was now superseded by one not more defensible, but less offensive and pernicious. In convictions of felony short of murder, discretion was afforded to the judge to reserve the case avowedly for a commutation of punishment, by recording, instead of pronouncing, the sentence of death ordained by the law; such record having the same effect 'as if such judgment had actually been pronounced in open court, and the offender had been reprieved by the court.' Such an arrangement shews how little the great principle was understood, that certainty of punishment is of more consequence than the degree of it. When it is considered that most criminals are ignorant, it appears important above everything that the consequences of crime should be made as plain and intelligible, and as certain as possible. The levity of pronouncing a sentence which every one knew to be a mere form was now to be avoided; but it was by what appeared to the criminals whom it concerned a falsehood and a quibble. 'Do you know,' asked a prison-visitor of a young thief, 'what your sentence will be if you are found guilty?' 'Yes: death recorded.' And do you know what that means?' 'Yes: transportation.' It will be a marvel to a future generation that we are yet so far from letting our yea be yea, and our nay nay, in penal legislation, where stern truth and plain retribution ought to be our first care.

A remnant of barbarism was next got rid of by abolishing the old custom-for which there was no express warrant of law-of ignominious burial of persons felo de se. Up to this time, it had been the practice to bury such suicides in some public place; usually at the intersection of four roads, a stake being driven through the body. One consequence of this was, that a verdict of felo de se was very rarely returned; the coroner's jury offering a verdict of insanity, without or against evidence, in almost all cases of suicide. Since the passing of Mr Lennard's bill, in this session, persons guilty of felo de se have been interred in burial-grounds, without funeral rites on the one hand, or barbarous usage on the other; within twenty-four hours of the return of the verdict, and between the hours of nine and twelve at night.

The subject of the marriage-law came up again; the act of the preceding year having been encumbered by so many troublesome forms as to impede marriage, instead of fostering it; which it was the intention of the bill to do. At the beginning of this session it was represented that marriages had remarkably decreased since the passage of the new act, and that loud complaints were made by the poorer classes of society, to whom it was most desirable to make the forms of marriage easy. The obstructive clauses were immediately repealed; and a committee of the Lords was appointed to frame a permanent bill. An attempt was made by this committee to restore the voidability of marriage under certain circumstances; but the sense of parliament was against it; and the clause which would have rendered certain marriages of minors voidable within a certain period was thrown out by a majority of six.

Nothing is more memorable in the history of this year than the movement in the House and in the

West Indies on the subject of negro slavery. Those who had achieved the abolition of the slave-trade had declared-and, no doubt, in all sincerity at the time--that their aim was confined to this object; but when men have entered upon a work of principle, be it what it may, they had better decline saying how far they will go. They can no more say beforehand where they will stop in the application of a principle than in the development of a science. New light is not calculable; and the future must be left to reveal itself. Thus did the truth now appear to the abolitionists. Their work was only begun; and they must not rest till they saw the end. At present, it is now clear they did not see the end; and they had much to learn about the means-much that we know only through their labours and sufferings, and which we must therefore apply to their case with reverence and gratitude. They did not yet see fully, that while there is slavery in the world, there will be a slave-trade; and that therefore the opposition should be made, in all parts of the world, not to the trade, but to the institution, through effectual denunciation of its principle. They did not then know that slaves can never be prepared by education for freedom; that freedom itself is the only possible education for a free man. They did not know that, in regard to the abolition of slavery, 'gradualism' is impossible. They did not see for long that gradual or prospective emancipation is indefensible in principle; and that, if it were not so, it would be impossible in practice. Those to whom they have bequeathed their good work sce now-and they saw it before they died-that a man either can or cannot righteously be the property of man. If he can, then slavery is justified, and there is nothing for abolitionists to do. If not, there can be no tampering with the wrong; no retention of stolen goods; no satisfaction in the promise of restitution at a distant day. Nor, as the stolen goods are men, is it possible to put off their release. If they know that they are entitled to freedom, on the ground of natural right, at any future time, they are entitled to it now. If their children are to be free as a matter of right, they themselves have the right to be free now. This logic, which lies deep down in the negro's heart, and is ever ready upon his tongue, cannot be controverted by legislative enactment, even though all the highest wits of the world went to make the parliament. All this appears plain enough to us now; but there is nothing in our modern history more interesting than the evolution of the proof. It seems like going back to the carly tentative stage of an established moral question, to read the debates of this session of 1823 on West Indian affairs.

