280 Our Colonies. [;Sept. 



btirthen of maintaining their slaves in sickness or old age, and therefore 

 the proposed act provides against owners availing themselves of the pre- 

 text of manumitting their slaves^ to cast upon the general community the 

 care and expence of providing for such of them as may be past their 

 labour. With this one just restriction, every possible facility is afforded 

 to the manumission of slaves ; they may be disposed of by will, they 

 may be freed by persons having legal or equitable estates in them for 

 life ; and in case of dispute, the value having been ascertained by proper 

 officers, the mode of doing which is pointed out by the act, the amount 

 may be paid into the Court of Chancery, Avhich has power to decide on 

 the claims of parties who may be entitled to it, so that the liberation of the 

 slave cannot be postponed by reason of " the law's delay," or the disputes 

 of parties. It has been usual, under the existing law of Jamaica, to 

 require from the persons by wliom slaves have been manumitted, a bond 

 for the purpose of indemnifying the parish against the expences to be 

 incurred by maintaining the persons so freed, if they shall become 

 chargeable by reason of age or infirmity ; this bond is dispensed with in 

 manumissions by will, to which the law proposed to gives immediate 

 effect, and also in those cases in whicli the owner shall give satisfactory 

 proof that the slave is not old or infirm. 



The seventli resolution is directed against the separation of families by 

 the sale of any of their members to different proprietors — a practice 

 which was never conmion in Jamaica — which by universal consent has 

 long ceased to exist, excepting in very rare instances, and Avhich might 

 obviously be the cause of great gi'ief and agony to the persons who are 

 the objects of the proposed regulation. The act of which we are speak- 

 ing — one of the purposes of which is to give the effect of law to customs 

 which are so common as to require such an enactment only for form's 

 sake — provides, that in all cases where a levy shall be made by any 

 deputy-marshall or collectii^ constable of a family or families, (that is, 

 the only case in which such a sale is ever known to talie place) such 

 family or families shall be sold together or in one lot. In the hope of 

 preventing the possibility of doubt or misconception as to the word 

 families, (a vain hope, as it should seem, from IMr. Huskisson's despatch) 

 a former act is quoted in the same section, and its definition of a family 

 adopted, in which it is expressly stated to consist of " a man and his 

 wife, his or their cliildren." Any sale made contrary to tliis provision, 

 would have been void, and might be set aside. 



With respect to the eighth resolution, the proposed act contains no 

 provision, and for a very obvious reason. The slaves being, by the laws 

 of England, the property of their owners, must be subject to the inci- 

 dents of all property, so far as the interests of those owners are con- 

 cerned. All that humauity requires having been, as we have shown it is, 

 provided for by the act, tliat mistaken philanthiopy, or that affected 

 benevolence which would indulge itself at the expence of others, is not to 

 be so far encouraged as to defeat the just claims of honest creditors, to 

 unsettle the estabhshed law of property, or to be made the means of pro- 

 tection and impunity to fraudulent debtors ; and what other effects than 

 these the resolution could produce, if it were carried into effisct, would 

 be difficult to conceive. 



The ninth resolution proposes to restrain the power of ai-biti*ary 

 pvmishment at the will of the master. No one will venture to deny — no 

 one can affect to doubt, that if such punishment could be wholly abo- 



