*

one lot, and to the same purchaser. The obvious defect of this provision is, that it is limited to slaves sold by legal process, and does not extend to voluntary sales by the master; and that it excludes from its operation slaves married, but belonging to different owners. The Jamaica Assembly seemed at first sight inclined to go beyond this limitation, for it was proposed "that it shall not be lawful in cases of sale" (making no distinction between voluntary sale by the master, and sale by legal process)" to separate married people from each other, or their legitimate issue, if under ten years of age, provided the parties belong to the same owner; and it shall not be lawful for any collecting constable, the Provost Marshal, or any of his deputies, to levy upon, or sell them separately." This clause, however, was rejected; and the only provision that appears to have been made on the subject, is to render more precise the old law of the 8th of George the 2nd., by which, when slaves are levied upon in execution, IF mothers and children under ten years of age are seized together, they shall also be sold together. Some of the arguments employed in discussing this question, will throw light on the state of feeling, among even the higher classes in Jamaica. Mr. Brown said it would be very hard upon a man who owed a small sum of £50., to have a whole family sold by the marshal. (The hardship inflicted on the slave is made no account of.)—Mr. Batty proposed that families should not be separated by voluntary sale. Mr. Hilton objected to this, (and his opinion prevailed,) that it would be violating the rights of property to dictate to the master how he should dispose of it: he had a right to sell one, or more, of his slaves, according to his wants and inclinations, in the same way as he had to dispose of any other property. The proposed clause he considered as an invasion of property.--Others argued that such an enactment would be hard on the slaves, as well as on the masters. slave of a family might become dissatisfied with his master and wish to be sold; one might prefer a town life, another a country life; one might be a notorious rascal whom it was the desire of the rest of his family to get rid of. Such are the reasons which avail in Jamaica to perpetuate one of the worst evils of Slavery!

One

8. The abolition of the driving-whip and of the flogging of women, and the modification of punishment.

It was not even proposed that driving in the field, or the flogging of females, should be abolished, but merely that the cat should be substituted for the cart-whip, both to coerce labour and to inflict punishment; and that, in the whipping of women, there should be no indecent exposure. Both these propositions however were rejected. If we adopt such an innovation, said Mr. Hilton, on the established usages of the Colony, now that the Duke of Manchester is about to leave the Island, the slaves will imagine that our conduct has been disapproved of by the King, and that we have been compelled to relinquish the whip, and with it every means of punishment and restraint. I disapprove of the law prohibiting the indecent exposure of women, because it is un

*How many legitimate children of slaves are there in Jamaica?

necessary, and implies that we allow them to be indecently exposed. But the females require punishment, at least as often as the men. Flogging with the cat is an inhuman punishment, as practised in the army. God forbid that we should have recourse to it.-Mr. Mais declared, that the slaves preferred the cart-whip to every other instrument of punishment, as being more manly; switches, &c. being only fit for children. Others confirmed the fact of the preference of the cart-whip to switches; but it was evident from the details that the real cause of the preference was, that the law affixed a limit to the number of lashes inflicted with a cart-whip, namely, thirty-nine; and that switches were administered without any such reserve. Now it may be possible that 500, or 200, or even 150 strokes of the prickly ebony, the switch generally used in flogging slaves, may draw more blood, and lacerate the flesh more, and cause severer suffering than thirty-nine lashes of the cartwhip; and also that from the noiseless infliction of the former, much more lengthened flagellations may be given than in the case of the cartwhip which conveys the report of every stroke to the adjacent plantations, and to the traveller as he passes along the road. But what does all this say for the system; a system which continues to place in the hands of individuals, many of them of the lowest description, this tremendous power of punishment? Think what would be the condition of the peasantry of this country if debates in our legislature were to turn on the question, Whether every farmer in the land should have the power of inflicting, on the naked posteriors of his labourers, whether male or female, either the lacerations of the cart-whip, or the sharp prickings of the ebony bush?