Mr Thomas Fowell Buxton moved, as a resolution, on the 15th of May: That the state of slavery is repugnant to the principles of the British constitution, and of the Christian religion, and that it ought to be abolished gradually throughout the British colonies, with as much expedition as may be found consistent with a due regard to the wellbeing of the parties concerned.' The enactments which he hoped would follow upon the adoption of this resolution, were such as would ordain the freedom of all children born after a certain day, and mitigate the condition

He

Baring, who, in the same breath, declared himself as sincere an abolitionist as any man, and deprecated all mention of the subject of slavery in that House, rebellion and bloodshed being sure to follow. did not, like Mr Baring and some others, regard the welfare of West India property as the only important consideration in the case. He did remember, as too many did not, that the negroes were a party in the case, and that their fate was an element in the question. But he was not prepared to assert any principle, or to contemplate any course of action, which should bring the abolition of the institution into question practically, within any assignable time. He proposed resolutions declaratory of the expediency of immediately ameliorating the condition of the British slave population; of the hope that such amelioration might fit the slaves for freedom; and of the desire of the House that these objects should be accomplished, at the earliest period that the safety of all parties would allow.

This was as much as the most sanguine of the abolitionists had expected to obtain; and it was more than their adversaries were able to bear. After a long debate, Mr Canning's resolutions were

carried without a division; and it was ordered that they should be laid before the king by certain members of the privy-council. Then arose a prodigious clamour in the country, on the part of the West India interest. The government was declared to have gone over to ultra-abolitionism; and West India property fell in the market. As for the colonies, when the news of the debate arrived, there was much anger; but there was at first little fear. Mr Canning's resolutions were looked upon as mere declarations-mere words; and abolition in the abstract' is as little formidable to a slaveholder as slavery in the abstract is disturbing to the heart of an abolitionist like Mr Baring, whose action in the matter consisted in recommending universal silence on the subject. It soon appeared, however, that the resolutions, and the House that had passed them, really meant something. A circular, dated from Downing Street, on the 24th of May, reached the functionaries of the different islands; and in this circular they read the doom of slavery. It did not convey anything which appears to us very tremendous. It drew the attention of its recipients to the debate in the House, and gave a decisive

intimation that there must be an end of the flogging of women, and of the use of the whip in the field. It was not the nature of these particulars which affected so deeply the West Indian mind. It was the fact of the interference at all; the prospect of further interference; the dread of emancipation at last; and before all these, there was the besetting vision-the panic which comes upon the slaveholder with every breath from over the seas-his cold horror at noon-his nightmare in the dark-the apprehension of insurrection, if any one of a million of negroes should hear that the British government was thinking about them. To other people it appears that the very time when the negroes are least disposed to rebel is that when they know that their cause is in good hands; and that nothing is so likely to drive them to insurrection as the feeling that they have none to help them. In another country, and at a later time, this has proved eminently true. Before 1832, there were numerous revolts among the negroes in the slave-states of North America; the average number being twelve in a year. Since Garrison rose up to be the Moses to this multitude of bondmen, there have been no insurrections at all. The slaves are aware that their cause is in better hands than their own; and they wait, in trust and hope.

The House of Assembly in Jamaica was passionate, according to its wont; talked of proclaiming the independence of the islands, if parliament should attempt to dictate to them; talked of addressing the king to remove Lord Bathurst (the signer of the circular) from his majesty's councils; talked of repealing the Registry Act; but did none of these things. What they did was to appoint a committee to consider what steps should be taken in consequence of the receipt of the circular; and they finally voted that they would take their own way of being just and kind to their slaves; and would not attend to any dictation from the mother-country. They also voted an address to their governor, in which they declared against making any alterations in their slave-code.

