THE MINISTRY AN'D TUK PARLIAMENT. 115 



the human bodies in their possession, they secured for a lengthened 

 period their interest in, and control over, the wretched creatures on 

 their estates ; while at the time the bill was brought forward, they 

 were in the hourly dread of being, by a simultaneous insurrectionary 

 movement among the slaves, not only deprived of them, but of their 

 estates also. Shakspeare asks " What* s in a name?" To many 

 people there is a great deal ; to some, every thing. Ask the negroes 

 in the West Indies the question, and they will answer, " Nothing." 

 They find to their cost that slavery is as bitter a draught under the 

 name of " apprentices" as it was under the old and plainer appel- 

 lation of "slaves." The West India bill, in one word, is a flagrant 

 outrage on humanity, a mere mockery of the wrongs of the slaves, 

 and a gross delusion on the people of this country. And to aggra- 

 vate the misconduct of the ministry which could propose, and the 

 parliament which could sanction, such a measure, this perpetuation 

 of slavery under the name of " apprenticeship" the perpetuation 

 of a system which, in a few short months, would, from its own na- 

 tive rottenness, have fallen to pieces, is purchased at the expense of 

 20,000,000/., to be wrung from the pockets of a people already pressed 

 to the ground by a more than Atlasian load of taxation. 



The modification effected in the East India Charter is, perhaps, 

 the best of the great measures accomplished by the reformed mi- 

 nistry and reformed parliament. Yet it falls far short of what the 

 circumstances of the case demanded, and the nation expected. To 

 perpetuate, or rather renew, the charter as it then stood, was seen to 

 be out of the question. The partial abolition of the monopoly so 

 long enjoyed by the " four-and-twenty princes of Leaclenhall Street," 

 was felt to be a measure of indispensable necessity, unless ministers 

 had chosen to encounter the inevitable alternative of expulsion from 

 power. Even the Tories themselves had long entertained this con- 

 viction in its fullest force ; for the Wellington government contem- 

 plated a measure of reform for India as extensive, if not more so, 

 as that which Lord Grey's ministry has carried into effect. 



The Bank Charter Bill is now universally denounced as a measure 

 of unqualified evil to the country. The genius of Toryism, even 

 when in its most high and palmy state, could scarcely have produced 

 a measure more replete with the elements of national mischief. The 

 country demanded that a monopoly, which conferred on two or three 

 irresponsible individuals the power of contracting or extending the cur- 

 rency at their pleasure, and, by consequence, of influencing the credit 

 and commerce of the empire to any extent that suited their own 

 caprice, should be utterly and unceremoniously abolished. The country 

 moreover asserted its right to all the advantages of a free trade in 

 banking : how far have its wishes been acceded to ? Let the fact, 

 that the commercial destinies of the country are as much as ever in 

 the hands of the Directors in Threadneedle -street, answer the ques- 

 tion. The ministerial journals one and all confess that the perpetua- 

 tion of the odious monopoly of the Bank was a most unjustifiable 

 measure on the part of ministers and the parliament. No Tory 

 administration, under the circumstances, would have dreamed of such 

 a thing. Whether Ministers knowingly truckled to the Bank, or 



