"14th. The practice of selling and purchasing slaves, has been in existence from TIME IMMEMORIAL," (p. 853.)

sociation of the human beings with "the price of cotton," to observe, that it is melancholy to find an individual who, according to his own shewing, is above the rank of "a common soldier," and who has been

eight years in India," and who yet knows so little about that country, its establishments and its population, as to venture to expose his own ignorance or stupidity by asserting "the flagrant falsehood," that no such state of society (for this is what he means his words to convey) as personal slavery, in its strictest and most unmitigated character, exists in India. Accustomed to the total disregard for truth which is on every occasion shewn by anti-colonial writers, it excites in my mind no surprise to meet with such assertions as those which have just been quoted. Instead of resorting to the tone of haughty Eastern declamation, which has no doubt been resorted to by this writer, because he was deficient in candour, information, and facts, I shall bring before your Grace and the public the following plain, unvarnished selections from the official papers, transmitted by the Governors General, and other authorities in India, who may, I humbly presume, be acknowledged to know more about India, its establishments, its population, and its laws, than any "common soldier," and a great deal more than this very ignorant and very insolent East Indian anti-colonial champion. In the documents which they have transmitted, this bravo scribbler may find out, if he has the understanding to find out, some of the East Indian "slave laws," and "advertisements in the Gazettes," which he calls for, observing to him shortly, and once for all, that " governors of India at home" dare not, and have acknowledged in writing that they dare not, "send out five lines in a dispatch disowning all recognition of the estate of personal slavery throughout their vast dominions."

In the proceedings of the Revenue Board at Calcutta, April 1819, we have the answers of no fewer than nineteen Hindoos of rank, the most versant in the Hindoo laws regarding personal slavery, made to fourteen different questions put to each. I confine myself to the following replies:

"10th. They are required to perform all the work connected with husbandry," (p. 855.)

"10th. They are employed in ploughing the fields (parrambas,) cutting wood, planting, cropping, AND IN SHORT IN ALL

WORK CONNECTED WITH AGRICULTURE.

They are, besides, required to watch the

fields and granaries DURING THE NIGHT," (p. 865.)

In pages 6 and 7 we have a correct translation of the Hindoo slave code, which enumerates no fewer than fifteen species of slavery, and in which we find included, " 1st, Whoever is born of a female slave;" "2d, whoever is purchased for a price;" " 8th, whoever hath been enslaved by the fortune of battle;" " and 10th, whoever of his own desire says to another, I AM BECOME YOUR SLAVE."

The Hindoo slave code, p. 7, runs thus:

"Whoever is born from the body of a female slave, and whoever hath been purchased for a price, and whoever hath been found by chance any where, and whoever is a slave by descent from his ancestors, these four species of slaves, until they are freed by the voluntary consent of their master, CANNOT HAVE THEIR LIBERTY; if their master, from a principle of beneficence, gives them their liberty, they become free."

"Whoever for the sake of enjoying a slave girl becomes a slave to any person, he shall recover his freedom upon renouncing the slave girl," (p. 8.)

"Whoever hath become a slave by selling himself to any person, he shall not be free until his master of his own accord gives him his freedom."

"If the master, from a principle of beneficence, gives him his liberty, he becomes free," (p. 8.)

At page 121 we find it admitted and stated by "G. Dowdeswell, Secretary to Government Judicial Department," in an official letter to the "Register of the Sudder Dewanny Adawlut," and dated 6th June, 1820, that "the Hindoo and Mahommedan laws regarding domestic slavery" remained " UNQUALIFIED."

At page

102, we find an official letter, dated 13th November, 1812, addressed by the Governor-General to C. T. METCALFE, Esq., the resident at Delhi, on

the subject of a proclamation issued by him regarding the abolition, not of slavery, but of a Foreign Slave Trade. It runs thus:

"2. The Governor General IN COUNCIL observes, that your proclamation not only prohibits the importation of slaves for sale into the assigned territories, but the sale of slaves actually within these territories previously to its promulgation, a measure which his Lordship in Council was NOT PREPARED TO SANCTION. Odious and abominable as such a traffic is in any shape, the laws which have hitherto been enacted to restrain it, have been confined in their object to the trade in slaves by importation and exportation, but have xor been extended to the emancipation of persons already in a state of slavery under the old law, nor to the PROHIBITION of their transfer by sale to other masters within the country which they inhabit.