In Barbadoes there was a rising; but it was of the slaveholding party. In slaveholding countries, the poorest order of freemen are, as everybody knows, a peculiarly depraved class, for reasons obvious enough. Where there are slaves to do the work of a society, industry is opprobrious, and idleness is honour. Such freemen as are too poor to have slaves, and to avoid work, are in a disgraced position; and none but the degraded would hold that position. A missionary at Barbadoes, named Shrewsbury, was believed to have written home to those who sent him that the lowest class of white men in that colony were ignorant and depraved. It is probable that he did so write; and that what he wrote was true. A multitude assembled round his chapel while he was in the pulpit, and silenced him with the noise of cat-calls and other clamour. The preacher stood in his place till he could be heard, and then went on with the service. The rioters next put out placards, inviting the missionary's enemies to assemble at the chapel on the following evening. They did so, and levelled the building with the ground. A placard

put forth by the governor, Sir Henry Warde, offering a reward for the apprehension of any of the persons engaged, was answered by one issued by the rioters, threatening vengeance on any one who should give information, and warning all missionaries not to set foot in Barbadoes-a place which did indeed seem as alien as it thus declared itself from the religion of Christ. Mr Shrewsbury was obliged to fly for his life. Such proceedings could not end at the point they had reached; and now ensued an excited state of suspense as to what was to happen next.

And so it was in another colony, Demerara, whose name and fame were deeply disgraced this year. When the circular reached the colony, the members of the government and other gentlemen talked of it in the presence of their domestic slaves, without making any express communications to the negroes on the subject of it, and even endeavouring to keep it secret from the field-hands. When the Court of Policy passed regulations in accordance with the instructions of the circular, pains were still taken to conceal the whole affair from the negroes. From what they heard from the house-slaves, they naturally supposed that orders for their emancipation had arrived from England, and that they were to be defrauded of it. In most slave regions, this would have led to a massacre of the whites; and it no doubt would here, but for the influence of a missionary of the Independents, to whom the Episcopalian clergyman of the colony ascribes the whole merit of the fact that not a drop of the blood of white men was shed. This missionary, John Smith, had been in the colony for seven years, during which time he had trained his flock to habits of order, industry, submission, and peace. Under his care, marriage became almost universal; and not one marriage in fifty was violated. There was an extraordinary deficiency of religious ministers in this colony; and that one man could have effected what Mr Smith did, shews what may be done by the calm and steady zeal of one man, whose single object is the improvement and happiness of his neighbours. Just before the changes caused by the circular, the governor, whose object was to make head against the sectaries,' among whom he included all the religious bodies in the colony except the one Episcopalian flockeven the Dutch and Scotch churches, as well as the Methodist and Independent missionaries-had issued a prohibition to all the negroes to attend public worship, except by means of a pass from their owners; these owners being under no obligation to grant such a pass. When the slaves found themselves thus hindered in their worship, and believed themselves debarred from the liberty which the king had granted them, they rose upon their masters. They shed no blood; but they imprisoned the whites, and put some in the stocks. The first who rose were some upon the east coast, who had suffered most by the deprivation of liberty to attend church, and they were joined by others who thought more of the other cause of complaint. The rising took place on the 18th of August. On the 19th, martial law was proclaimed. On the 20th, the insurrection was completely over. While no white was sacrificed, above two hundred negroes were killed and wounded

CHAP. VI.]

in the first instance; forty-seven were executed; and the floggings of many more were worse than death -a thousand lashes being a frequent sentence. So much for the insurrection. It was Mr Smith's story, in connection with it, which makes this particular revolt conspicuous above others in the history of our time.

The governor kept the colony under martial law for five months after this insurrection of two days; and one of the persons brought to trial under this martial law was the missionary, Mr Smith. Now was the time, during the reign of martial law, for 'making head against the sectaries.' The one Episcopalian clergyman, however, gave the governor no help in the valiant work. His testimony is all in favour of the 'sectary' under persecution. He declared his conviction, that nothing but those religious impressions which, under Providence, Mr Smith has been instrumental in fixing-nothing but those principles of the gospel of peace which he has been proclaiming-could have prevented a dreadful effusion of blood here, and saved the lives of those very persons who are now, I shudder to write it, seeking his.' Under this reign of martial law, the pastor was kept in prison for two months before trial; in apartments-the one under the roof, exposed to burning heat-and the other on the ground, fetid from the stagnant water visible under the boards of the floor. He was an invalid before his arrest; and his death under these circumstances is not to be wondered at. The mode and conduct of the trial abounded in illegalities; and his conviction took place, on the evidence of three negroes, who afterwards confessed that they had been wrought upon to allege what was wholly false. The charges were, of having incited the slaves to revolt; of having concealed their intention to rise; and of having refused -which he did on the ground of ill health, and of his clerical office-to serve in the militia, several days after the suppression of the rebellion. But the real purpose of the trial is obvious, through all the ill-supported pretences put forward in the military court which assembled in the name of justice. 'No man,' declared Mr Brougham in parliament, 'can cast his eye upon this trial without perceiving that it was intended to bring on an issue between the system of the slave-law and the instruction of the negroes.' This was, in truth, the cause in question; and John Smith was its martyr. The life of martyrs in a cause so vital and so comprehensive as this is rarely or never given in vain; and few have been laid down to more effectual purpose than that of the Demerara missionary.

