1829.] [ 525 ] 



OUU COLONISTS, AND THEIE CALUMNIATORS. 



It is because we feel intensely that, in these times, dangerous as they 

 have been to the liberties of the country — still more dangerous as they 

 are likely to be to its true interests — the most urgent necessity demands 

 the adoption of prompt and vigorous measures to stem the tide of frau- 

 dulent innovation which is setting in so strongly, we recur to the sub- 

 ject of the West India Colonies. A topic of greater importance to the 

 nation can hardly be agitated ; and as it is impossible that, in the next 

 session of parliament, whenever that may be held, tlie momentous ques- 

 tions connected with it can be any longer staved off, we earnestly apply 

 ourselves to contribute, as far as our influence may extend, that portion 

 of information which the public— by whom the question must, after all, 

 be decided — ought to possess before they come to their decision. 



In order to do this effectually, we must,inthefirstplace,mark,as strongly 

 aswemay,thedifference between the persons who areputforward as the os- 

 tensible opposers of the nation's colonial interests, and those who, haying no 

 interests but such as spring from their own base and dishonest views of 

 gain, shelter themselves under the reputation and character of the former 

 class, and make them the stalking-horse by which they hope to approach 

 their victims securely, and to destroy them effectually. The first are, for 

 the most part, pious, amiable, and enthusiastic, who, even in their '' fail- 

 ings, lean to virtue's side." The others are those who would establish an 

 East India monopoly upon the ruins of the West India commerce, and 

 that tribe of Whigs, Radicals, and Infidels who are, and have ever been, 

 the well-known enemies to the constitution and welfare of the empire, 

 and to the decencies and comforts of well-regulated society. That two 

 classes of persons, so entirely unlike each other — so utterly opposed in inte- 

 rests and feelings, acting upon principles, and seeking to attain ends so 

 essentially different from each other— should be found to coalesce, passes 

 all the wonders that have ever been wondered at ; and yet it is not more 

 strange than true that they are now united, and that they labour with 

 combined forces to ruin and destroy the West India Colonies. 



Another distinction, always to be kept in mind, is that which exists 

 between the cause in which the only honest part of this most unnatural 

 confederacy first embarked, and that in which they are now engaged. 

 IMuch as we deplore the extent to which the former antagonists of the 

 Colonies have carried their hostility, we are ready to admit that the 

 motives which first influenced them were pure and honourable. The anni- 

 hilation of the detestable traffic in slaves is at once their most honourable 

 triumph, and an irrefragable proof of the virtue and purity of their 

 motives ; but who is there so wilfully blind as not to see that the exist- 

 ence of slavery in the modified form, and under the influence of the 

 gradual, but not slow amelioration in the moral condition of our slave 

 population which is now in progress throughout the British Colonies, 

 has nothing whatever to do with that odious system, at the contemplation 

 of which the heart of man revolts > Will any one, who has considered 

 the suliject at all, who has read upon it at all, even though his reachng 

 should not have extended beyond the statements of the anti-colonists, 

 deny that the question whether such slavery as is at this moment recog- 

 nized ])y law should be abolished by law (for it ought to be in no other 

 way abolished, notwithstanding the charitable suggestions of some ot the 

 anti-colonists, who recommend bayonets and bloodshed), and the ques- 



