Part 24

We have seen that the slave has no legal property in his own body. It is almost unnecessary to say, that he has no property in any thing else,--that all his acquisitions belong, like himself, to his master. He is, in fact, a chattel. We should rather say, that to serve the purpose of rapacity and tyranny, he is alternately considered as real and as personal property. He may be sold or bequeathed at the pleasure of his master, he may be put up to auction by process of law, for {307}the benefit of the creditors or legatees of his master. In either of these ways he may be, in a moment, torn for ever from his home, his associates, his own children. He is, in addition to this, legally a subject of mortgages, demises, leases, settlements in tail, in remainder, and in reversion. The practice of raising money on this species of property, is favoured by the laws of all the Colonies, and has been equally fatal to the owner and to the slave. It is fatal to the owner, because it enables him to risk capital not his own, in the precarious lottery of the West Indian sugar trade. It is fatal to the slave, because, in the first place, while it leaves to the master all his power to oppress, it deprives hi in of his power to manumit; and secondly, because it leads the master to keep possession of his Negroes, and to compel them to labour, when he has no prospect of holding them long, and is therefore naturally inclined to make as much by them, and to spend as little upon them as possible,--a fact amply proved by the miserable state in which the gang is generally found, when transferred from the ruined planter to the half ruined mortgagee.

Such is the legal condition of the Negro, considered with reference to his master. We shall proceed to examine into the nature of the relation in which he stands towards free persons in general.

He is not competent to be a party to any civil action, either as plaintiff or defendant; nor can he be received as informant or prosecutor against any person of free condition. He is protected only as a horse is protected in this country. His owner may bring an action against any person who may have occasioned the loss of his services. But it is plain that the slave may sustain many civil injuries, to which this circuitous mode of obtaining redress is not applicable; and even when it is applicable, the damages are awarded, not to the injured party, but to his master. The protection which indictments and criminal informations afford, is also of very narrow extent. Many crimes which, when committed against a white man, are considered as most atrocious, may be committed by any white man against a slave with perfect impunity. To rob a slave, for instance, is, in most of the islands, not even a misdemeanour. In this case, the grand principle of Colonial law is suspended. The property of a slave, it seems, is considered as belonging to his owner for the purpose {308}of oppression, but not for the purpose of protection. By the meliorating laws of some of the Colonies, the crime of highway robbery upon a Negro, is punished by fines, which, as far as we are informed, in no case exceed thirty pounds currency.

But this is not all. The natural right of self-defence is denied to the slave. By the laws of almost all the islands, a slave who should defend himself from murder or torture, to the injury of a White person, though such White person should posess no authority whatever over him might be punished with death.

We now come to the laws respecting the evidence of slaves,--laws which the Colonists stoutly defend,--and with reason; for, while these remain unaltered, the meliorating acts, feeble at best, must always be utterly inefficient. The testimony of these unfortunate beings is not admissible in any cause, civil or criminal, against a White person. To this general rule there are, in a very few of the smaller Colonies, some partial exceptions. It is needless to say, that every crime may be easily perpetrated in a community of which only one member in ten is a competent witness. The Government have pressed this point on the consideration of the Colonial Assemblies. In Jamaica, the proposed amendments were recently negatived by a majority of 34 to 1. In Barbadoes they have met with a similar reception. The only excuse we ever heard made for so disgraceful a law, is this, that the Negroes are ignorant of the nature and obligations of an oath, and, in fact, are scarcely responsible beings. But from this excuse the legislators of Jamaica have excluded themselves, by enacting, that a slave who commits perjury, in a criminal cause, against another slave, shall suffer the same punishment as the prisoner, if convicted, would have suffered. If a slave be ignorant of the nature of an oath, why is he admitted as a witness against any human being? Why is he punished, in some cases, with death, for an offence which subjects his more enlightened, and therefore, more guilty master, only to transportation? If, on the other hand, he possesses the moral and intellectual qualifications which are required in a witness, why is he not suffered to appear against an European?

