Part 9

Concerning all laws for the protection of the Slaves, it might be justly remarked, that so far as the protection of Slaves is concerned against ill usage from all but their Masters, it was natural that the Slaves of any man should be protected equally with his cattle, or any other articles of his property; nor did the Slaves, any more than the cattle, owe this protection to the humanity of the legislature. They were protected merely like the rest of his substance.

But as to the far more important consideration, concerning legal protection from the Owner’s ill usage, it is unquestionably true, that be the laws what they may, “so long as the evidence of black or coloured men against whites continues inadmissible,” the latter, in all that respects the treatment of Negroes, are “in a manner put beyond the reach of the law.” Such were the very words in which a much respected Colonial Proprietor, though called as one of our opponents witnesses, acknowledged the important truth.

His testimony on this head was the more worthy of attention, because, besides his long residence in the West Indies, and his known intelligence and habits of observation, he was for some time Chief Justice of one of our islands. He also acknowledged, that till black evidence should be admissible, he knew no possible mode of preventing the most gross infractions of any laws against the ill-treatment of Negroes. The subsequent death of this valuable man is deeply to be regretted; because, with several of his immediate connections, he was exempt from many of the prejudices which, in colonial proprietors, too often obstruct the reform of West Indian abuses.

A remarkable proof was afforded how little the Slaves were regarded as under the protection of law, against their Masters ill usage, by a transaction which took place a few years ago, in one of our oldest sugar colonies, and of which an account is contained in the Privy Council report:

A man, named Herbert, in low circumstances, and of very indifferent character, had been guilty of an act of the most wanton cruelty, which was rendered still more atrocious by being committed against the helplessness of infancy. He had most wantonly and cruelly lacerated the mouth and face of a child six years old, his own Slave, in a shocking manner, and bruised various parts of its little body. The crime happened to be committed under circumstances which admitted of legal proof, and, owing to the benevolent and spirited exertions of a man of legal eminence, who then resided in the neighbourhood, and who himself was able to give decisive evidence, a prosecution was carried on against the perpetrator. The facts were clearly established, and most horrible they were; yet so strange and novel a doctrine did it appear to the jury, that a Master was liable to punishment for any act of cruelty exercised on his own Slave, that, after long consultation, they brought in a conditional verdict, “Guilty, subject to the opinion of the Court, if immoderate correction of a Slave, by his Master, be a crime indictable.” The Court determined in the affirmative; and what was the punishment of this abominable act of barbarity? A fine of forty shillings currency, equivalent to about thirty shillings of our money! This was the more extraordinary, because only two years before, in consequence of some recent acts of abominable cruelty, an Act of Assembly had been passed for the express purpose of preventing barbarities of a similar nature, and a fine of £.500 currency, together with six months imprisonment, had been annexed as the punishment of such offences. But so little were the enactments of law in unison with the general feelings of the bulk of the people, that even after this statute had been passed, not only did a jury doubt whether the most wanton barbarity towards an infant, by its owner, was liable to any punishment; but the idea of calling a Master to account for this ill-treatment of one of his own Slaves created a popular ferment, and a violent cry against the prosecutors of the delinquent, and was resented as a gross and novel infraction of the rights and privileges of ownership. This very Herbert afterwards brought his action against the Provost Marshal, for having taken the poor unoffending boy into his custody, partly that the child might be forth-coming, partly to save him from the violence of his brutal Master. The Provost Marshal, after a long course of judicial proceeding, would have had heavy penalties to pay, had he not got off on a point of law. Herbert was considered as a persecuted man, and became a highly popular character in the community.

But that which renders this incident most of all worthy of remark, is, that unsatisfactory as the issue might appear to us to have been, a detailed account of it, with some other instances too much in the same spirit, was sent over to the Privy Council, by the Council and Assembly of the island, with some apparent satisfaction, as a proof of the protection enjoyed by the Slaves against immoderate punishment or cruelty on the part of their Masters.

Not to insist in this place on the impossibility of enforcing any laws which may be enacted for the protection and comfort of Slaves, a topic on which I may have occasion to say more hereafter, law and slavery are, in their own nature, absolutely and universally incompatible. The Slave’s best protection must ever be found in his Master’s kindness, especially where kindness is combined with affluence; and, by giving to the Slaves a nominal right to definite legal privileges, you only infuse a spirit of discontent into them, and a spirit of suspicion and resentment into their Masters; at least, until the absolute nullity of the law be clearly manifest to both parties. The Master has not the same motives for tenderness, (motives ever powerful in a generous mind) as when all right, all rivalship are excluded, and he knows that his Slaves are given up completely into his power; that they are entirely dependent on his will, and that they must receive every favour as flowing altogether from his spontaneous beneficence. It is not therefore going too far, to affirm, that by destroying, or at least impairing, the force of these feelings, you do the Slave more harm, than can be compensated by any benefit he can derive from the laws.

