Negro, if you will, with every comfort which a better climate and the interested care of a calculating master can afford; surround him with his family. He looks at his wife, the partner only of his bondage; her back, perhaps, striped with the lash, her wrists galled with the fetters, and on her shoulder the burning brand which marks her as the chattel of another; subject, like himself, to the cruel caprice of a slave-driver, to all the violence which unrestrained and irresponsible power never fails to engender in the human mind; subject, perhaps, to worse-to the delicate partialities of her task-master! And these are the domestic reflections of a Slave, until the crack of the thoug calls him to labour, and tells him that reflection is not for the Slave. He looks at his children; not the hope and pride of his affections, but children born only to receive from him and drink to the dregs the bitter cup of hereditary degradation-to inherit from him the hateful and hopeless portion of the brand, and the chain, and the cartwhip -a family whom he may love, but whom he can neither cherish nor defend. And this is the condition of 800,000 British subjects. (Cheering.) It is said that Slaves have no feelings to be wounded by this. Then a thousand times cursed be the system which has extinguished such feeling within them! But of this even slavery is not guilty. No; the poor slave can feel as a man, and has feelings which would often put those of more cultivated minds to shame.

"As the stern captive spurns his iron load,

And asks the image back that Heav'n bestowed,
Proud in his eye the fire of nature burns,

And, as the Slave departs, the Man ́returns!"

(Hear, hear.) I would that those who deny to the poor slave a participation in feelings like our own, who libel the justice of creating Providence and would cancel the charter by which God has given feeling and soul to universal man; I would that they had but heard the testimony on that point as I did, of a slave-master, but one of the kindest of human beings, a gentleman who resided long on his property at St. Vincent's. He told me, that after a few years' residence there, finding that the village in which his gang lived was unhealthy and incommodious, he looked about for some better spot to build habitations upon for them. He fixed upon one with all the advantages that situation and good air, and, the inestimable

blessing there, of good water, could give them, and he employed the gang to collect materials for building. One day, as he was superintending his preparations, one of the gang advanced to him as spokesman, and begged he would be kind enough to say what he was making those prepa rations for. He pointed out the advantages of the site on which they stood, and told them he meant to remove them from the unhealthy swamp in which they were living. Suddenly a strange and universal groan burst from the gang. Divers slaves came up to him in attitudes of sorrow and supplication. They pointed to their village. One said, "Under that tree lies the body of a child I lost in its infancy." Another, "There are buried my parents." A third, "In that village I lived with my wife; I lost her. Do not remove us from that spot." Let Him who alone can try the hearts of man judge between such feelings and those of the majority of the men in whose hands the mortal destinies of these poor creatures are placed; between such feelings and those of the Legislatures of Barbadoes and Jamaica. (Hear, hear.) Why, then, driven to their last hold, the planters take refuge in the very citadel of their cause. They ask us, "Have we not at least an in. terest in the health of our labourers? And can their health be better secured than by kind treatment? Would any man who values his property abuse or overwork or starve his farm-horse?" Let us for a moment subdue the sentiments of disgust and indignation that spring up to meet such a question; let us forget every claim of right and reason and immortal soul; grant that man is justly given to his fellow-man as a beast of burthen and of toil; and grant that the driver has the same interest and no passions, neither of which, I apprehend, is true; then I turn from the case of the slave of the farm and of the household, to a worse state than either-the jobbing slaves; a class whom it is always the business of the planters to keep out of sight in these discussions; slaves kept by masters who have no land, to let out on jobs to those who have. And I then say that, whatever is the interest of him who works the poor horse in the mill to his last expiring sob, the same precisely is the interest of the master of this jobbing gang. And who is to provide for the jobbing slave, when < old age or hopeless infirmity has closed for ever the account of profit between his master and himself? But I turn willingly from these subjects to one which may well inspire us