"3. For these reasons, and from other considerations of much apparent weight, the views of Government have been limited to the prohibition of further importation of slaves for sale into the territories of the Honourable Company; and you will observe the regulation X. of 1811, is confined to this object. In conformity, therefore, to the sentiments conveyed to you in Mr EDMINSTONE's letter of the 25th of September, his Lordship IN COUNCIL desires that the terms of your proclamation may be modified, so as to correspond with the enactment contained in that regulation."

"Signed J. ADAM,

Secretary to Government."

In a further communication to the Government upon the subject, Mr Metcalfe, under date 3d January 1813, amongst other things, states:

"17. In issuing a proclamation for the abolition of the future importation and sale of slaves, 1 had no idea of infringing on the rights of the actual proprietors of slaves purchased or possessed heretofore. All the proprietors of slaves in this territory, notwithstanding that proclamation, retain all their rights over their slaves, except that of selling them, or making them the property of another. This is perfectly understood in consequence of the decisions given in the Court of Judicature in trials between owners and slaves. I have more than once embraced the opportunity afforded by such trials to explain publicly, that slaves are still the property of their owners, though not (with reference to my former misconception of the views of Government) as heretofore disposable property."

Under date March 6th, 1813, the Government again writes Mr Metcalfe thus:

"In continuation of the orders of Government of the present date, I am directed to acquaint you, that it occurs to the Right Hon. the Governor General in Council, that the prohibition established against the importation of slaves into the territory, subject to your superintendence, should not extend to slaves accompanying their masters from other parts of the Company's territories, and not intended for sale. As persons possessing slaves are not restricted under the general laws and regulations from removing them from one district to another, the principles of consistency and uniformity in arrangements of a legislative nature, seem to require that no such restriction should be established on the removal of slaves from other parts of the British territories into the places subject to your superintendence.”—(Signed G. Dowdeswell, Chief Secretary to Government, page 107.)

These and other communications terminated in the prohibition of a slave trade, by the sale of new slaves in the province of Delhi. How the law was obeyed, I consider unnecessary to state, and, besides, have neither time nor limits to enter upon this part of the subject.

At page 559, we find a letter from Mr Secretary Thackeray to the President and Members of the Board of Trade, Madras, and dated 13th Nov. 1810, which states thus:

slave, had afterwards sold him to another, or that any person had compelled another into slavery by force and violence, the ruling power may then order the emancipation of such child or slave. This is the law declared by Jak Bulk, Munu, Minoo, and Kuteeabun, according to Met Unchhra and other authorities."

and goldsmiths; in transcribing; as weavers, and in manufacturing woollen cloths; as shoemakers, boatmen, twisters of silk, water drawers; in shaving, in performing surgical operations, such as cupping; and as farriers, bricklayers, and the like; and he may hire them out in service in any of the above capacities. He may also employ them himself, or for the use of the family in other duties of a domestic nature, such as in fetching water for washing or weezoo, religious purification, in, anointing his body with oil, rubbing his feet, in attending his person while dressing, and in guarding the door of his house," &c.

"Answer to the 2d Question."
Hindoo Law.

"The owner of a male or female slave may require of such slave the performance of impure work, such as plastering and sweeping the house, cleaning the door, gateway, and necessary, rubbing his master's body with oil, and clothing him, removing fragments of victuals left at his master's table and eating them, removing urine, or human ordure, rubbing his master's feet and other limbs, &c. In cases of disobedience or fault committed by the slave, the master has power to beat his slave with a thin stick, or to bind him with a rope; and if he should consider the slave deserving of severer punishment, he may pull his hair, or expose him upon an ass. But if the master should exceed this extent of his authority, and inflict punishment upon his slave of a severer nature than the above stated, he is liable to pay a fine to the hakim or ruling power of a thousand puns of Khur mohurs (eighty thousand Kowries.) This is declared by Munoo, according to Rutnad, Khun, Bibad, Chinta, Mun, and other authorities."

"Answer to the 3d Question.

"A master has no right to command his male and female slave to perform any other duties besides those specified in the answer to the 2d Question, or authority to punish his slave, further than in the manner before stated; and if he should exceed this discretionary power in either case, he is liable to the same penalty, viz. one thousand puns of Kowries. This is declared by Munoo and Bishee."