But we must proceed. The slave, thus excluded from the protection of the law, is subject to all its restraints. He undergoes {309}the miseries of a beast of burden, without enjoying its immunities. He is bound, notwithstanding that alleged inferiority of his understanding, which is admitted as a reason for curtailing his rights, but not for lightening his responsibility, by the whole of the criminal code which is in force against free persons. And, in addition to this, he is subjected to another most unjust and cruel code, made for his class alone. If he flies from the colony, he is put to death. If he goes beyond the limits of the plantation to which he is attached, without a written permission, he is liable to be severely punished. Actions in themselves perfectly innocent,--buying or selling certain goods in a market,--raising certain descriptions of produce,--possessing certain species of live stock,--are crimes for which the Negro is punished, unless he can produce a written authority from his owner. In some of the Glands, not even the command of his owner is admitted as an excuse. To beat a drum, to blow a horn, to dance, to play at quoits, to throw squibs, to make fireworks, are all offences when committed by a slave, and subject him to the cruel chastisement of the whip. When things merely indifferent are visited with such severe penalties, it may easily be imagined that real delinquencies are not very mercifully dealt with. In fact, many actions for which a White man is only imprisoned, or otherwise slightly punished, if punished at all, are capital crimes when committed by a slave. Such are stealing, or attempting to steal, to the value of 12d. currency, killing any animal of the value of 6s., uttering mutinous words, and a long list of equally heinous crimes. We have already mentioned the infamous law which exists in Jamaica on the subject of perjury. Another of a most kingly character is in force in the same Isand. To compass or imagine the death of any of the White inhabitants, (God bless their Majesties!) is an enormity for which a slave is punished with death. It is contrary to the duty of their allegiance!

Such is the penal code to which the slaves are subject. The manner in which they are tried is, if possible, still more disgraceful. On charges which do not affect their lives, a single justice is, for the most part, competent to decide. In capital cases, several justices must attend, and, in most of the Colonies, a Jury is summoned, if that name can be applied where there is neither parity of condition nor right of challenge. {310}No indictment is preferred No previous investigation takes place before a Grand Jury. In most of the Islands no record is drawn up. In some, it is enacted, that the execution shall immediately follow the sentence. The prisoner is now sufficiently lucky to be hanged. But formerly it was not unusual to inflict what the Colonial codes style “exemplary punishment.”

When it was thought expedient to exercise this right, the offender was roasted alive, hung up in irons to perish by thirst, or shut up in a cage and starved to death! These punishments were commonly reserved for wretches who had committed the diabolical crime of insurrection against the just and paternal government, of which we have feebly attempted to delineate the excellence.

The bondage, of which we have given this description, is hereditary. It is entailed on the posterity of the slave to the remotest generations. The law does not compel his master to enfranchise him, on receiving a fair price. On the contrary, it interferes to prevent the master, even when so inclined, from giving him his liberty. In some of the islands a direct tax is imposed on manumission; and in all, the encouragement which is given to the practice of raising money on Negroes by mortgage, tends to obstruct their liberation.

Slavery in the West Indies is confined to Negroes and people of colour. This circumstance is peculiar to the slavery of the New World; and its effects are most calamitous. The external peculiarities of the African race are thus associated in the minds of the Colonists with every thing degrading, and are considered as the disgusting livery of the most abject servitude. Hence it is, that the free Negroes and Mulattoes he under so many legal disabilities, and experience such contemptuous treatment, that their condition can be esteemed desirable only when compared with the bondage to which it lias succeeded. Of the rules to which this class is subjected, we shall notice only one of the most odious. We speak of the presumption against liberty, which is a recognised principle of colonial law. The West Indian maxim is, that every Negro and Mulatto is to be considered as a slave, till, by documentary evidence, he can be proved to be otherwise. It may be notorious, that he has been free since he first resided in the colony,--that he has lived twenty years in England,--that he is a citizen of Hayti or Columbia. {311}All this is immaterial. If he cannot produce a deed of manumission, he is liable to be put up to sale by public auction! On this subject remarks would be superfluous. Thank God, we are writing; for a free people.

