civilization among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us—that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and English Magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency-which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.

It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable tyrants whom he found in India, when they dreaded the capacity and spirit of some distinguished subject, and yet could not venture to murder him, to administer to him a daily dose of the pousta, a preparation of opium, the effect of which was in a few months to destroy all the bodily and mental powers of the wretch who was drugged with it, and to turn him into an helpless idiot. The detestable artifice, more horrible than assassination itself, was worthy of those who employed it. It is no model for the English nation. We shall never consent to administer the pousta to a whole community-to stupify and paralyse a great people whom God has committed to our charge for the wretched purpose of rendering them more amenable to our control. What is that power worth which is founded on vice, on ignorance, and on misery-which we can hold only by violating the most sacred duties which as governors we owe to the governed—which as a people blessed with far more than an ordinary measure of political liberty and of intellectual light, we owe to a race debased by three thousand years of despotism and priestcraft? We are free,

we are civilized, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilization.

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep them submissive? Or do we think that we can give them knowledge without awakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent? Who will answer any of these questions in the affirmative ? Yet one of them must be answered in the affirmative, by every person who maintains that we ought permanently to exclude the natives from high office. I have no fears. The path of duty is plain before us and it is also the path of wisdom, of national prosperity, of national honour.

The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick darkness. It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate reserved for a state which resembles no other in history, and which forms by itself a separate class of political phenomena. The laws which regulate its growth and its decay are still unknown to us. It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history. To have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to But there are triumphs which are followed by no

our arms.

reverses. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. These triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.

282

MINISTERIAL PLAN FOR THE ABOLITION OF

SLAVERY.*

JULY 24, 1833.

He rose with feelings of regret upon the present occasion. Though he had taken no part in the discussion upon this Bill, yet there was no one who had with more patience watched, or with greater anxiety attended to, the provisions of a measure, which he could not but consider to contain a great mixture of good and evil. He should now express his opinions upon this Bill in general, and particularly on those parts in which Amendments had been introduced, and to which the hon. Member (Mr. Fowell Buxton) had referred. He should discharge his duty, he was afraid, very imperfectly, and he would therefore entreat the House to extend to him that indulgence on the present occasion which he had experienced on former occasions when he had addressed it with less harassed feelings, and more confidence than at present. · He had every disposition not only to do the amplest justice to his Majesty's Ministers, but to give them the greatest credit-them, with whom he generally acted-for having framed every part of this measure with the purest and most benevolent intentions, even those parts of which he could not approve. To those parts of which he disapproved, he was anxious to state his objection, but, previous to doing that, he most solemnly disclaimed any unfriendly feeling towards any class of persons whose interests might be concerned in the proposed measure. He hoped that he should be able to prove, that he was not, on the one hand, disposed to

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xix. P. 1202-1209.

sacrifice principle to party, nor on the other, disposed to sacrifice the rights of the planters to popular clamour. Of the three objects which the Bill was intended to effect, the first had his fullest and most unqualified approbation-the abolition of slavery. He believed slavery to be the greatest of political evils; and when he thought of the horrid state of the slave, he sometimes felt ashamed of himself for the enthusiasm he had manifested in removing domestic grievances; such, for example, as the Catholic disabilities. They had seen guilt in many ages and in many countries; but where had they seen guilt in the hideous forms in which it had for so many years been exhibited in the West-India islands? Slavery there had been made to do the work of famine, of pestilence, and of war combined. It had accomplished more than they could accomplish, in putting an end to that disposition to increase and multiply which was manifested by the human race in every other part of the world. There had been fierce and prolonged wars in Europe, but population went on augmenting; and fresh life filled up the chasms caused by such fields as those of Leipzic, Borodino, and Waterloo. Ambition had done all it could to destroy; but it had been assisted by famine and pestilence; but the void which they created was speedily and completely filled up. The law of nature was not counteracted. As soon as the population became thinned by any powerful physical cause, early marriages increased, and the deficiency was soon supplied. In the West-India colonies alone was found a society in which the number of human beings was continually decreasing without the surviving labourers obtaining any advantages. In the West-India Colonies a state of society existed unparalleled in the history of the world. Fully believing in the necessity of demolishing slavery, he nevertheless thought, that his Majesty's Government had taken the right course in the Bill which his right hon. friend had introduced. The only fault which he found with that Bill was, that it had a leaning to mitigate an evil which ought to be