He was sentenced to death; but his persecutors had not the courage to subject themselves to the consequences of executing a judgment so obtained. They transmitted the sentence to England, for the decision of the British government. The British government rescinded the sentence of the courtmartial, as far as related to the penalty of death, but decreed Mr Smith's banishment from the colony. No time was lost in transmitting the information to Demerara; but before it arrived, the missionary was in his grave. His medical attendants had repeatedly declared that if he had not a better apartment, he

171

must sink; but he was not removed; nor was he allowed a change of linen; nor the attendance of a friend to relieve the cares of his worn and wearied wife. He died on the 6th of February 1824. The funeral was ordered to take place at two o'clock in the morning, that no negro tears might be shed over the pastor's coffin. The widow and her friend, Mrs Elliot, intended to follow the coffin; but the headconstable declared that this could not be permitted. 'Is it possible,' cried Mrs Elliot, 'that General Murray can wish to prevent a poor widow from following her husband to the grave?' The widow exclaimed that General Murray should not prevent it; that she would go, happen what might. The head-constable went to his excellency to report this, and brought back orders to imprison the women, if they attempted to follow the coffin. The mourners, therefore, went first. They left the jail, attended by a negro with a lantern, and arrived at the grave before the coffin was brought; the light weight carried by two negroes with a single lantern, and attended only by the clergyman, Mr Austin, whose testimony in favour of his Christian brother we have quoted above. Two negro members of Mr Smith's congregation, a carpenter and bricklayer, wished to mark the spot of their pastor's rest. They began to rail in and cover over the grave; but by official orders the brickwork was broken up, the rails torn down, and the spot left desolate.

On

Mr Smith died on the 6th of February. the 24th of the same month, a public meeting of Demerara slave-owners resolved forthwith to petition the Court of Policy 'to expel all missionaries from the colony, and to pass a law prohibiting their admission for the future.' The government paper of the same month declares: 'It is most unfortunate for the cause of the planters, that they did not speak out in time. They did not say, as they ought to have said, to the first advocates of missions and education, we shall not tolerate your plans till you prove to us that they are safe and necessary; we shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves, who are by law our property, till you can demonstrate that when they are made religious and knowing, they will still continue to be our slaves.' Again: 'To address a promiscuous audience of black or coloured people, bond and free, by the endearing appellation of "My brethren and sisters," is what can nowhere be heard except in Providence Chapel.' These are evidences, quite as strong as any connected with the trial, that the Christian religion was wholly inappropriate to Demerara society. These are evidences, as strong as any afforded by the trial, that it was intended to bring on an issue between the system of the slave-law and the instruction of the negroes;' and to one who clearly saw this, the cause would appear one worth dying for. But to martyrs themselves, the scope of their case is seldom clear; and in this instance, the probability of such an animating comprehension was less than ordinary. This John Smith, perhaps, prepared himself, during his missionary training, for violence from half-naked savages -for mockery in an unknown tongue-for the fire, the flint-knife, the tomahawk, and every possible destitution of comfort and of intercourse; but he