"Answer to the 4th Question. "The commission, however, of offences of the above nature by the master, does not affect the state of bondage of the slave, and the ruling power has not the right of granting his manumission; but if it should be established in evidence before the hakim, that any person having stolen or inveigled away by fraud and treachery a child or

laws being the codes by which the The Mahommedan and Hindoo jurisprudence of India is administered to the natives thereof, and personal slavery being sanctioned and supported by these laws, it is necessary to ascertain how far the British laws, emanating from Great Britain, and the British Government in India, have altered the Hindoo slave code. The following extracts" of a letter in the Judicial Department from the Governor General in Council of Bengal, to the Court of Directors, dated the 29th October 1817," will shew this:

"145. On this point it appeared to us, that none of the provisions of the act of Parliament passed for the abolition of the slave trade, in any manner affected, or professed to affect, the relation between master and slave wherever that relation might exist by law; whatever, therefore, had been the law according to the Mahommedan and Hindoo codes (for those over whom they extended) on the subject of domestic slavery, before the passing of the act of the 51 Geo. III. c. 23, continued to be the law still: MORE ESPECIALLY AS THESE CODES

HAD BEEN DISTINCTLY RECOGNIZED AND OR

DERED TO BE OBSERVED BY PARLIAMENT !"

"155. The native subjects of the British government residing in the territories, subordinate to the several Presidencies, have, in fact, the same authority over their slaves, and the same property in them, that they would have had, if the act in question had never been passed; and the several Zillah and provincial courts are bound to receive and to determine all questions of that nature, which are respectively cognizable by them under the existing regulation."

"158. A slave, by entering the Company's territories, does not become free; nor can he, who was lawfully a slave, emancipate himself, by running away from one country where slavery is lawful, to another where it is equally lawful."

"159. The property in the slave still continues in the master; and the master has the same right to have it restored to him, that any native subject of our territories could have, supposing that right to be established in the mode prescribed by the local laws and regulations."

163. Had the provisions of that act been intended to apply to the importation and removal of slaves by land, in the Honourable Company's territories or the continent of India, it cannot be supposed that the Legislature would have confined the operation of the 4th section of that Act exclusively to the West Indies; that it would have subjected to the punishment of transportation whole NATIONS, amongst whom domestic slavery had immemorially existed, under the sanction of law, RECOGNIZED BY PARLIAMENT, and this without any reference to those established laws and usages, and without repealing the acts of Parliament, by which

the observance of them IS GUARANTEED TO THE NATIVES; that it would, in short, have subjected the Hindoo and Mahommedan inhabitants of the British territories in the East Indies, to the severe punishment of transportation, for acts which the 4th section of the act renders legal in the West Indies."

It would be superfluous for me, my Lord Duke, to adduce further references from the Reports in question, to prove that personal slavery exists in its most strict and absolute form in India. It not only does so, but it is "GUARANTEED TO THE NATIVES" by "Acts of the British Parliament,”by that Parliament, and by the people of that country who elect that Parliament, and who cry out to extinguish that system of domestic slavery which they had established and long encouraged in the West Indies!

In my former letter, I shewed, at great length, the incredible number of domestic slaves that there are at this day in India. One single reference may here be considered to be sufficient to shew this extent. "In Malabar and Canara alone," says the Madras Revenue Board, p. 900, "the number of slaves is calculated at 180,000" in 1819!

Thus, my Lord Duke, we have not only the admission, that personal slavery exists in India, but the inveteracy of the system is shewn in the acknowledged fact, that a slave trade, (about which I have hitherto said little) and to a great extent, continued to be carried on in that quarter of our dominions, ten years after it had been totally abolished in the West Indies; and we shall presently see that it continued to a much later-to the latest period. What will the insolent writer in the Westminster Review say to these notorious, these incontestable,

these overwhelming facts, and to his "flagrant falsehood," namely, that there are (for this is what his words are intended to convey) no slaves in India, and which, in the face of the whole British nation, insulted by such forth. I leave him, my Lord Duke, a flagrant act, he has ventured to put to that mortification, which detected "falsehood," and exposed ignorance and presumption feel, and must always feel.

