NEGRO SLAVERY UNDER ENGLISH RULE.[1]
Abundant experience has established in the cultivated men of Europe, as testified in European literature, the conviction that a fixed system of slavery is a deadly plague-spot in any national institution. Notoriously, it is fatally demoralizing to the masters, and inevitably oppressive to the slaves. From an industrial aspect it is intensely wasteful; and by dishonoring labor, it propagates idleness and vice among poor freemen. Through the danger of insurrections it also conduces to military weakness. Notwithstanding the attempts in the American Union at a philosophic defence of the cruel and ruinous system but lately dominant there, and the deplorable support given to them in England by one eminent man of letters, we can happily say that the vile and hateful institution is now thoroughly condemned by the collective European intellect.
But unhappily English colonists and seamen in large numbers are unversed in our higher literature, are ignorant of past history, and, when out of reach of English law, are very apt to reconstruct both law and morals for themselves. In many of our colonies, as in the Mauritius and in Queensland, local laws are made which reduce Chinese immigrants to a state closely similar to slavery. In the English West Indies nothing but the strong hand of the home government stops the importation of coolies to be converted into virtual slaves; and the temper shown by the whites of the Cape Colony towards the native Kafirs and Hottentots is anything but assuring. It is but a little while ago since the excellent and humane Commodore Goodenough was killed on one island of the Pacific, and Bishop Patteson on another, because English merchant ships had carried natives away by fraud or violence. Fiji has narrowly been rescued from such lawless treatment, and Sir Alexander Gordon, the governor, without very ample and exceptional powers, would be quite unable to suppress our buccaneers, who with the arts of high civilization and the enterprise of capital unite gross and heartless brutality. Unless knowledge in the English public reinforce our government, which is always so overworked as to lean towards evil laxity, the British colonies are likely to use their early freedom in this pernicious direction. But (so many are the novelties and distractions of English politics) our young people in tens of thousands are totally ignorant of the history of negro slavery. Even those who cannot at all be called uneducated easily believe bold assertions — such as, that the liberation of West Indian slaves was an unfortunate mistake and a failure; that the anti-slavery party ought to have aimed at gradual abolition and did not; that they were fanatics; that the islands have never been so prosperous since the emancipation; and that as slaves the blacks were better off and better behaved than now. So widespread is ignorance of this great and melancholy history in the younger generation, that it is believed a retrospect in moderate compass may be timely and acceptable.
The first matter perhaps on which a distinct understanding is desirable, is the legal aspect of the slave trade and of slavery. The one and the other were from the beginning utterly illegal, and only gained a show of legality through the malversations and neglects of executive officers, whose real duty was to denounce the system and suppress it wherever it lay in their power. The position of the English king and his chief ministers was in early days somewhat difficult, and a few words may be not amiss on this head. The power of Queen Elizabeth by sea was very puny in comparison to that of Spain; the supplies of her exchequer scant. She rejoiced in the exploits of individual sea-captains, with little inquiry as to the legality of their proceedings, whether towards Spaniards or Africans. The English slave trade, in fact, began with Sir John Hawkins in the year 1562. He had obtained leave from the queen to carry Africans to America with their own free consent; but he forced them on board his ships not without slaughter, and escaped
- ↑ Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies. By Charles Buxton, M.P. Longmans, 1860.
The Anti-Slavery Reporter.
The Slave Colonies of Great Britain. Hatchard and Son. 1826, second edition.