A speech of Mr. Barret's embodies the arguments on the other side of the question. He observed that it was no reason for refusing to abolish the cart-whip that its abolition had been recommended by Government. That was no reason for rejecting a measure beneficial in itself." But I do deny that his Majesty's ministers alone, or that our countrymen in Great Britain alone, view the cart-whip as a base, cruel, debasing instrument of torture. Every person of humanity in the colony, every being whose heart is not callous, pants for the abolition of this detestable mode of punishment. You are told, that to abolish the use of the cart-whip is an innovation. It is indeed an innovation, so was the abolition of the rack and the thumb-screw, and such like instruments, the fellows of the cart-whip. But I have yet to learn that these innovations have undermined the civil institutions of Europe. I do not hesitate to say, I do not hesitate to declare to all who hear me, that the cart-whip is a horrible, detestabie instrument, when used for the punishment and torture of slaves. I do say that 39 lashes with this horrid instrument can be made more grievous than 500 lashes with a cat. Honourable members may raise a clamour against me, but they will do so in vain. They are afraid to hear the truth respecting this odious, this horrid, this detestable instrument. Clamour shall not put me down. The time, I hope, is not far distant when the cart-whip will be abolished even as an emblem of authority. On my own estate I have entirely abolished it, and also the cat. I do not even allow the infliction of the cart-whip on the cattle of my property, so abhorrent

is the instrument to me as an engine of cruelty. Honourable gentlemen contend that the cart-whip is an instrument of punishment less severe than the cat. I shall not determine how many stripes of the latter are equal to one of the former, but I will put the question thus, Whether a given number of lashes by the cart-whip are not more severe and more lacerating than the same number by the cat? You say, a greater number of stripes are inflicted by the cat in the army than are allowed to be given by the cart-whip. But how are the former inflicted? Not at the caprice, at the will, at the passion or rage of an individual, but after a solemn trial by a Court-Martial, where the offender's superiors, unbiassed, unprejudiced, and with calmness, deliberate upon the charge brought against him." He might have added that their sentence is also subject to the review of their superiors. "But the punishment of the cart-whip is inflicted at the pleasure of an individual, at his sole command, as caprice or passion dictates. Sometimes one slave inflicts it at his discretion upon another slave. Sometimes it is ordered by the book-keeper or overseer, or proprietor of the lowest order, men too frequently most unfit to apportion punishment. To me, the predicted danger from abolishing the cart-whip seems totally imaginary. Its use has been abolished in many places, and having been accustomed to witness its spontaneous abolition in many places, there can be no fear, when the measure is made general, and passes into a law, that they will mistake our lenity, or suppose it was forced upon us."

The clause for substituting the cat for the cart-whip, was negatived by a majority of 28 to 12, as was that for prohibiting the indecent exposure of women.

A limitation of punishment, at the discretion of individuals, appears to have taken place in Jamaica. They are said to be prohibited from giving more than twenty lashes at a time, or from confining a slave more than ten days in the workhouse, without the authority of a magistrate.

The prohibition of the driving whip, and the flogging of females, and the record of punishments, have been rejected, not only by Jamaica, but by Barbadoes and the Bahamas. "To forbid," says the Assembly of Barbadoes, "by legislative enactment, the flogging of female slaves, would be productive of the most injurious consequences." In the case, for instance, of domestic females, they argue, that it is quite apparent how objectionable it would be to forbid their being flogged. As for the driving whip, they consider it to be inseparable from slavery. "The recording of punishment by whipping," they add, "being consequent on limiting it to a given number of lashes, and the Assembly being of opinion that in the hands of a relentless executioner, a given number of stripes may, under the sanction of the law, be so inflicted as to amount to an act of cruelty"-the Assembly seem to have thought, that the ends of humanity would be best answered, by leaving every man to give as many lashes as he pleased, and by not requiring him to record them; but to refer it to the Justices, on a complaint being made, to determine whether cruelty had been committed or not.

This is a view of the subject, altogether worthy of the Assembly of

Barbadoes! It is a view, however, from which it is but just to say, that the Council of that Island have dissented. They passed a Bill for effecting the very objects which the Assembly think so unnecessary, but it was rejected in the lower house.

The case in Jamaica was similar; and the Council there, desirous of delivering themselves from the discredit of having concurred with the Assembly in rejecting so many measures of amelioration, presented an address to the Duke of Manchester, at the close of the session, exculpating themselves from being parties to that rejection, saying, that they had proposed a variety of amendments, to which the Assembly had disagreed. The Duke nevertheless lauds the Assembly.

