West Indies will join me in asserting. Those among them (and these certainly form the majority) whom planters term the most sensible, and Englishmen the most degraded of beings, are really and positively happy in their enslaved condition; they know that condition to be greatly improved, and they feel that it is greatly improving; there are others, however, who desire freedom, but they desire it, not for its glorious self, but for the pleasant life they imagine they would then pass;-namely, that of having nothing to do, and for the power which it would give them over their present masters: they have besides an idea that on receiving emancipation they will still be allowed to retain their dwelling, land, and produce, on their master's property, and they forget that food, clothing, and the attendance of the physician will be immediately withdrawn. I have repeated this fact to many of the slaves, and they appeared perfectly astonished and even confounded at the information. When they were undeceived, however, they invariably disclaimed any further ideas of emancipation, and positively declared that they had no wish to be free. One man in particular replied to my inquiries whether he still persisted in his former desire, "No, massa, no; me lose house, me lose clothes, me lose meat, me lose all me hab in de world, me get sick, what me do den?"

I would not however have this feeling encouraged among the slaves. I would rather that they did desire emancipation, but that they desired it witd. nobler motives.

Education and religion are two of the fairest flowers that adorn the beautiful garden of the mind; in those distant isles they have been long blasted by the rude and cheerless winter of ignorance; they have lately budded, and they are now beginning to blossom. I will hope with Englishmen that they may soon ripen into a fair and grateful fruit. When that day shall arrive, the feelings of the slave will be softened and refined, the energies of his mind will be called forth, and the latent spirit that has long been dormant in his soul will be roused to action and to life; he will see and know what a glorious thing liberty is, and he will desire it, not because it emancipates him from labor, but because it enables him to labor in independence and in peace. Mark me,

I have said "when that day shall arrive," it has not yet arrived, but it may be hastened or delayed by the energy or the idleness of those on whom devolves the task of educating the slaves, and of instilling into their minds the principles of morality and religion. This is of course a gradual work, and that is why I assert that a gradual emancipation will be a benefit to the planter and a blessing to the slave, while a hasty emancipation would be an unjust and a dangerous thing both to the one and to the other.

In thus reviewing the present state of slavery, and in considering the advantages or disadvantages that would arise from present emancipation, the reader will see that I do not plunge into those violent and sometimes scurrilous arguments with which some, personally interested in the event, have injured the

cause they intended to defend. I do not indulge in invectives against Messrs. Wilberforce, Buxton, or Macauley; on the contrary, I am willing to allow, that those gentlemen have been actuated by the best of motives, and that, in many cases, their exertions have produced the best effects; nevertheless I consider that an over zeal may prove injurious to any cause; and though I am in heart and soul an Englishman and a lover of freedom, though I desire as much as any man the emancipation of the slaves, yet I would not be inconsiderate and unthinking enough to vote for that sudden emancipation, without a knowledge of the state of things, and a foresight of the consequences that were likely to ensue :-that knowledge I have, those consequences I foresee, and I therefore sincerely hope that LIBERTY may be given to the slaves, but that it may not be given now.

CHAPTER XLIII.

LIVES OF ESTATE NEGROES-AFRICANS AND CREOLES

-GRADUAL EMANCIPATION.

“When the relative state of the master and slave is properly considered, it will be seen that this race of men are not the wretched creatures they are believed to be."

Sketches and Recollections of the West Indies.

"I look to the gradual and safe abolition of slavery, in which, not the individual should be set free, but the state itself should Canning. expire."

THE reader is, perhaps, aware that the greater number of slaves in the West Indies were born on the plantations to which they belong, and that their attachment, if they feel any to such places, must have grown with their growth and strengthened with their strength that they do feel such attachment is evident for reasons hereafter to be told.

Those slaves who were born, fed, nurtured, and grew up in slavery, are not to be regarded in the same light as those who, from being free, have been made slaves; and who have been brought from their native country to serve masters in a foreign land. Years have rolled away since the abolition of the slave trade, and, consequently, the race of Africans now in the colonies is nearly extinct, at all events

the majority is great among the creole slaves. It is clear that these, in their present state of ignorance, have powerful reasons for being contented with their condition, which the Africans have, or rather had not. I have already observed that they have not yet acquired the spirit of freedom, and that, consequently, they do not understand the maxim that liberty and independence, even though accompanied by poverty, are better than the best state of an enslaved condition.

The old African was brought to the colonies when slavery was in the height of its cruelty; that cruelty he was necessitated to endure, he did endure it, and though he now enjoys, with others, the benefits of amelioration; though near and dear connexions, in his present abode, may have weaned him from the ties of his childhood, yet, be assured, he retains a strong impression of the endurance of early cruelties, and, at all events, a faint one of the enjoyment of early freedom. Time and custom have habituated him to slavery-better treatment may have quieted his indignation and calmed his desire of revenge --a home, children, and grandchildren may have repaid him in some measure for the ties he left behind, yet he must have felt his wrongs, and, even if he felt them with the sullen and less acute feelings of an uneducated mind, yet he did feel them, and his sufferings deserved the sympathy of the humane.

With all classes of creole slaves, but more especially with the latter generation, the case is far otherwise. The chubby urchin, who is to be fed with