494 Our Colonies, [May, 
they had all such enemies to deal with. Mr. Canning said the system 
of slavery “is an evil which is the growth of centuries and of tens of 
centuries, which is almost coeyal with the deluge, which has existed, 
under different modifications, since man was man.” Let us, however, 
pursue the comparison a few steps further—the labour of the negroes is 
compelled by the stern enforcement of their masters. To effect this the 
use of the whip has formerly been found necessary. That it was ever 
so, excites on all occasions deep regret,—in many, censure not less pro- 
found. That. baneful practice has, however, been almost if not wholly 
discontinued in Jamaica. But is there no enforcement to the toils of 
agricultural labourers in this country? Are not the stings of hunger, “the 
bare point of sharp necessity,” the horrid alternative of starvation, or of 
crime and its attendant penalties, compulsion as strong upon the minds 
of English peasants as the whip of the taskmaster upon the less 
exalted understandings of the negro slaves? Save as the punishment of 
crime, the use of the whip in the West Indies is discontinued ; and for . 
the same purpose is it not in operation here? Are the vagrant laws—the 
laws against poaching—the penal parts of the poor laws—more mild in 
their effect, or more leniently administered, than the measures which the 
policy of the colony, the interests of the proprietors, the very existence 
of the slaves themselves, have rendered necessary in Jamaica? In sick- 
ness they are carefully tended ; and when old age deprives them of the 
capability of further exertion, the humane laws of the colony provide for 
them an asylum for the enjoyment of the repose which their declining 
years demand—not in the prison-like walls of a parish workhouse—not 
upon the condition that the miserable object of the reluctant and enforced 
benevolence of a thrifty overseer shall renounce the society of his family 
—the comforts, scanty and few as they must needs be, yet not on that 
account the less prized, of his humble home ; but in the same hut, upon 
the same land that witnessed his birth, and has been the scene of all his _ 
simple joys, in the bosom of his family, and surrounded by his com- _ 
panions and connexions. The contrast is painful, but justice requires 
it to be continued. What man’s knowledge or memory can furnish him 
with an instance of an English day-labourer, whose exertions were so 
rewarded, or whose industry was so repaid, that he was enabled to 
accumulate money and stock sufficient not only to dispense with the — 
necessity of further exertions in his old age, but to transmit the property 
to his children? In the West-Indies, these occurrences are frequent 
enough to justify the pressing of this point much farther than it is here 
carried, and slaves could be specified, who have purchased their freedom, 
who have become the masters of slaves and the owners of property, and 
in sufficient numbers to lead to the conclusion that industry and sobriety, 
and those habits of order, that increased intelligence, which is the result — 
of the measures willingly and even eagerly adopted by the West-India — 
proprietors for the amelioration of their slaves, secure there the reward 
they are entitled to every where.* . 
et i a a 
* We know the name of a gentleman, at present the proprietor of an estate in the 
parish of Westmoreland. He had been for many years overseer on an estate, and whi 
in that situation, he was about to purchase a small gang of negroes. The slaves on the 
property who were under his charge, felt towards him so much attachment, that one of 
them was deputed by several others to offer him a sum of money, exceeding £1,500, _ 
which they had saved from their earnings, if he required assistance in the purchase. He de- 
clined accepting their offer: he had sufficient gratification in the proof which was afforded 
him of their attachment, which he had by his conduct towards them acquired, and of oe 
prosperity and comfort which they had enjoyed, to enable them to make that offer. Will 
any body tell us of a similar instance in any of the colonies in which the members of th 
African Society are concerned ? 