In the new slave law of Jamaica, in addition to the changes already noticed, is a clause for obliging owners, who manumize old or infirm slaves, to provide for them, by allowing them ten pounds a year.-The law for punishing cruelty, has also undergone some modification; and to brand a slave is now, for the first time, subjected to a penalty not exceeding £100, (£70 sterling,) or a year's imprisonment. In other respects the new law does not differ substantially from the old, of which it retains with some slight change, we are sorry to say, the following unjust provision—“ and if it shall appear to the Council of Protection that the complaint of the slave is frivolous or unfounded, it shall be lawful for them to dismiss the complaint, and to direct such slave to be delivered over to his master; or to direct such punishment, by confinement to hard labour, or whipping, or both, as to them may seem proper." It is still made a capital crime in a slave to compass or imagine the death of a white person. This is indeed giving to each white the attributes of a despot.

Some improvements are also introduced into the mode of conducting the trial of slaves, but we think it a monstrous provision which excepts, from the necessity of referring to the Governor all cases of capital punishment for his revision prior to the execution of the sentence, the cases of rebellion and rebellious conspiracy; the very cases, of all others, which the ends of justice require should be most calmly and dispassionately investigated.

Two petitions having been presented from a few white persons in each of the two parishes of St. James's and St. Elizabeth's, in favour of the people of colour, an attempt was made, by one of the members of the Assembly, to obtain for them some extension of civil and political privileges, particularly the elective franchise, which it was proposed to confer only on such as should possess freeholds of the value of £100 a year, (the qualification of a white being £10 a year); and also the power of saving deficiencies for estates belonging to whites, on which persons of colour serving in the militia might be engaged as bookkeepers or overseers. The attempt however met with no support. The only point gained for them has been the repeal of an act of the 10th of Queen Anne, making it penal to employ a free black, an Indian, a person of colour, or a Jew, in any public office. The heavy fees also which it had been customary to exact from those who, by private legislative acts, were raised to the privileges of the white class, have been abolished.

In former sessions, the House of Assembly signalized their liberality by their largesses to their advocates, the Editors of the John Bull, and the Glasgow Courier. Their late session produced a resolution of a similar kind, directing their agent, Mr. Hibbert, to circulate gratuitously, in such manner as he may consider most beneficial to the colonies, a thousand copies of "A practical view of the present state of slavery in the West Indies, by Alexander Barclay;" and of a pamphlet by A. H. Beaumont, entitled "Compensation to Slave Owners, fairly considered in an appeal to the common sense of the People of England:" -two works which, whatever claims they may possess to the favour of this illustrious body, have certainly none to the public confidence on the ground of their fairness or truth.

Another instruction given to their agent is still less creditable to their sagacity and ingenuousness. On the 14th of October, 1826, there appeared in the Royal Gazette of Jamaica, a proclamation pretended to be issued in Hayti, by the President Boyer in April or May, 1826; which, however, has proved to be a forged and fabricated document. It had in substance been issued by Toussaint Louverture in 1799, under widely different circumstances; but it was now vamped up, and in a mutilated and garbled state palmed upon the public as a proof of the severe coercion which was requisite to obtain from the population of Hayti, in the present day, an adequate measure of industrious exertion.

On the ninth of November the subject of this proclamation was brought before the House of Assembly by Mr. Atkinson. They had all seen, he said, a proclamation of the Haytian President,-a document which he considered of material assistance at the present period, when that house was called upon to adopt a parcel of nonsensical measures for the regulation of our slave population, quite incompatible with their habits and customs. This proclamation was without date, but its contents specified that compulsory labour must be resorted to in the free state of Hayti, and this circumstance ought to be made known in England. He then commented on the coercive measures resorted to in Hayti to enforce agricultural labour. The proclamation, he added, had certainly come in an unauthenticated shape, and the house therefore could not treat it as an official document. He had, however, subsequently obtained a copy of a printed code of laws, dated in April last, which was in force there, and which embraced the regulations entertained in the proclamation. In this code, it is enacted that free persons, wandering from the plantations on which they and their parents had been domiciled, shall, in the first instance, be subject to fine and imprisonment, and for a repetition of the offence, to corporal punishment by the military; the extent of which, however, was not mentioned. Many of the minor regulations, he added, were analagous to the laws of Jamaica; the hours of labour of these free men, being similar to those of this Island. He moved that a copy of this code should be transmitted to the agent, for publication in England.-The course proposed by Mr. Atkinson was objected to by several members, and it was sug

*

The fact is, as may be seen on an inspection of the two documents, there exists no relation whatever between them.