1829. } Our Colonies. 497 
gain their several ends ; all are equally eager to cut their shoe-ties out of 
the colony’s leather, and, although the shapes might vary in each case, 
there is no doubt that the wearers would cut stuff enough. 
Now, because the colonists of the West Indies, notwithstanding the 
respect which they must needs feel for the pure and estimable motives 
of their enemies, nine-tenths of whom know nothing of the matter, and 
are directed by the remaining tenth in a scheme of mere plunder, be- 
cause they venture to defend their reputations and their property, and the 
colony itself, against the vain and dishonest purposes of their enemies, 
they find themselves involved in a serious quarrel with the English govern- 
ment, which stands thus :—In 1823, that most amiable and fair dealing 
porter brewer, Mr. Buxton, (whose beer, if it is no better than his 
speeches, is enough to make any reasonable stomach revolt,) proposed 
to the House of Commons a resolution to abolish slavery throughout 
the British colonies ‘with as much expedition as may be found 
consistent with a due regard to the well-being of the parties concerned.” 
The dishonesty of this attempt is obvious in every line of Mr. Bux- 
ton’s speech ;—see him at every step mixing up the old horrors of the 
slave trade with his present proposition, and endeavouring to establish a 
connexion between the West India proprietors of this day, and those dis- 
graces to humanity, who trafficked in the blood and lives of African 
slaves. Look to the indignant rebuke which the brewer received from 
-Mr. Fanning, who reminded him that the two subjects had no natural 
reference to each other, and could never be joined but for a purpose dis- 
honest in itself, unfair tothe house, to the country, and the colonies ;— 
that the house was under an engagement, “ not, on every subsequent 
‘discussion to look back to atrocities which have ceased,—not to revive 
-animosities which have been extinguished—not to throw in the teeth of 
_those whose interests are at hazard, cruelties with which they in fact had 
‘no concern.” The whole of Mr. Canning’s answer is an admirable run- 
ning stricture upon Mr. Buxton’s address, and is to that address what 
benevolence, guided by sound judgment, philantrophy, regulated by the 
doctrines of Christianity, and political sagacity, the result of profound 
study and deliberation, are to an ignorant zeal, an overweening vanity, 
and an hypocritical pretence, extraordinary virtue. . Having sufficiently 
_ demolished that insidious proposition, Mr. Canning submitted certain 
resolutions which were afterwards adopted, the object of which was the 
_ -institution of measures for ameliorating the condition of the slave popula- 
_ tion in the colonies, to be effected through the progressive improvement 
in the character of the slaves, and in such time as might be “ compatible 
with the well-being of the slaves themselves, with the safety of the 
colonies, and with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of 
»private property.” The sense which that statesman entertained of the 
duty of this country towards the colonies, and the conduct which in justice, 
and in good policy, ought to be adopted towards them, may be gathered 
from the concluding sentence of his speech, in which he expresses the 
anxiety of the government “ on the one hand to redeem the character of 
the country, so far as it may have suffered by the state of slavery in the 
colonies, and their duty on the other, to guard and protect the just 
| interests of those who by no fault of their own—by inheritance—by 
| accident—by the éncouragement of repeated acts of the legislature—find 
their property vested in a concern exposed to innumerable hazards and 
-slifficulties which do not belong to property of another character, such 
» M.M. New Series—Vou. VII. No.41. 35 
