286 Our Colonies. QSept. 



blance than is unavoidable on all writings on the same subject. The 

 honest Reporter then takes four several points, in which he accuses us of 

 falsification. The first is, that we have said " the slaves in Jamaica do 

 not work for a greater number of hours than the agricultural labourers 

 of Great Britain." We say so again, and defy conti'adiction — and we 

 say, moreover, that the artizans and mechanics of Great Britain work for 

 still longer periods, and that many of them have less comfort and 

 enjoyment as the reward of their laboiu- than the slaves of Jamaica. 

 His second charge against us is for having asserted that the practice of 

 enforcing the labour of slaves by the whip, has been almost, if not 

 wholly, discontinued in Jamaica. Without condescending to notice the 

 dishonest artifice by which he has extracted from a long paragraph a 

 single sentence the meaning of which can only be understood by the 

 context ; without referring again to the provisions of the law which 

 provides for the safety of the persons of slaves against any cruelty by 

 their masters, we stand upon the very letter of our former assertion, and 

 in support of it we quote an authority, at least equal to that of this scrib- 

 bling Mawworm — the Report of the House of Assembly of Jamaica — who 

 in replying to an objection of ]Mr. Huskisson's on this subject, say " on 

 many properties the whip is no longer an instrument of punishment, 

 and the use of it will soon be so generally discontinued, as to enable the 

 legislature to restrict or abolish it by law." His third complaint is that 

 we have stated " the use of the whip, save as the punishment of crime, 

 is discontinued ;" and the proof that we are right in saying so is con- 

 tained in the law we have referred to, and the sentence we have just 

 quoted. In the fourth place, Alawworm is touched to the quick by a 

 sentence in which we said, " If some of those good-natured dreaming 

 people, who take for granted all that they have been told on the other 

 side, ask why we have left out of the picture the torture to which slaves 

 are put, at the mere caprice of their masters, the dismemberments, the 

 chainings, the wanton floggings, the separate selling of slaves who are 

 united in famihes, the cruel severing of nature's sweetest and holiest ties, 

 the answer is;, that if such atrocities ever existed, they have for many 

 years past ceased to disgrace the colonies ; — that to assert they now exist 

 in any degree, is a foul, gross, malignant calumny ; the falsehood of 

 which is notorious to every one who has taken the trouble to read and 

 examine the evidence on the subject, and more notorious to none than 

 to the crafty forgers of these monstrous lies." 



Is this not true ? Do not the conduct of the colonists of Jamaica, the 

 law they proposed, and their vindication of that law, establish beyond 

 doubt or dispute that what we have said is true ? Does it not prove also 

 that the sentence which follows, and which IMawworm would not venture 

 to quote, is true also?* But we are shocked at finding ourselves insen- 

 sibly engaged in a contest with such an antagonist. It is upon other 

 grounds that the case of the colonies rests ; and however the equitable 

 and most desirable adjustment of such differences as exist may be 

 retarded by the machinations of such an assailant, and by those of his 



* Relying upon the public appetite for whatever partakes of the man-eUous — upon the 

 proneness of uncharitable nature to believe imputations of evU rather than to receive 

 proofs of good deeds — and more than all, upon the supineuess and apathy of the \rest 

 Indian proprietors, their enemies have exerted tliemselves indefiitigably, and to a certain 

 extent successfully, to create a j)ublic prejudice agaiiist the colonists, and to engage the 

 co-operation of Government to their ruin. 