with hope and confidence in the good work to which we have set our hands. Let us look back to the Slave-Trade debates. It is cheering, at least it is consolatory, to see that the self-same opposition was raised, and nearly the self-same arguments, against the abolition of the Slave Trade, until the very hour when the slave-ships went down with the bloody flag still flying, went down amidst the cheers of a triumphant majority in Parliament and a sympathising people; the Slave Trade, now named only among the foul crimes against which the laws of the land have vindicated those of God and nature, by declaring them felony by statute. The Slave Trade finds no one bold enough now to defend even its memory. And yet, when we hear the Slave Trade reprobated, and Slavery defended by the same persons, I must own I think the Slave Trade unfairly treated. The abuse of defunct Slave Trade is a cheap price for the abettor of living Slavery to pay by way of compromise. But we cannot allow the Colonial party, on these terms, to cry truce with us, by stigmatizing the Slave Trade. There is not one general principle on which the Slave Trade is to be stigmatized, which does not impeach Slavery itself. If Slave Trade is spoliation, the liberty of the man is the spoil, and his fellow-man loses his title to the possession. If Slavery is more to be authorized on one account than any other, it is because it perpetuates, and always must, a Contraband Slave Trade. The Slave Trade abolition is incomplete, rapine and murder are still carried on, and by English hands too, upon the defenceless shores of Africa, and the murderous horrors of the middle passage still abound, and must abound, while Slavery exists. It is with you, it is with the people of England, now to urge Parliament on to its duty. Great objects are in preparation for next Session. But we must look to your Petitions for support. You have in your cause the gigantic powers of Mr. Brougham, the fascinating eloquence of Sir J. Mackintosh, the indefatigable activity and knowledge of Mr. Buxton and Dr. Lushington, and you have the veteran and honest zeal of Mr. William Smith. I would advert to the invaluable assistance out of Parliament, of one of the most distinguished supporters of this great cause whose name, I trust, we shall be honoured with as a vice-president; but it would be the worst taste in the world of me to speak of him while his son (Mr, Stephen) is at my left haud, (Hear, hear.) I may how

་

ever speak (how can we here be silent?) on the venerable and glorious example of his immortal kinsman, Mr. Wilberforce. May the calm evening of his pure and illustrious life be cheered and made truly happy by meeting the final consunimation of the great cause with which it is identified. (Cheers.) I glory in the position in which you have just placed me in this society. I only feel shame in the length of time I have trespassed upon you. Yet let me implore, in the name of your country, because of freedom-in the name of justice and of right, because of freedom-in the name of religion-of that Being "whose service" at least "is perfect freedom," never to relax your efforts until they shall have obtained peace for Africa, liberty for those hundreds of thousands of fellow-subjects who are unrepresented here but by your sympathy; and, though long delayed, the unspeakable glory for your native land, of leading the way, before the Old Nations at least of the earth (some parts of the New World have set us a noble example), in that great blessing for the whole of mankind, the full and entire abolition of Slavery. (This address was received throughout with great applause, which lasted for some time after its conclusion.)

Mr. Cockburn's Speech.

My Lord, I hold in my hand a Petition, which I propose to submit to this meeting, as proper to be adopted; and after what you have heard, I have little more than to say, that it embodies the resolutions which have now been passed, and that from the bottom of my heart, I do most sincerely approve of all that this Society has done of all that it is now doing-and of the great work which I trust it is yet destined to accomplish. (Applause.) The fact is, my Lord, that we have now come to that stage in the history of this great question at which all doubts as to its material features are removed. I don't say that we have come to the time at which the railer is to be silent, or the selfish man is to avow that he is confuted. [During the meeting a slight opposition was attempted, but when an opportunity was offered to the opponent to speak, he slunk away.] But I do say that we are come to that stage in which no person, without plainly professing to resign his understanding, can say, "I am still a friend of Slavery.” (Immense applause.) About a year or two ago, his majes ty's government required the colonial authorities to send to

parliament a statement of what they had done for the amelioration of their slaves. They have sent that statement; and we now see, under their own hand-writing, how true their former statements were—and, if we only knew thenf by their own accounts, we should judge more candidly of them. We have it on the official reports of the local authorities in the West-Indies themselves; and the essence of these reports is to be found in a book lately published, the name of which you will all observe, for I beg you will all read it for yourselves: it is entitled, "A Picture of Negro Slavery, drawn by the Colonists themselves." This pamphlet any body may read in the course of about two hours; it consists of about 150 pages, of which I should suppose, upon a guess, not twenty of them are written by any person but the Colonists themselves. These pages contain the evidence by the West-Indian planters, why Great Britain should no more interfere. These pages contain the proofs that they are going on perfectly well. Now, my Lord, if there be one person in this room, who has not yet read every page of that terrible record, that person has not done -not what charity asks-but what justice demands in behalf of the family of man. (Applause.) Since the comreencement of the long annals of human atrocity, I don't believe that such a picture ever met the human eye. There was an old Italian poet, who had passed through many personal sufferings, and lived in the most troublous era of his country's history, who was possessed of a fertile and gloomy imagination, and who, with the pen of fiction, sat down to embody in words all the terrible conceptions of his, soul. This was a cause to exhaust his genius by supposing his enemies and human criminals placed in an aërial region of his own making, and in assigning to them all the dreadfal punishments, all the terrible employments, by which he thought that guilt ought to be visited. It has always been imputed to that genius, that it is in some degree absurd, by the extravagance of his fictitious wretchedness.-Gentlemen, I assure you, upon my personal authority-for I have read the book-that all the horrors of the dark fancy of Dante are exceeded by the actual horrors which pass every day in our own islands upon those whom we have "torn from their country to put them there, protected by what we call our laws, shielded by what we term the charity of our religion, sprung from the same origin with ourselves, partakers of the same common nature, destined