We have now accompanied Mr. Stephen through most of the leading topics of his work. We have occasionally departed from his arrangement, which indeed is not always the most convenient. This, however, is to be attributed, not to the author, but to the circumstances under which the work was composed. If there be any thing else to which we should be inclined to object, it is to the lengthened parallels which Mr. Stephen draws between the Slave laws of the West Indies and those which have existed in other countries. He is not, we think, too severe upon our Colonists. But we suspect that he is a little too indulgent to the Greeks and Romans. These passages are, at the same time, in a high degree curious and ingenious, though perhaps too long and too frequent. Such blemishes, however, if they can be called such, detract but in a very slight degree from the value of a book eminently distinguished by the copiousness and novelty of the information which it affords, by the force of its reasoning, and by the energy and animation of its style.

We have not alluded to that part of the work, in which the lamentable state of the law, on the subject of religious instruction, is described; because the evil has been universally acknowledged, and something intended for a remedy has at last been provided. The imagined specific, as our readers are aware, is an Ecclesiastical Establishment. This measure, we doubt not, is well intended. But we feel convinced that, unless combined with other reforms, it will prove almost wholly useless. The immorality and irreligion of the slaves are the necessary consequences of their political and personal degradation. They are not considered by the law as human beings. And they have therefore, in some measure, ceased to be human beings. They must become men before they can become Christians. A great effect may, under fortunate circumstances, have been wrought on particular individuals: But those who believe that any extensive effect can be produced by religious instruction on this miserable race, may believe in the famous conversion wrought by St. Anthony on the fish. Can a preacher prevail on his bearers strictly to fulfil their conjugal duties in a country where {312}no protection is given to their conjugal rights.--in a country where the husband and wife may, at the pleasure of the master, or by process of law, be in an instant, separated for ever? Can he persuade them to rest on the Sunday, in Colonies where the law appoints that time for the markets? Is there any lesson which a Christian minister is more solemnly bound to teach,--is there any lesson which it is, in a religious point of view,--more important for a convert to learn, than that it is a duty to refuse obedience to the unlawful commands of superiors? Are the new pastors of the slaves to inculcate this principle or not? In other words, are the slaves to remain uninstruted in the fundamental laws of Christian morality, or are their teachers to be hanged? This is the alternative. We all remember that it was made a charge against Mr. Smith, that he had read an inflammatory chapter of the Bible to his congregation,--excellent encouragement for their future teachers to “declare unto them,” according to the expression of an old divine, far too methodistical to be considered as an authority in the West Indies, “the whole counsel of God.”

The great body of the Colonists have resolutely opposed religious instruction; and they are in the right. They know, though their misinformed friends in England do not know, that Christianity and slavery cannot long exist together. We have already given it us our opinion, that the great body of the Negroes can never, while their political state remains the same, be expected to become Christians. But, if that were possible, we are sure that their political state would very speedily be changed. At every step which the Negro makes in the knowledge and discrimination of right and wrong, he will learn to reprobate more and more the system under which he lives. He will not indeed be so prone to engage in rash and foolish tumults; but he will be as willing as he now is to struggle for liberty, and far more capable of struggling with effect. The forms in which Christianity has been at different times disguised, have been often hostile to liberty. But wherever the spirit has surmounted the forms,--in France, during the wars of the Huguenots,--in Holland, during the reign of Philip II.,--in Scotland, at the time of the Reformation,--in England, through the whole contest against the Stuarts, from their accession to their expulsion.--in New-England, through its whole history,--in every place,--{313}in every age,--it lias inspired a hatred of oppression, and a love of freedom! It would be thus in the West-Indies. The attempts which have been made to press a few detached texts into the cause of tyranny, have never produced any extensive effect. Those who cannot refute them by reasoning and comparison, will be hurried forward by the sense of intolerable wrongs, and the madness of wounded affection. All this the Colonists have discovered; and we feel assured that they will never suffer religious instruction to be unreservedly given to the slaves. In that case, the Establishment will degenerate into a job. This is no chimerical apprehension. There have been clergymen in the West-Indies for many years past; and what have they done for the Negroes? In what have they conduced, either to their temporal or to their spiritual welfare? Doubtless there have been respectable men among them. But is it not notorious, that the benefices of the colonies have been repeatedly given to the outcasts of English society,--men whom the inhabitants would not venture to employ as book-keepers, yet whom they desired to retain as boon companions? Any person who will look over the Parliamentary papers which contain the answers returned by the colonial clergy to certain queries sent out a few years ago by Lord Bathurst, will see some curious instances of the ignorance, the idleness, and the levity of that body. Why should the new Establishment be less corrupt than the old? The dangers to which it is exposed are the same; we do not see that its securities are much greater. It has Bishops, no doubt; and when we observe that Bishops are more active than their inferiors on this side of the Atlantic, we shall begin to hope that they may be useful on the other.

