord Bathurst here objects, states that slaves may, but with the approbation and consent of their owners (a qualification which obviously altogether nullifies the right of property), possess property of any kind, and dispose of it by bequest or otherwise, save and except fire-arms and ammunition, and such colonial produce as is prohibited to be sold or bartered by the eleventh article of the existing law. On turning to that article, we find it to be as follows:

“All slaves, as well males as females, are prohibited from selling or bartering,with any one whatever, any produce,-sugar,coffee, cocoa, indigo, rokow, syrup, rum, bottles, or flasks, or any thing else; being permitted to sell only vegetables and ground provisions, the produce of their gardens, or stock which they are allowed to rear; on pain of being severely flogged on the plantation to which they belong, for the first offence; and for the second to be punished by sentence of the court, according to the exigency of the case." (A. p. 210).

Lord Bathurst might well question whether any sufficient reason was assigned for making, by a side wind, such a cruel and preposterous enactment as this a part of the new and ameliorated slave code. But such is, in point of fact, the cruel and preposterous law of every slave colony in his Majesty's dominions; and Lord Bathurst himself, we fear, has inadvertently given it an indirect sanction, in his correspondence with the

Demarara, by which the consent of the Governor and the Court of Policy is rendered necessary to every act of manumission, to which even the owner of the slave is consenting, and he cannot therefore allow such a principle to be introduced into the new code. It is impossible, he says, to admit of this, or indeed of any other departure from the provisions of the Trinidad Order in Council on this head,

Another important regulation, which postpones the payment of the Protector's salary till he shall have made his periodical returns, has been omitted in the draft, but, his Lordship says, must be strictly adhered to.

The clause proposing to vest in the Governor a power of suspending the proposed law, is declared to be perfectly inadmissible.

Lord Bathurst adds, that he trusts the Court of Policy is prepared to adopt these suggestions; but, if not, "it is necessary that I should explain to you, that in such an event, however desirous his Majesty's Government may be that the origination of this measure of melioration should proceed from the Court of Policy, they would feel it their paramount duty to issue, without further delay, an Order in Council for the purpose of carrying them into effect."

The whole of this dispatch is most highly creditable to

Governor of Trinidad. The passage to which we allude is contained in a letter to Sir R. Woodford, dated 24th July 1824, and is as follows:

:

"In the papers before me, a construction is put upon a part of the Order in Council which is warranted by none of its provisions. It appears to be doubted whether the permission, conveyed to slaves, to purchase and hold land, does not indirectly revoke the existing law of Trinidad, whereby slaves are prohibited from cultivating for their own profit any of the staple commodities of the island. In granting the slaves the power of acquiring land, the Order does not, of course, exempt them from any existing restrictions as to the mode in which land might be cultivated by persons of their class and condition." Now as the restrictions in Trinidad and Demarara are substantially the same, it appears that there is as good reason for questioning in the former as in the latter case the propriety of prohibiting slaves to cultivate or to possess exportable produce. In fact, the principle on which the legislators of the West Indies have uniformly proceeded, of absolutely prohibiting slaves from raising any exportable produce whatever, is one which deserves the very utmost degree of reprobation, and which, as the attention of Government has at length been called to it, will, we trust, in every case, meet with their decided and unequivocal reprobation.