76 Voice of the Country Abolition of Slavery. Ju'LY, 



ther introduction of Africans was not necessary for keeping up the popu- 

 lation of the colonies; but the great inequality of the sexes seems to have 

 been studiously kept out of view by the abolitionists, and the subsequent 

 diminution of numbers which has, in consequence, taken place, has been 

 very adroitly turned against the planters as a proof of their inhumanity, 

 although their antagonists are well aware that any decrease has been 

 owing to the unavoidable decrement of human life in such an unequal 

 state of the population, and that this apparent falling off has been in- 

 creased by manumissions a circumstance which the anti -colonial party 

 carefully exclude from their comparative calculations. 



The late Joseph Marryat, Esq., M. P., has given us many instances of 

 the palpable falsehoods, gross impositions, and suppressions of the truth, 

 which distinguish the proceedings of the abolitionists ; and before saying 

 any thing respecting the late anti-slavery meetings, we shall extract from 

 one of his pamphlets, published in 1816, the following account of one of 

 those exhibitions, got up by Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Stephen, and their 

 compeers, for the purpose of influencing " the voice of the people." 



It having been announced by advertisement that the members and 

 friends of the African and Asiatic Society would dine together at the 

 Freemasons' Tavern, on the day the Report of the African Institution 

 was read, and that a number of Africans and Asiatics were expected 

 to dine in an adjoining room, Mr. Wilberforce took the chair. After 

 Dinner the company drank the usual toasts ; the King, the Prince Re- 

 gent, the Queen, and the rest of the Royal Family (but without rising 

 from their seats). 



" Mr. Stephen then arose and apologized for addressing the meeting, 

 which he was induced to do as being more accustomed to speak in pub- 

 lic than Mr. Prince Saunders, a man of colour, who had just returned 

 from a mission to St. Domingo, and whose communications from thence 

 he would lay before them." " Mr. Stephen addressed himself in a great 

 degree to the Africans and Asiatics, who had only been separated from 

 (he company by a screen drawn across one end of the room, from behind 

 which they had by this time emerged, and were standing round the 

 tables. He dwelt upon the infamy of supposing, that the difference of 

 colour in the skin could occasion any inferiority in the mind. From a 

 warm eulogy upon blacks as contrasted with whites, he slid into a pane- 

 gyric upon Christophe, whom he described as an ornament to the African 

 name, and an honour to the human race as the friend of the immortal 

 Toussaint the patriot, liberator, and exalter of his fellow-creatures 

 liberal, enlightened, beneficent, merciful and, above all, A SINCERE AND 



PIOUS CHRISTIAN ! ! 



" Mr. Saunders corroborated every assertion of this harangue by bow- 

 ing assent from time to time. Mr. Stephen distinctly asserted that King 

 Henry of Hayti, the name by which he always spoke of this person, was 

 one of the most august sovereigns in the universe ; the glorious founder 

 of a new dynasty, which he predicted would, in no distant time, subvert 

 the relations of the western world as at present constituted, and give 

 Africa its natural rank, if not superiority, in the scale of mankind! !" 



The health of this blood-thirsty negro was then drank with three times 

 three and enthusiastic acclamations, the whole company standing! 



" Mr. Prince Saunders confirmed the details of Mr. Stephen. He re 

 peated the earnestness with which Christophe longed for religious in- 

 structjpn, and his disdain for the trappings of state. He particularly 



