200 Notes of the Month on [Aug. 



taryships upon them, and foolishly and presinnptuously imagining them- 

 selves into important public personages. How men will suffer their 

 Avives and daughters to do these things, we cannot conceive ; but the 

 majority of these bustling spinsters are ladies who, having passed the 

 period when domestic ties or the cares of families might fall to their 

 share, have nothing better to employ their leisure than lap-dogs and 

 negro emancipation. A meeting of this heteroclite kind was some time 

 since headed by Mr. Otway Cave : that gentleman has some little 

 arrangements resting on his hands since his last election, and the reco- 

 very of his popularity with the Leicester patriots may be no bad policy. 

 He proposed the emancipation of the whole rising generation of negroes. 

 We wish it had occurred to Mr. Otway Cave to make them fit for it, or 

 to ensure the planters that the first results of freedom would not be to 

 run the imminent risk of having their throats cut. 



The spirit has now started up in the new shape of a circular, of formi- 

 dable length and perplexity, from The Leicester Ladies' Anti-Slavery 

 Society, established in 1820, being a branch of the Birmingham Female 

 Society, Jor the Relief of the British Negro Slaves! 



The objects of this female branch being — 



" To circulate through all classes authentic information .of the present 

 wrongs and sufferings of our Al'est Indian slaves ; to awaken a lively sense of 

 the guilt and danger of continuing to hold our unoffending fellow creatures in 

 a state of bondage, ' ivliich otififiyfs crery reco<jiiised principle oftlie British Con- 

 stitution, and of the Christinn rfliijion.' 



" 2d. To extend present relief to the aged, sick, deranged, and maimed 

 negroes, who are left by their masters to perish. ,30/. were sent last year by 

 the Birmingham Society, to the Committee for the relief of the Distressed 

 Negroes in Antigua. 



" 3d. To strive to promote i\\e formation of Ladies' Associations in every part 

 of his Majesty's dominions, to which their influence may extend, for the above 

 purposes, or any other which may tend towards the great object of emancipa- 

 tion. 



" 4th. To enforce, by example and influence, the resolute rejection of 

 West Indian sugar, and to substitute that which is the genuine produce of free 

 labour. 



" Note. — East Indian sugar is sold by many of the Leicester grocers— moist 

 8(f. and dd., and loaf at l*. per lb. 



" N.B. East Indian sugar would be considerably cheaper than West, if the 

 duties on both were equal. The duty paid on coming into this country is — 

 " On West Indian sugar, 27/. per ton. 

 " On East Inrlian sugar, 37l. per ton. 



" There are also higher duties on all East Indian articles than on West 

 Indian. By sij; families using East Indian instead of West Indian sugar, 

 one slave less is required. 



" Her leisure and her influence in the domestic department, enable her to be 

 a most efhcient auxiliary in discountenayieing the production of slave labour, 

 which appears the most certain means of extinguishing slavery, were it once 

 to engage a zealous and extensive co-operation." 



To the " intelligent" the whole of this must seem a mere puff of East 

 India sugar. To the sincere among those ladies we must say that they 

 are dupes, innocently assisting a brcinch society of male radicalism; and 

 perfectly certain to be at no great distance of time undeceived by the 

 awkward discovery, that they have been unconsciously doing their best 

 to forward the designs of a faction as base and venomous as ever 

 abused the confidence of the giddy and enthusiastic, no matter whether 

 in a female committee in Leicester, or at a tavern dinner in the glorious 

 cause of " reform" and Westminster. 