could hardly have anticipated persecution and heartbreak from Christian gentlemen, and officials under the British government. If he saw clearly the scope of his own case-saw that he was not the less a martyr for his judges being British officers, the curses on him uttered by Christian tongues, and his bolts turned by Christian hands, he might sustain his spirit amidst the reeking vapours of his dungeon, and the damps of death. In court, he had been silenced; but his voice was soon to be heard in the British parliament, and by the firesides in Orkney and Scilly, and under the cane-roofs in India, and among the pine barrens of Canada. His private journal had been taken from his locked desk, to be pored over by malignant eyes; but he need not, therefore, wish that he had never written it. Once brought to light, the very light seemed to catch it up, and to present it, sun-printed, before all eyes that were vigilant for human liberties. He might have appeared to himself sunk in desolation, and squalor, and ignominious misfortune, when arrested, tried, and sentenced as a criminal under the semblance of the forms of British law and Christian authority; and he might not have felt that exhilaration of martyrdom which would have thrilled through him in a scene outwardly more savage. But not the less was he a martyr; and the cause was not the less express or worthy, because the heathens with whom he had to do, bore the Christian name. The true issue will never be forgotten-'the issue between the system of the slave-law and the instruction of the negroes.' It was understood in England as by a universal intuition; by the whole nationfrom the king, in his sumptuous seclusion, going over the matter with the premier, to the little child on its mother's knee, hearing its father tell on the cottage bench of the missionary's negro flock, his unfair trial, and his dreary lantern-burial. It needed only to be brought fairly before British minds, and near to British hearts, that slaves were anywhere denied to be their brethren and sisters-were anywhere deliberately denied their birthright of knowledge and religious fellowship-to secure the overthrow of slavery.

From this time the doom of slavery was fixed, and known to be so; and the impotent struggles of resistance in the colonies, served no other purpose so effectually as that of reminding men of Smith the missionary, and stimulating them to new efforts in the cause for which he died.

The session of parliament closed on the 19th of July, the royal speech being delivered by commission, owing to the indisposition of the king. The noticeable point of the speech is its tone of congratulation on the abatement of agricultural distress, and on the high prosperity of commerce and manufactures.

CHAPTER VII.

HE year 1824 opened amidst such prosperity, that instead of grumbling, there was nothing heard of among capitalists of every order but anticipations of vast increase of wealth. The demand for all kinds of agricultural produce was steadily rising; and wheat was at 62s. on the average for the year. The price of bread was not complained of; for almost every class of labourers was well employed. The cotton manufacture increased largely; the ironmasters were in high spirits; the hardware trade was brisk; and the woollen manufacturers made no complaint. In the exhilaration of the time, men were disposed to make haste to be rich; and the immense spread of joint-stock companies became a joke of the time-a heavy joke enough in its issue, but very merry at the moment. While this exhilaration and satisfaction were apparent on the surface of society, and there was even in its depths a sense of comfort and hope not often enjoyed there, some things were going forward in by-places, which make us wonder now how men could have been satisfied with a state of things so obviously needing improvement in its principle and in many of its workings.

There were strange doings by night in the creeks and hollow-ways and caves of the southern coast; and a remarkable order of passengers by day in the packets from France. Every now and then a fisherman's great boots were found to be stuffed with French lace, gloves, or jewellery; or a lady's petticoats to be quilted all through with silk stockings and lace. Here and there, a nice-looking loaf of bread was found to have a curious kernel of lace and gloves; and a roll of sailcloth turned out to be a package of gay lute-string. In the dead of the night, a large body of men would work for hours noiselessly in the soft sands, rolling tubs of spirits, and carrying bales of goods in the shadows of the rocks, and through tunnels, and up chasms, under the very feet of the preventive patrol, and within sound of the talk of the sentries. While this was going forward on the English coast, the smugglers on the opposite shore were engaged, with much more labour, risk, and expense, in introducing English woollens, by a vast system of fraud and lying, into the towns, past a scries of custom-houses. In both countries there was an utter dissoluteness of morals connected with these transactions. Cheating and lying were essential to the whole system; drunkenness accompanied it; contempt for all law grew up under it; honest industry perished beneath it; and it was crowned with murder. Little children who lived near a smuggling haunt learned early to be sly, and to say anything that was convenient. Their mothers stole down to the sands at night to bring up light goods which they might hide in the rafters of the cottage, and spread temptingly before any foolish ladies within their reach. Or, if they did not themselves meddle, they reproached their husbands for working at the plough or the anvil when certain neighbours