The Horrors of the Negro Slavery Existing in our West Indian Islands, Irrefragably Demonstrated From Official Documents
9781465679277
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In the last Session of Parliament a variety of papers respecting the Slave Trade was laid on the table of the House of Commons, and among them, the following extract of a letter from Lord Seaforth, the Governor of Barbadoes, to Lord Hobart, dated at Barbadoes, the 18th March 1802, viz. “Your Lordship will observe in the last days proceedings of the Assembly, that the majority of the House had taken considerable offence at a message of mine, recommending an act to be passed to make the murder of a Slave felony. At present the fine for the crime is only fifteen pounds currency, or ELEVEN POUNDS FOUR SHILLINGS STERLING.” It was difficult to conceive a stronger proof of the deplorably unprotected condition of the Negro Slavesin Barbadoes, the oldest and most civilized of our slave colonies, than is furnished by the above official document. In a community where even the life of a Negro slave is estimated at the cheap rate of eleven pounds four shillings sterling, and where a proposition to raise its legal value to a price which may be less revolting to European feelings is resented as an affront by a grave legislative assembly; it would argue an utter ignorance of the nature of man, and of the principles by which his conduct is usually guided, to expect that the general treatment of Negro slaves should be humane and lenient. But we are not at present reduced to the necessity of inferring, by the aid of disputable analogies, the practical nature of the existing slavery, from the state of the laws respecting it. What might, last year, have been considered by some as matter of presumption merely, of presumption, however, sufficiently strong to remove all doubt from unprejudiced minds, is now matter of fact. We have now the practice of slavery so graphically described, in some further documents of unquestionable authority, as to supersede the necessity of reasoning, and to silence the most determined stickler for West Indian humanity. On the 25th of February 1805, a number of additional papers respecting the Slave Trade was presented to the House of Commons by His Majesty. To these papers it is the purpose of this pamphlet to call the attention of the public, as exhibiting a picture of Negro bondage, with which every individual in the kingdom ought to be made fully acquainted, who has a heart to feel for the miseries of his fellow-creatures, or a voice to raise against that detestable traffic which is the main prop of colonial despotism.
