492 Our Colonies. ; [May, 
policy upon mere prejudices, and no candid or honest mind but must 
shrink at the notion of having its better feelings wrought upon, for the 
purpose of working an injustice, by means of an honest impulse misled, 
or under colour of some sacred but prostituted name. And yet, with 
respect to Jamaica, the government and the people of this country have 
been induced to condemn and to sentence, unheard and untried, the con- 
duct of persons who participate with them—nay, who go beyond them, 
if that be possible, in their abhorrence of slavery, if by slavery is meant 
privation, and suffering, and injustice ; the denial of the rights of huma- 
nity, and the violation of all social privileges. If the people of Jamaica 
have been guilty of the crimes which have been laid to their charge, 
there can be but one feeling excited respecting them. If the system of 
slavery prevailing in that island be such as their enemies have described 
it to be, there can be no doubt, not only that it should be abolished, at 
whatever cost of pecuniary interest, at whatever sacrifice of political 
power ; and though the fate of the colonists should be beggary, the 
scorn of all good men, even anihilation itself—the punishment will have 
been deserved by their offences, and they will be seen to endure it with- 
out exciting or deserving one particle of commiseration. 
All that they ask, and if they did not ask it, common justice and the 
interests of the country would demand it, is—that the foundation of 
.their supposed crimes should be inquired into, and that their guilt should 
be ascertained before their punishment is visited upon them. 
With respect to slavery itself it must be remembered, that the institu- 
tion is neither of this day nor by those people who are now interested in 
its continuance ; whatever may be its evils, no man is now called upon to 
justify or to excuse them ; it was begun under the direct sanction of the 
British Government ; it has grown under the protection of British laws, 
and is as much a part of the legislative enactment of this country, as the 
poor laws, or any other provision which the interests or the exigencies of 
the state may have required. The colonial system, of which it has been, 
of which it ts, an inseparable part, has been nurtured by British capital, 
and British industry ; its fruits have been commercial prosperity—an 
influx of national wealth—an ample market for the sale and consumption 
of British manufactures, and the extension of that political power which 
has made this country prosperous at home and formidable abroad—rich 
in peace, and terrible‘in war—the source of opulence and security to its 
people, and an irresistible weapon of offence against its foes. Still, — 
though these benefits were infinitely increased, we are not prepared to 
‘deny that they ought all to be surrendered unhesitatingly, if they can be 
held by no other than unjust and unchristian means. A cursory exami- 
nation—and though it be cursory, it will yet be more profound, as well” 
as more candid than that which the enemies of the colonies have chosen 
to make into the subject—will prove that no such principle applies to the 
case of the colonies. Without adverting to the fact that the evidence of 
‘all history, sacred as well as profane, establishes the existence.of slavery 
‘without reminding the Englishmen of the nineteenth century, that the 
Villeins of the thirteenth were in name and in-fact, slaves under a more 
‘galling yoke than those Africans who till the soil in Jamaica,—let ut 
examine into the actual condition of the latter slaves, and see in what re= 
spects they differ, excepting in the name, from that large class of humaiy 
‘beings whose fate it is by the laws of nature, and the regulations 6 
society, to earn the food they eat by the cultivation of the earth which 
produces that food. 
