1829.] and their Calumniators. 531 



the subject of East India sugar ; for which purpose alone his article was 

 written. He denies that there is any thing like slavery in the East 

 Indies. We do not propose to enter into this matter very deeply. The 

 publications of JMr. Saintsbury, in which there is more true and rational 

 piety and charity, as well as incomparably more of indisputable fact and 

 of sound argument, than in all that has ever emanated from the press of 

 the anti-colonists, have abundantl)^ proved the falsehood of this assertion ; 

 and, if further proof were needed, it may be found by any body who 

 will take the trouble to look for it in the voluminous mass of Parliamen- 

 tary Papers published on the subject of slavery in the East Indies. We 

 say, without the fear of contradiction, that ih agricultural labour of a 

 great part of the East Indies is performed by slaves ! But, in the name 

 of common sense, is it necessary for the cause Ave maintain to prove this ? 

 Is it not a matter of notoriety, that the whole system of the East India 

 Company is one of slavery, and monopoly, and coercion, of the very 

 worst kind ? Are they not themselves, by turns, despots and slaves of 

 the most odious and contemptible description } Are they not obliged to 

 divert the attention of the slaves, whom they call " the Company's ser- 

 vants," to the acquisition, no matter how, of immense fortunes for 

 themselves, in order that their own ill-gotten and precarious influence 

 may be preserved ? Is not public opinion stifled in India by means the 

 most unjust ? and is there any thing like a free man among the persons 

 employed by the tea-dealers of Leadenhall-street .'' Are tliey not, at 

 this moment, engaged in an atteinpt to Avard off the approaching inquiry 

 into their affairs, by picking a quarrel about their pay and allowances 

 with the soldiery they employ, in the hope that the British government 

 may think it not worth while to encounter the difficulties which attend 

 their management of the distant provinces under their care ? And is it in 

 favour of such a body as this that the West India colonists are to be de- 

 cried — and by such hands ? Is it for the sole purpose of enabling this 

 august company to sell, at a ridiculous and unreasonable profit, the sugar 

 they produce by means of their slaves, that the West India colonists are 

 to be reduced to beggary and ruin .'' 



But the concluding passage — and we are glad to have arrived at it — 

 of the Westminster article is curious. Caliban recommends the Anti- 

 Slavery Society to make a figure of a negro woman in cheap clay, and 

 to Avrite under it, " We still pay a poll-tax to support the flogging of 

 women in Jamaica," in the hope that it may be placed by the side of 

 Paul Pry on the chimney pieces of half the working men in England. 

 We think the society cannot do better, since they circulate " the article," 

 than to follow the advice it gives. It is advice worthy of the source 

 from which it comes ; but it shows at the same time the utter lack of wit, 

 the poverty of invention of the rogues who offer it. No one can have 

 forgotten the similar device which was practised by a gifted radical, who 

 was one of the most renowned of the sages of the Westminster Review 

 — he may be the very Caliban whom we are discussing — and it is 

 by no means unlikely. He had conceived a most indescribable 

 remedy, as he called it, for the too rapid increase of population, and 

 used to amuse his leisure by dropping papers, in which the method of 

 practising his invention was explained, down the areas and into the 

 houses about the metropolis. He went further, and sent some of thera 

 into the manufacturing districts for distribution, wlien a woman into 

 whose hands they fell (this was at Manchester, and he was at London, 



3 Y 2 