These reforms have begun at the wrong end. “God,” says old Hooker, no enemy to Episcopal Establishments, “first assigned Adam maintenance for life, and then appointed him a law to observe.” Our rulers would have done well to imitate the example,--to give some security to the hearth and to the back of the slave, before they sent him Bishops, Archdeacons, and Chancellors and Chapters.

The work of Mr. Stephen has, we think, disposed forever of some of the principal arguments which are urged by the Colonists. If those who conscientiously support slavery be open to conviction, if its dishonest advocates be susceptible of {314}shame, they can surely never again resort to that mode of defence, which they have so often employed when hard pressed by some particular case of oppression. On such occasions their cry has been, “There are individual instances. You must not deduce general conclusions from them. What would you say, if we were to form our estimate of English society from the Police Reports, or the Newgate Calendar? Look at the rules, and not at the exceptions.” Here, then, we have those boasted rides. And what are they? We find that the actions which other societies punish as crimes, are in the West Indies sanctioned by law;--that practices, of which England affords no example but in the records of the jail and the gibbet, are there suffered to exist unpunished;--that atrocities may there be perpetrated in the drawing-room or in the market-place, on the persons of untried and unconvicted individuals, which here would scarcely find an asylum in the vaults of the Blood-Bowl House.

Is it any answer to this charge, now most fully established, to say that we too have our crimes? Unquestionably, under all systems, however wise, under all circumstances, however fortunate, the passions of men will incite them to evil. The most vigilant police, the most rigid tribunals, the severest penalties, are but imperfect restraints upon avarice and revenge. What then must be the ease when these restraints are withdrawn? In England there is a legal remedy for every injury. If the first prince of the blood, were to treat the poorest pauper in St. Giles’s as the best code in the West Indies authorizes a master to treat his slave, it would be better for him that he had never been born. Yet even here we find, that wherever power is given, it is occasionally abused; that magistrates, not having the fear of the Court of King’s Bench before their eyes, will sometimes be guilty of injustice and tyranny, that even parents will sometimes starve, torture, murder the helpless beings to whom they have given life. And is it not evident, that where there are fewer checks, there will be more cruelty?

But we are told, the manners of a people, the state of public opinion, are of more real consequence than any written code. Many things, it is confessed, in the Colonial laws, are cruel and unjust in theory: but we are assured that the feeling of the Colonists renders the practical operation of the system lenient and liberal. We answer, that publie feeling, though {315}an excellent auxiliary to laws, always has been, and always must be, a miserable and inefficient substitute for them. The rules of evidence on which public opinion proceeds are defective, and its decisions are capricious. Its condemnation frequently spares the guilty, and falls on the innocent. It is terrible to sensitive and generous minds; but it is disregarded by those whose hardened depravity most requires restraint. Hence its decrees, however salutary, unless supported by the clearer definitions and stronger sanctions of legislation, will be daily and hourly infringed; and with principles which rest only on public opinion, frequent infraction amounts to a repeal. Nothing that is very common can be very disgraceful. Thus public opinion, when not strengthened by positive enactment, is first defied, and then vitiated. At best it is a feeble check to wickedness, and at last it becomes its most powerful auxiliary.

As a remedy for the evils of a system of slavery, public opinion must be utterly inefficacious; and that for this simple reason, that the opinion of the slaves themselves goes for nothing. The desire which we feel to obtain the approbation, and to avoid the censure of our neighbours, is no innate or universal sentiment. It always springs, directly or indirectly, from consideration of the power which others possess to serve or to injure us. The good will of the lower orders, is courted only in countries where they possess political privileges, and where there is much they can give, and much that they can take away. Their opinion is important or unimportant, in proportion as their legal rights are great or small. It can, therefore, never be a substitute for legal rights. Does a Smithfield drover care for the love or hatred of his oxen? and yet his oxen, since the passing of Mr. Martin’s meliorating act, are scarcely in a more unprotected condition than the slaves in our islands.