but have its due and powerful influence upon your minds and upon your charity.
But besides this claim upon your interest, your generosity, and your zeal, as Englishmen, there is another earnest consideration, and one which appeals to you on a higher principle, that is, as Christians.
When I commenced my remarks I said that it was a cherished idea of many of the supporters of this Society, that their labors might eventually tell upon Africa. Christian friends, this is no longer a mere idea. It is, in very deed, one of the results
their freedom with so little effort. Whilst in these regions many are still thinking of the Negro as an animal who wears a monkey-face, and says 'massa,' with just wit enough to be cunning, and just English enough to lie, there is a race growing up in those Western Islands, seemly in their bearing, and very often handsome, (civilization and improvement fast creolizing their features, and effacing the uncomeliness of the African type ;) their peasants as intelligent and intelligible as our own; their advanced classes already a powerful bourgeoisie, of whose future position we have an instalment in this, that even now (and I pray it be carefully marked) it has its merchants, its barristers, its clergymen, its magistrates, its members of Assembly, and (even) its members of Council."—"Africa in the West," by Rev. W. C. Dowding, M. A.
Both Mr. Dowding and Mr. Bigelow speak impartially of the character of the West Indian blacks, and mention their failings as well as their virtues; yet their common testimony evidences the improvement of my race in the British West Indies. But why is it, it may be asked, that so many writers declare emancipation a failure, and that the Negro race is degenerating? The reasons are briefly these: 1. Because most persons think that the only important parties in the British West Indies, are the planters; and consequently that the ruin of this small item of the population, is the ruin of the population itself; forgetful of the fact that their numbers are inconsiderable; that they have always been in pecuniary embarrassment; and above all that, from the nature of the case, there is no hope for slave-holders: they must go to ruin!
