634 The Colonists, QNov. 



has been established there by the authority of the British government ; 

 and, besides, that although slavery is in this country repugnant to the 

 principles of the British constitution^ and could under no circumstances 

 be either justified or endured, it is in its pi-actical effects very different 

 in those places to which allusion is made. It has been demonstrated 

 that the fertile but burning soil of the West India islands, can only be culti- 

 vated by the labour of such persons as are there employed in its tillage ; 

 that the negroes, from the peculiar laws of their physical constitutions, 

 from their activity and strength, their power not only of enduring the 

 heat which would extract the very vitals of an European, but from their 

 capacity of accommodating themselves to the various changes of climate, 

 are the only race of human species who are able to undergo the toil in- 

 disputably attendant upon the cultivation of cotton and sugar and coffee. 

 The situation they fill is that of agricultural labourers. They are by 

 law enabled to acquire property, and are protected in the enjoyment 

 of it; they are as much under the care and superintendance of the 

 lawfe as are the people of this country, always making such allowance 

 as is necessary for the difference between the country in which 

 they are born and this. They are required, in return for advan- 

 tages and immunities which agricultural labourers in this country 

 do not possess, to submit to regulations that could not be 

 here enforced. Whether this is a state of things which oucht or 

 ought not to be changed, is a point that need not now be mooted. It is 

 enough to know that if changed, it must be changed gradually ; — it 

 ought to satisfy the advocates of a change, that the process of ameliora- 

 tion has been begun, and has been carried on as rapidly as is consistent 

 with the welfare of the slaves and the existence of the empire. As to 

 any peculiar hardships which are said to rest upon the slaves of the 

 English Colonies, a grosser misrepresentation never was practised ; they 

 are confessedly in a better position for all purposes than the slave 

 agricultural labourers of the East Indies, or than the peasantry of 

 Russia or Poland ; nay, it has been said l)y a recent traveller, who will 

 not be accused of any partiality in favour of the Colonies, that their 

 condition is better than that of the working classes of Great Britain. 



Mr. Robert Owen, in a recent letter to a correspondent in England 

 on the subject of Negro Slavery, has the following passage : — " I was 

 anxious to see the state of slavery in Jamaica, which I had an opportu- 

 nity of witnessing two days afterwards at Kingston ; and, after con- 

 versing with several of the domestic slaves, and seeing the proceedings 

 of a large number in the market-place for two hours, and meeting great 

 numbers coming from the mountains, and other parts of the country, 

 as I was going to the admiral's and bishop's residences, some distance in 

 the interior, I have no hesitation in stating most distinctly, that their 

 condition, with the exception of the term slavei-i/, is, in most respects, 

 better than that of our working classes, and that a very large portion of 

 cur operatives and labourers would most willingly exchange situations 

 with them." 



In order to satisfy one's mind that such slavery as that of our colonies 

 is not inconsistent with the spirit or opposed to the doctrines of Christi- 

 anity, it is not necessary to prove that those doctrines in any respect 

 proscribe the existence of slavery : it is enough to know that it is not 

 positively forbidden ; and to know, also, that it existed when the sublime 

 principles of that faith were first published on earth. In so far as slavery 

 or oppression of any kind militates against those principles, it is detest- 



