strance of such powers would receive no small force, and form, and character, in bringing others to think with them upon the necessity of coming to a common understanding, to support that true, virtuous, and beneficent confederacy, for the total abolition of the slave trade. (Hear.) He thanked the house for the patience with which they had heard him, and concluded by moving for leave to bring a bill for the more effectual suppression of the African slavetrade. (Loud cheers.)

On the question being put from the chair

Mr. Fowell Buxton rose to express his cordial support of one part of the right honourable gentleman's speech, whilst he had to regret, to another, and he believed the more important part, he was under the painful necessity of giving his most decided opposition. Indeed, when he was thus called upon to discuss over again what he had hoped had already been concluded, he felt that a subject was unfortunately and impoliticly reopened, which he had expected, until this night, was terminated for all ages to come.

Last session the government had formally taken the West India slavetrade under its own especial consideration, with a positive and specific pledge that it was expedient to adopt decisive measures for the amelioration of the slave population. They had resolved, nemine contradicente, "That it is expedient to adopt effectual and decisive measures for ameliorating the condition of the slave population in his majesty's colonies. That, though a determined and persevering, but at the same time judicious and temperate (loud cries of "hear," from the opposite benches) enforcement of such measures, this house looks forward to a progressive improvement

in the character of the slave population, such as may prepare them for a participation in those civil rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other classes of his majesty's subjects. That this house is anxious for the accomplishment of this purpose at the earliest period that shall be compatible with the well-being of slaves themselves, with the safety of the colonies, and with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private property." (Reiterated cries of "hear," from the opposite benches.) Such was the pledge which parliament had given upon the subject, and what had been the result? Then it would, perhaps, be said, that the colonial legislative bodies would not consent to the recommendation of the British government. What was the right honourable gentleman's own declaration on that point? he said, "I think they will; but if they do not, we have a right to expect that they will give their reasons unequivocally; and that any resistance which should partake of the appearance of contumacy would certainly make out a case which would bring his majesty's ministers again into parliament to consider what further proceedings they would counsel for the adoption of the crown." First, then, the resolution of last session, was a general one-it pledged the legislature to an amelioration of all the slaves in all the countries; there were no reservations or distinctions-no grades of comparison with reference to which island was better or worse. Such being the pledge, the next question was, had it been fulfilled? for if it had, then there was an end to the present consideration-they were debarred from further interference. If, however, the pledge, though not directly abandoned, was softened down, and here a little, and there a little

taken

taken away; and if the amelioration, instead of being for all the colonies, was to be only for a part, and even in those partially and indefinitely ap plied, then the pledge was altogether incomplete; for the life of man might pass away without one step being taken to promote the end which had been so solemnly determined upon. What did they mean by leaving the question for a gradual measure- for the light of reason (cries of "hear," from the benches opposite.) What he meant was, that if they were to leave the matter for the light of reason, after forfeiting their pledge, they might wait for ten centuries before the amelioration would be accomplished. He was bound to complain that the government had departed from its pledge to a slave population of seven hundred thousand human beings a pledge not expressly given in words, but a tacit virtual understanding, and therefore the more sacred, and one which ought to be particularly in violable, when those in whose behalf it ought to be enforced had not the power of complaint. (Hear.) No man approved more than he did of the order in council, the general principles of which (whatever were its details) were sound and just. So far as that order in council went, and so far only, he admitted the pledge had been faithfully fulfilled. The first point was that which related to the flogging of female slaves, and which, according to the proposed arrangement, was, he was shocked to find, notwithstanding the general reprobation it had received, to be continued in ninety-nine out of one hundred parts of the slave population. He must protest against this arrangement. He knew how he exposed himself to the reproaches of his opponents when he took this course

let them ring tenfold against him more than they had done, still her stood committed, and should perform his duty by a straight forward steady course, "come what, come may," rather than purchase a base indemnity by deserting the cause which he had pledged himself to promote. (Hear, hear.) What would be said of him were he capable of such desertion? Would he not be told, “you have begun this cause; you knew at the outset its besetting difficulties; better had it been that you had not ¦ stirred, rather than to have obtained a pledge which was only made to be abandoned, which was only calculated to excite hopes, and then level them with the dust? (Hear, hear.) How can you reconcile with that pledge, this cutting down of the benefit from the whole Archipelago to one single island?" As the law would stand, a female slave might be stretched upon the earth, and pressed down by four negroes, whilst a fifth used the cart-whip upon her naked body. True it was that this outrage was to be abolished in Trinadad.