[Sidenote: Considered in the view of its degrading effects.]

But to quit this view of the subject, it is the effect, in another direction, of this inadequate protection of the laws, to which I wish to point your particular attention. I wish you to observe the proofs which it affords of the low estimate of the Negro race; as well as the tendency which it must have to keep them in their present abject and depressed condition.

But here, instead of quoting passages from the statute books and judicial records of the several islands, which might be objected to, as an unfair test of the opinions and feelings of the present generation, I will extract from a set of papers, laid not long ago before the House of Commons by Government, the account, given from the most respectable authority, of some transactions which have recently taken place, and which shew the degraded state of the Negro race in, excepting Jamaica, the largest and oldest settled of all our West Indian colonies.

[Sidenote: Late incidents in Barbadoes.]

The Governor of Barbadoes, Lord Seaforth himself, I understand, an old West Indian proprietor, in consonance with the wishes of many respectable inhabitants, endeavoured lately, from the most honourable motives, to procure the repeal of a law which had long been the disgrace of the Barbadoes statute book, and for the rescinding of which an effort had been in vain made a few years before; a law, by which the wilful murder of a Slave was punishable only by a fine of £.15. currency, or about £.11. 4_s_. sterling[33]. His Lordship therefore sent a message in the common form to the House of Assembly, recommending that an act should be passed to make the murder of a Slave a capital felony. There seems every reason to believe that the Council, or Colonial House of Lords, would gladly have assented to the proposition. But, strange as it may appear to those who are unacquainted with the West Indian prejudices, notwithstanding the time and manner in which the proposition was brought forward, the House of Assembly absolutely refused to make the alteration. But if the bare statement of this fact must shock every liberal mind, how much will the shock be increased, when it is known under what circumstances it was that this refusal took place.

For it happened, that, very recently, several of the most wanton and atrocious murders had been committed. Some of these were accompanied with circumstances of such horrid and disgusting barbarity, as to be too shocking for recital; and yet it scarcely seems justifiable to allow such horrid deeds, from their very atrociousness, to derive impunity. But one of the accounts you must submit to hear, because the narrative contains circumstances which strikingly illustrate the condition and estimation of the Negro race. To myself, to say the truth, it tells me, in the view in which I shall here regard it, nothing more than I already knew; but it was scarcely to be expected that Providence would furnish such undeniable and glaring proofs, of the assertions we had before established by the most respectable testimony.

_Extract of a Letter from the Right Hon. Lord Seaforth, to Earl Camden, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, dated Barbadoes, 7th Jan. 1805._

“I inclose the Attorney General’s letter to me on the subject of the Negroes so most wantonly murdered. I am sorry to say, _several other instances of the same barbarity_ have occurred, with which I have not troubled your Lordship, as I only wished to make you acquainted with the subject in general.”

It will be enough for me to quote that part of the Attorney General’s letter in which he gives the account of the single murder which I wish to lay before you:

_Extract of a Letter from the Attorney General of Barbadoes, to the Governor of the Island._

“A Mr. ——, the manager of a plantation in the neighbourhood, had some months before purchased an African lad, who was much attached to his person, and slept in a passage contiguous to his chamber. On Sunday night there was an alarm of fire in the plantation, which induced Mr. —— to go out hastily, and the next morning he missed the lad, who he supposed intended to follow him in the night, and had mistaken his way. He sent to his neighbours, and to Mr. C—— among the rest, to inform them that his African lad had accidently strayed from him; that he could not speak a word of English, and that possibly he might be found breaking canes, or taking something else for his support; in which case he requested that they would not injure him, but return him, and he would pay any damage he might have committed. A day or two after, the Owner of the boy was informed, that Mr. C. and H. had killed a Negro in a neighbouring gully, and buried him there. He went to Mr. C—— to inquire into the truth of the report, and intended to have the grave opened, to see whether it was his African lad. _Mr. C—— told him, a Negro had been killed and buried there; but assured him it was not his, for he knew him very well, and he need not be at the trouble of opening the grave. Upon this the Owner went away satisfied._ But receiving further information, which left no doubt upon his mind that it was his Negro, he returned and opened the grave, and found it to be so. I was his leading counsel, and the facts stated in my brief were as follow: That C. and H. being informed that there was a Negro lurking in the gully, went armed with muskets, and took several negro men with them. The poor African seeing a parcel of men coming to attack him, was frightened; he took up a stone to defend himself, and retreated into a cleft rock, where they could not easily come at him; they then went for some trash, put it into the crevice of the rock behind him, and set it on fire; after it had burnt so as to scorch the poor fellow, he ran into a pool of water near by; they sent a Negro to bring him out, and he threw the stone at the Negro; upon which the two white men fired several times at him with the guns loaded with shot, and the Negroes pelted him with stones. He was at length dragged out of the pool in a dying condition, for he had not only received several bruises from the stones, but his breast was so pierced with the shot, that it was like a cullender. _The white savages ordered the Negroes to dig a grave, and whilst they were digging it, the poor creature made signs of begging for water; which was not given to him, but as soon as the grave was dug, he was thrown into it, and covered over; and there seems to be some doubt whether he was then quite dead._—C. and H. deny this; but the Owner assured me that he could prove it by more than one witness; and I have reason to believe it to be true, because on the day of trial, C. and H. did not suffer the cause to come to a hearing, but paid the penalties and the costs of suit, which it is not supposed they would have done had they been innocent.