Subsequent to the abolition of the African slave trade by Great Britain in 1808, great exertions were made by the authorities in India, in order to suppress the slave trade which was carried on in that quarter of the world, both by land and sea. Severe laws, in obedience to the British statute, and founded upon it, were passed in every Presidency; but after years of labour, these were found to be in a great measure inoperative, because they were opposed to the feelings and to the interests of the population and the government of Hindostan ; and while the operation of these laws was very frequently productive of

great injustice" (so the authorities state) to individuals, they were found to be too feeble to root out the inveterate evils against which they were directed. They continued to be evaded, both by land and sea, though less frequently so by the latter, than by the former. Down to 1825, the latest period to which the official documents reach, we find the system of kidnapping children, and selling them as slaves, continuing in various parts of India, notwithstanding the efforts of the authorities to punish and to prevent it. Almost every page of the documents referred to, bring before us instances of the violation of the laws in this respect. At page 376, we are told that the practice continued in Bengal so late as 1823; and at page 903, we find it stated in an official letter from the Court of Directors, to the Governor in Council of Fort George, dated 28th April 1824, that the system of kidnapping children was " very prevalent at Madras," and that the police endeavoured to apprehend the offenders," but without success;" and at page 555, as well as in various other passages, we find some striking instances mentioned, of parents selling their own children as slaves, which is considered legal by the Hindoo code. At page 115, we are told

that the traffic in children in Nepaul was very great. At page 211, we find the case stated, of a woman who had purchased at Jhausey, and brought into Cawnpoor in 1813, two young girls, for the purpose of prostitution, a custom which is quite common all over India. At pages 243 and 244, we are informed, that not only slavery existed in Dacca, but that a slave trade continued to be carried on there in 1813; and even as late as 1816, the practice of inveigling children, and evading the laws against the slave trade, continued to prevail in that quarter. At pages 246 and 247, we are told, that in 1816 it was the practice in Sylhet, for mothers to sell their children, and which children were better taken care of by their new masters" than by their own mothers; and farther, that in the Zellah Tipperal, the slave trade continues, the people selling themselves from poverty, &c. At page 109, we are told that "the importation and sale of slaves continues unrestricted in Rumpoore and the Rohilla Jageer;" and under date 17th June, 1825, J. COTTON, principal collector and magistrate, adverts to the continued practice of mothers selling their children, and then informs us, that in Tanjore Nagapatam, " slavery is carried to a greater extent than is generally understood, and TO BE INCREASING."

Pages 377-379 place before us, under the head Bengal Judicial Consultations, 25th March, 1824, the following remarkable instance of a foreign slave trade successfully carried on at Calcutta. The fact was stated in the Calcutta Journal, a paper, if I mistake not, then conducted by the individual who now conducts the Oriental Herald in London, which Journal, in a late number, had the extraordinary hardihood to dispute the existence, not only of a slave trade, but almost of slavery itself, in India; and further, of boldly asserting, that the quotations from the documents which have been so often referred to were unfairly quoted. To "such writers as" this, reply is unnecessary. The charge made about a slave trade in Calcutta, upon investigation, was found to be correct: it runs thus :-"We are informed that 150 Eunuchs have been landed from the Arab ships this season, to be sold as slaves in the capital of British India. It is known,

too, that these ships are in the habit of conveying away MANY OF THE NATIVES OF THIS COUNTRY, PRINCIPALLY

FEMALES, and disposing of them in Arabia, in barter for African slaves in the Calcutta market." "Nature shudders at the thought of the barbarities practised by these abusers of God's noblest creatures, who are led by an accursed thirst of gold, to brutalize the human species. Only one fact shall suffice, to shew the savage and murderous barbarity resorted to by the wretches engaged in a traffic so revolting to humanity. A gentleman has informed us, that of 200 African boys emasculated at Judda, only ten survived the cruel operation!"

It is twenty years, my Lord Duke, since the African slave trade with our West India colonies, a trade instituted and carried on, not by the colonies, but by the mother country, for her interest and advantage, was by law abolished, and since that period, not a single violation of the law by any British subject, has taken place in any one of these colonies; while in India, held up as being so pure and so superior to them, the violations are numerous-innumerable and glaring; but then these West India colonies have no harems to guard, like the Nabobs in the East,-like the worshippers of Juggernaut and the "False Prophet," and the Lords who rule both, otherwise they would not be so reviled and calumniated.

So inveterate is the system both of slavery and the slave trade in India, that, as I have already stated, after years of labour and of error from hasty measures, the East Indian government seem wisely to have adopted the plan of trusting to time, instruction, and good government, to meliorate and to root out these widespread evils in civil society in India; and so far are they, as the haughty writer in the Westminster Review boasts, from being secure from the non-existence of personal slavery in India, and heedless of what passes about that subject, that they tremble at the consequences which the innovations which have been attempted, and others which may be meditated, may produce in India, as the following extracts from their official correspondence and instructions will abundantly testify:

At page 106, G. DOWDESWELL, chief