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.
Let them, therefore, join with me, in seriously considering the practical conclusions to be drawn from these shocking incidents, and the remedy which should be applied to such crying evils. Let them not retort, as has been sometimes done, that instances of monstrous cruelty have taken place in this country also. It is true, that even in this land of liberty and humanity, we heard some years ago of an apprentice being starved to death. We heard more recently of a British Governor of an African possession, causing the death of a soldier by excessive punishment. But let us complete the parallel; not only were these crimes punished by the death of the criminals, but here, in Lord Bacon’s phrase, “mark the diversity;” it was difficult to prevent the indignation even of the populace, from anticipating the sentence of the law. In the West Indies, on the contrary, when you begin to talk of punishing capitally far more horrible murders, the sympathy, among the majority of the community, the highest classes excepted, is for the criminal, not for the wretched and innocent sufferer; and that, not merely among low illiterate men, in whom such prejudices might be somewhat less astonishing, but in the House of Assembly of the Island, the body to which it especially belongs to watch over the rights, and which naturally gives the tone, and fixes the standard for the opinions and feelings of the whole community.[34]
Let the absentee Proprietors attend, above all, to this, because it leads to the most important practical conclusions. I have been assured privately, (though the information has not yet been laid before Parliament, and therefore I cannot speak with certainty) that Lord Seaforth has at length been able to carry his point, and to prevail on the Assembly as well as the Council, to make the murder of a Slave a capital offence. In my view of the above transactions, this is a matter of small importance. It will not, I trust, appear uncandid; but I must frankly declare, that had the Assembly originally consented to Lord Seaforth’s recommendation and made the murder of a Slave a capital crime, I should not have admitted it as any proof of their feeling for the Negroes with any tenderness of sensibility. It would only have shewn that there was no apparent want of common humanity, and therefore have belonged to that class of actions, from the performance of which no man arrogates to himself praise, though to be defective in them we consider as blameworthy. For, might we not fairly have questioned whether the members might not be influenced, not so much by motives of benevolence, as by deference for their Governor, by a regard for their character, by a respect for the feelings, call them, if you will, the prejudices, of the more liberal few among their own community; or even by the apprehensions of the effects which their refusal might produce in forwarding the abolition of the Slave Trade? Surely, however, the rejection of the proposition shews, that they not only do not themselves regard the Negroes as entitled to the consideration and treatment due to a _human being_, considered as such, but that they cannot even persuade themselves that he will be regarded as entitled to them by the world in general.