THE COMPLAINTS OF THE PLANTERS. 



IB 



planters of their slave property by the Emancipation Act 

 of 1834.* 



I believe I have here given a full and perfectly fair state- 

 ment of the causes to which the Jamaicans as a body, attri- 

 bute their ruin. It is a fair reflexion of the sentiment of 

 their journals, and corresponds with the view of Mr. Stanley, 

 who has volunteered to be their champion and apologist. 

 It is a view which leaves them nothing to do, and there- 

 fore is very naturally acceptable to a West Indian. They 

 fold their arms under the conviction that no efforts of theirs 

 can arrest the decay and dissolution going on about 

 them, and that nothing but home legislation, nay, nothing 

 but protection to their staples, can protect them from hope- 

 less and utter ruin. 



This has seemed to me a most gross and extraordinary 



* The following is the material clause of this Act, certainly one of the very 

 most momentous measures ever adopted by any legislative body. It directly set 

 at liberty some 800,000 human beings, and destroyed a title to over three millions 

 of property. The bill was submitted in 1833 by Lord Stanley, then Secretary for 

 the Colonies. 



M Be it enacted, that all and every, the persons who, on the first day of August, 

 one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, shall be holden in slavery within any 

 such British Colony as aforesaid, shall, upon and from and after the said first day 

 of August, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, become and be to all in- 

 tents and purposes free, and discharged of and from all manner of slavery, and 

 shall be absolutely and forever manumitted ; and that the children thereafter born 

 to any such persons, and the offspring of such children, shall in like manner be 

 free from birth ; and that from and after the first day of August, one thousand 

 eight hundred and thirty-four, slavery shall be, and is hereby utterly and forever 

 abolished and declared unlawful throughout the British colonies, plantations and 

 possessions abroad." 



This bill also provided for a system of apprenticeship which was to last twelve 

 years, and then give place to unrestricted freedom. This system worked so badly 

 that after a trial of four years it was abandoned, and on the 1st of August, 1838, 

 the freedmen of all the British Colonies were made fully and unconditionally free, 



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