The right honourable gentleman had most eloquently described the moral scale of improvement through. which these unhappy people had to pass before they were qualified for the enjoyment of civilized privileges; but in the case of these wretched fe males, could they hope for one step towards moral amelioration, thus exposed in a state of nakedness to the vile infliction of the lash? Could they hope, under such an ordeal, to find the young negress chaste, modest, reserved, and decent in her deportment, as long as she was liable to the painful, revolting, degrading, and shameless exposure of her person under the lash of her tormentor? (Hear, hear.) They had, indeed, been told of the licentiousness of these unhappy

females,

females, and asked, such being the fact, how was it possible to raise them suddenly into a state of moral improvement? He admitted it was impossible, so long as the odious practice of flogging was persevered in (hear, hear); and yet, notwithstanding the positive baseness of the practice, they were now to begin with only a partial abolition of it-they were to commence with a population of twenty-two thousand at Trinidad; and then in one or two other small places, where crown lands existed; and finally in Demerara and Berbice, leaving almost unaffected the larger population of seven hundred thousand slaves.

How had the proposition to remove the cart-whip been received at Jamaica? In a tone of wounded feelings-of supposed injury-of exasperated majesty. How had it been received at Barbadoes, which boasted of a superior class of proprietors, possessing more of English feeling, from a greater identity with the education, habits, and manners of Englishmen? Had they not read Mr. Hamden's speech at Barbadoes? And he begged to speak in some degree of commendation of that speech, for in some parts it breathed a temper, avowed principles, and conveyed them in a tone of moderation which was commendable. Mr. Hamden had stated, that he was a friend to the education of the slave population, provided that Great Britain paid for it-he was also against sunday markets-he was favourable to the manumission of slaves; but when he came to the question of flogging female slaves, he seemed to have lost all his temper, and talked of lord Bathurst as a man who was an enemy to the colonies, and the victim of a fanatical feeling. In fact Mr. Hamden joked on the subject of female flog[1824.

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ging-he talked of "the black ladies having a tendency to the cast of Amazons, and that their husbands would be extremely sorry if they were put beyond the reach of the cart-whip." The joke might be very good, but, as he would presently show, the argument was very wretched. But it had been more than once broadly insinuated, that female slaves were not flogged in the West Indies. He contradicted that assertion, and challenged any man to deny the flagrant fact. He had referred to the West India newspapers for the last six or seven years, and the instances of inflicting this punishment upon females were frequent and notorious. He would read some of these cases. The first was the case of Mr. Huggins, (not the notorious case of that name) in 1817, at Nevis. He, on one occasion, had flogged two male slaves, and learning that two female slaves who had witnessed the punishment were observed to cry→→ not in a loud shrieking manner, but in a natural tone, for that was distinctly affirmed by the bystandersthis Huggins said, "Bring out the ladies;" and he then, in the presence of the men, had them flogged, and it turned out that one of them was the sister of one of the males who had been flogged, and that the punishment at which she had cried had been inflicted by the hand of his father: this agency was at the time, he believed, unintentional. The next was the celebrated case of the negress America, at Berbice, which had been often quoted. The clergyman (Mr. Ray) had described his having seen her back in long furrows from the punishment of the whip, and her wounds in a state too horrid for description; she had been flogged naked on all parts of the body, and being at the time in a state of preg

nancy, had miscarried from the torture. She had received one hundred and fifty lashes from drivers who stood at each side of her to inflict them, and then had fourteen days' further punishment in the stocks. There was another fact mentioned by colonel Arthur, at Honduras, when a female, after being screwed down in a position of great torture, was barbarously and wantonly flogged, until her wounds became so festered from forced exposure to the sun, as to endanger her life, and for this offence the aggressor was fined 50%. Jamaica currency, about 351. sterling. In Honduras in 1821, there was another case of a female, named Peggy, who on a supposition of having made away with a handkerchief, was flogged, and afterwards confined in a contagious hole filled with vermin and musquitos, from which she made her escape, but was retaken and exposed to the same punishment again. (Hear, hear.) His object in reciting these disgusting cases was to shew, that the practice of flogging females was notorious and well-grounded -- his argument was, that it ought to be universally abolished from its manifest and inevitable tendency to debasement. He hated the practice, first, from its necessary effect upon the brutal perpetrator of the punishment; 2dly, from its cruelty to the wretched sufferer; and 3dly, because it obviously kept down all promise of improvement, and defiled the morals of both parties. The cart-whip, in fact, and moral improvement were utterly incompatible-they must have either one or the other exclusively, for both could not exist together. (Hear.) Look at its effect, according to Mr. Hamden's description of the sense entertained for it by the negro husbands. Mr. Hamden is in this respect either truly or falsely repre