I have the honour to be, &c.”

The same transaction, with another far more dreadful murder, in which there was a deliberate ingenuity of cruelty which almost exceeds belief, is related, with scarcely any variation as to circumstances, by the Advocate General, who, as well as the gentleman of whose estate the criminal was the manager, and who was at the time absent, expressed their most lively indignation against such horrid cruelty. After so shocking a recital, lest you should be instinctively urged to be chiefly affected by the barbarity of this horrid transaction, let me once more remind you, that it is not in the view of its cruelty that I wish you to regard the foregoing narrative but in that of the decisive evidence which it affords of the utter degradation of the negro race.

How striking a proof is afforded of this, in the conduct even of the Owner of the boy, the prosecutor of the delinquent, a man too, as the beginning of the story indicates “of kind and liberal feelings.” Can any thing suggest more strongly, that the protection which the Negro Slave receives from the laws, is too often to be ascribed rather to a Master’s care of his property, than to any more generous motive. When he had only reason to believe that _a_ Negro had been killed, and buried out of the way, and not that it was his own Slave, he goes away satisfied. Again, it is a suggestion which the circumstances of the story enforce on us, that the crowd, which was now collected, instead of being shocked at such barbarity, were rather abettors of it; and then we hear, the White Savages, as the Attorney General justly styles them, order the Negroes who were present to dig a grave for their wretched countryman; they knew their state too well to refuse, and accordingly we see them immediately obey the order; yet I confess, that with all my ideas of their sunk and prostrate spirit, I was myself surprized, under all the circumstances, by this promptitude of obedience.

But I have not leisure to deduce half of the important lessons which we are taught by the above horrid recital. Let us pass to the circumstance which is most of all important; because it proves how little we can expect an identity of sympathies and feelings between the Colonists and ourselves: that this and several other murders, some of them attended with circumstances far more shocking, instead of exciting any just commiseration for the Negro race, had actually worked in a contrary direction, and that not merely among the populace, but in a majority of the House of Assembly itself. This is a problem by no means of difficult solution. It is not that the Barbadian (I say it seriously and with sincerity) is less humane, in general, than the inhabitants of other countries; but Negro Slaves are not comprised within the scale of his humanity; or, to be more accurate, they do not assume, in his estimate of things, the rate and value of human beings. Hence, the proposition for punishing a white man capitally for murdering a Slave, appeared to him a punishment as much disproportionate to the crime, as if, in compliance with the opinion of some speculator on the rights of the brute creation, or, of some lover of domestic animals, we were to propose to execute a man in this country for killing a favourite pointer.

One of the other murders supplies so striking an illustration of the nature of this feeling, and of its almost necessary effects in producing a disposition to injury and insult, that, contrary to my original intention, I will lay before you a very brief and summary view of the chief particulars of it.

As a private militiaman was returning home from his duty upon an alarm, with his musket, and bayonet fixed, over his shoulder, he overtook several Negroes returning from their daily labour on the road, and among them, a woman big with child. He began abusing, and threatening to kill them, if they would not get out of the way. Most of them escaped him; but he made after the woman, and, without the least provocation on her part, plunged his bayonet into her, and, as one of the accounts states, very coolly and deliberately stabbed her several times in the breast. Providentially it happened, that a very respectable Gentleman, who was also returning from town, was a witness of the whole transaction. And now comes the curious part of the story; for, when Mr. H. went to him, “spoke harshly to him, and said, he ought to be hanged, for he never saw a more wicked unprovoked murder, and that he would certainly carry him before a magistrate and that he should be sent to gaol;” the man replied, “_for what? killing a Negro!_”—Some of the accounts state that the man was in liquor; but it is clear from the circumstances, that it was in no such degree as to affect his reason; for neither is this circumstance mentioned by Mr. H. the eyewitness, nor by the magistrate before whom Mr. H., having got assistance, immediately brought him, nor by the President of the Island, before whom, from having no right to commit him, they next carried him. On the contrary, they state distinctly, that the murder was committed in the most wanton, malicious manner, and that he seemed afterwards to be very indifferent about the crime.