sented. If he were true in his statement, that the males would regret the removal of this sort of punishment from their wives, see the dreadful moral degradation and state of moral turpitude into which these slave husbands must have fallen, when they made such an avowal. Now all sense of moral feeling must have been extracted from the human mind, when a man could declare his regret that his wife or mother, child or sister, should be exempt from the odious and painful degradation. (Hear, hear.) If it were false, then it showed how dangerous it was to depend upon the information said to be locally acquired by the planters. There was one imputation which had been cast upon the abolitionists, which was, that he and those who thought with him, had embarked in wild and extravagant theories for colonial legislation. (Cries of "hear" from the benches opposite.) Let the charge be openly made, and it should be openly and explicitly met. (Hear, hear.) Let it be brought forward, article by article, and particular by particular; let them take this very case of female flagging. Had the opponents of the practice outrun either the feelings of that house or the country upon that punishment ? Certainly not, for both the right hon. gentleman and the house called for its cessation; they had given a pledge to rescue the female slave from the cartwhip of the driver. He would now proceed to the right honourable gentleman's second point-the use of the whip as applied to male slaves, to stimulate them to labour. The West India planters denied that the whip was borne for the purpose of being such a stimulus: how could that denial be reconciled with their reluctance to abolish the practice of bearing it? An honourable member

who

who was the reputed author of a pamphlet upon this question, said, "that the whip is to the managing driver what the mace is to the sergeant-atarms of the house of commons (a laugh), and that it was just as rational, and precisely as true, to assert that the sergeant-at-arms carried that mace for the purpose of knocking the heads of members as they entered the house, as to say that the managing drivers carried the whip to stimulate the labour of the slaves." But how could he reconcile this statement with the accounts which he read in the colonial newspapers? In these he saw repeated instances of flogging: the marks upon the wretched victims were palpably described; their scars, and the positions of them, were detailed; and in one year a friend who looked over for him, (for he could not examine them all himself) discovered five hundred such cases described within that space of time. If the whip were a mere symbol of office, and badge of authority-a remnant of a barbarous custom, how came those marks upon the backs of the slave population? (Cries of "No.") He would say "yes," and add, that until these few days, he did not believe that a practice prevailed of stamping the names of owners and their estates with hot iron upon the bodies of these unhappy people. He would give the following descriptions of runaways and sales from the West India papers:-“ :-"Betsey, who had the letters M. K. and I. O. upon her right shoulder, together with several other letters not equally plain, upon her breast." "Peter, marked with a cow, and the letters A. S. R. O. N. P. 1. L. E. (a laugh) on his breast." The prevalence of this brutal practice could not be denied. He admitted that no respectable proprietor would act so, but it was an undoubted fact

that many others of inferior character were less scrupulous.

The next point to which he would advert was that respecting religious worship, and the diffusion of religious instruction. In the propriety of that diffusion he entirely concurred; but he hoped he was wrong in supposing that the missionaries and dissenters were to be placed under the control and direction of the church establishment. If they were, he anticipated, both here and the West Indies, insurmountable obstacles to that subjection. The missionaries would never fall, in that respect, into the views of the established church. The next point related to the marriage of the slaves; and there he saw no difficulty in carrying into effect the proposed arrangement. With respect to the acquisition of property, he approved of the arrangement which gave the force of law to the previous validity of custom. The next point related to the reception of negro evidence; and on that he must say, that to refuse the evidence of negroes was to refuse to the whole of the negro population the protection of the law. In the whole population there were about fifty thousand whites among seven hundred thousand blacks; so that if the former were equally scattered over the surface of the colonies, they would stand in the ratio of one to fourteen; but they were so situated that they did not reside in the proportion of one to one hundred on the same spot with the blacks. They were assembled in towns, and these individuals were thinly scattered over large tracks of country. So that nothing could be easier than to commit the most heinous crime upon a black, and for the criminal to screen himself from punishment. A white man might avail himself of the absence at a particular

moment