It may seem only candid to state the sequel. The President did commit him, though aware that it was a stretch of power; the man’s person was thereby secured, and he remained answerable to the amount both of the King’s fine, £. 11. 4. _s._ sterling, and of the Negro’s value, for which he was afterwards arrested by the Owner’s representative, and which, as she is stated to have been a valuable Slave, who had five or six children, would be a still larger sum. The man was not worth a shilling, in possession or expectancy, and therefore, as the President adds, may possibly be in confinement for life. It is only due to the President, to add, that in the conclusion of his letter, he expresses himself in terms of the warmest and most indignant feeling, that the Assembly should look on such things with cool indifference, and not provide “that just remedy which has been found productive of no evil in the still larger island of Jamaica, and which, in every other civilized community, is provided by the law, both of God and man.”

Let me subjoin one additional remark, that, but for the circumstance of Mr. H.’s happening to have been at the same time returning from town, this barbarous murder must have remained unpunished for want of evidence. It is fair, also, to acknowledge, that the murder above stated, however horrid, appears (very different, indeed, in that respect, from another shocking incident, which I suppress) to have been an act of wanton insult and contempt, rather than of deliberate cruelty; and to have been precisely such in nature, (though I doubt not, above the ordinary rate of insults in measure) as I have supposed to proceed from a low estimate of Negroes, as such. Hence the criminal’s exclamation, when he was told he deserved to be hanged, and was further threatened with being committed to gaol. _For what?_ he replied; _killing a Negro!_—Surely I need not add a word—the fact supplies its own inference.

Shall we allege, in behalf of this poor militiaman, that he was, probably, half drunk; that he was a low uneducated man; that it was the exclamation of passion; or that it was suggested by self-preservation or self-defence? But what shall we say, then, for the Assembly of the Island? They consist of men of liberal education, and liberal manners; yet it is grievous to reflect, that their conduct is but too much in the same spirit as that of this militiaman. Their estimation of a Negro is much the same. Hence, on its being proposed to inflict a capital punishment, not on themselves, but on others, for the murder, though attended with the most horrid circumstances, of a _Negro_, they resent the suggestion, not by a transient and passionate exclamation, but by a deliberate and continued opposition of some years; not unguardedly, not privately, when a man will sometimes hint an opinion he would not avow; but publicly; in opposition to clear explanation; to powerful influence; to eloquent enforcement of the principles of justice and humanity; in opposition, one should have thought, to the natural suggestion of self-interest, and of regard to their own property, when gravely sitting in their capacity of Legislators.

Let me again, however, declare most seriously, that it is not so much of defective, as of misplaced humanity, that I here complain. They had not been used to think and feel concerning Negroes, as concerning their fellow creatures; and to consider that their rights, and comforts, and feelings, were to be protected by the same powerful sanctions. Hence, when it was proposed to inflict a capital punishment for the murder of a Black, their sympathy was excited on the wrong side. They felt, but it was for the offended dignity of a White Man, not for the murdered Negro. The truth is, a certain _esprit de corps_ was now called into action, and all the barbarities of which the wretched Negroes might be the victims, would, in such a temper, and such circumstances (taken, I mean, in connection with such a proposed punishment) serve rather to inflame than to mitigate the general fury. Hence, Lord Seaforth, in another letter, declares, “that though he had received no contradiction of the horrible facts, yet that nothing had given him so much trouble as to get to the bottom of these affairs, so horribly absurd were the prejudices of the people.”

There are no persons, I am persuaded, who will be more shocked by the above transactions than the West Indian Proprietors themselves, and none especially more than those of the very island of Barbadoes, in which these tragedies were acted. They, like other absentee Proprietors, are most of them, I doubt not, almost utterly ignorant of the real state of things in the West Indies; and they will read with equal astonishment and concern, Lord Seaforth’s horrid communication. Let them however remember, these cannot be styled, as some former relations have unjustly been, exaggerations of Abolitionists; but, like Governor Parry’s famous charge against the African Captains, they are the official communication of the Executive Government laid before the House of Commons.