nishment of transportation to the crime of trading in slaves, was lately brought forward in parliament, not a voice was raised against it in either house. We have thought it due to the leaders in this cause thus briefly to explain the reasons, as stated by lord Grenville himself, of their having, in the first instance, stopped short of those measures of just se verity to which they have since resorted, and which indeed they foresaw would be necessary for the accomplishment of their object. Some evils may appear to have been incurred by this more lenient course: it has been insufficient to prevent a considerable contraband slave trade: but how much greater would those evils have been, if, through their precipitancy, the bill had at that time been lost. Our readers will also recollect how critical was the moment of its passing. In an hour after it had received the Royal assent in the House of Lords, the ministers who had framed and proposed and supported this most beneficent measure laid at his Majesty's feet the seals of their respective offices. And although the bill had received the active support of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Canning, and also of lord Harrowby, and other friends of the succeeding administration in both houses, yet it was impossible not to feel great anxiety, until it had passed into a law, lest something should have occurred, in that moment of political change and party violence, to frustrate the hopes that had been raised of seeing an irreversible sentence of condemnation pronounced on this cruel and disgraceful traffic. The present parliamentary year had no sooner opened, than the Directors of the African Institution appear to have employed themselves in preparing a bill which might strengthen the too feeble provisions of the former acts. That bill has received the Royal assent, and is now in operation. Its main object is to inflict the punishment of transportation, not exceeding fourteen years, or of confinement and

hard labour for a term not exceeding five years, nor less than three years, on all persons, subjects of Great Britain, or residing in any part of the British dominions, who shall be convicted either of reducing any person to slavery, or of carrying away, buying, selling, or using such person as a slave, or of detaining, confining, or embarking on board of any vessel, any such person for the purpose of being sold or dealt with as a slave, or of fitting out, or navigating, or of being in any way concerned in fitting out or navigating any vessel, either employed or intended to be employed in the Slave Trade: in short, of being engaged, either directly or indirectly, by themselves or their agents, in this trade. This pu nishment admits of a mitigation in the case of persons acting as petty officers, servants, or seamen; who are to be punished, as guilty of a misdemeanour, only with imprisonment, not exceeding two years; and to such persons a promise of complete impunity is held out, in case they shall, within three months after their arrival at a British port, give information on oath against the principals in the crime to which they have been accessaries, so that such principals may be prosecuted to conviction. Offences under this act are very appropriately directed to be tried according to the provisions made for the suppression of piracy in an act of the 28th of Henry VIII. and of the 11th and 12th of William III.-The present act is not to be construed as repealing any of the former acts for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in respect of forfeitures and pecuniary penalties; and a power is conveyed by it, to all governors of forts and settlements on the coast of Africa, and to all persons deputed by them, of making seizures and prosecuting offences under those acts.

We are sanguine in hoping that this new law will very materially abridge, if not wholly abolish, that contraband Slave Trade which British subjects and British capital, dur

ing the last two years, have been engaged in carrying on. On this point, we shall quote the authority of the Directors of the African Institution.

"It is obvious, that, while the punish

ment of trading in Slaves is confined to confiscations and pecuniary mulets, the only consideration with the individuals who are still unprincipled enough to embark in it will be, whether the profits of their crime be more than adequate to the pecuniary loss which they risk by the commission of it.

"This view of the subject has been exemplified on a variety of occasions, and it is strikingly confirmed in a letter received a few weeks since from Mr. Smith, the act

ing Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court at Sierra Leone, dated 12th December, 1810. This gentleman expresses himself as follows: "I have had my hands' pretty full of admiralty business lately; but it appears to me, that hardly any thing will put a stop to this abominable traffic. The profits are so extremely high, that if they save one cargo out of three, they will still make money.'

"

Such being the case, it became necessary that a punishment of a very different nature should be attached to this crime. And the Directors cannot but hope, that the risk of an arraignment and trial for felony will do more to deter men possessing capital, from engaging in the Slave Trade, than the infliction of the severest fines." pp. 10, 11.

There is one clause in the act - which seems to us to require a few observations. It is that which excepts from the operation of this law all persons selling, removing, or transferring slaves within the British West India Colonies, provided such slaves shall have been imported before the first of January 1808; for if imported subsequently to that period, they are legally entitled to freedom. We do not mean to deny the propriety, all things considered, of this exception; and yet we find it hard to reconcile our minds to the circumstances which render such an exception necessary or expedient. There is something extremely revolting to British, and still more to Christian, feelings in the parliamentary recognition of a state of slavery, unless it be for the purpose of mitigating its harshness. Jealous as this nation has always been on the subject of personal liberty,

it is not easy to account for the worse than apathy with which it has re garded the open and undisguised oppression of hundreds of thousands of our fellow-subjects, who are shut out not only from all participation in British rights, but are destitute even of the shadow of legal protection, except in what regards life or limb. We have often brought before our readers a view of that frightful system of bondage which prevails in our colonies. We are unwilling that should be weakened by any apprethe impressions of its enormity, hension that the Abolition of the Slave Trade has as yet had the effect of materially softening its rigours. It is a system which stands still preeminent in cruelty and injustice; for we are bold to affirm that there is no condition of slavery now existing on the face of the globe, and that there never has existed a state of slavery, not even among the Romans, whose slave code was by far the most rigorous of any, which may not be called mild in comparison with the slavery of our West Indian Co. lonies. And yet this slavery, known and proved to be thus inhuman and oppressive, is continued, is recognized, is sanctioned even by a British Parliament, without one di, rect step being taken for the allevi. ation of its miseries. It is indeed most strange that such a monstrous anomaly as this should ever have existed. It will be stranger still, if, after its true nature has been fully and accurately ascertained, it shall continue to exist, without an attempt, at least, to abate its evils.

Let us contemplate the state of a slave in the British West Indies. He is, in the first place, the absolute property of his master, and may be sold by him at pleasure, precisely in the same manner as he may sell a horse or a mule. Nor is the master bound, in making such a transfer of a fellow-creature, to consider for one moment, either the character of the individual to whom he conveys by the deed of sale his right of property, nor the ties of husband, father, wife, or child, which may be sud

St. Kitt's in 1798, in consequence of the earnest applications of his Majesty's Government (pursuant to a parliamentary address) to the colonial governors and legislatures, to obtain laws for the protection of slaves and the melioration of their state; and an act was passed for those purposes, by the tenth section of which it is enacted, that the slaves shall not be turned out to work before five o'clock in the morning, nor after seven in the evening, except in crop time, or from some evident necessity, under the penalty of five pounds.

"Whether Mr. Huggius's slaves had heard of this law, or whether the repugnance of injured nature to his oppresions produced involuntary opposition, is not known; but so it was, that some desertions, or some appearances of insubordination, were asserted to have been produced by the illegal exaction of night-work in carrying out dung. No insurrection, nor any forcible resistence of the master's authority, was proved, or even pretended, on the the part of Mr. Huggins; and had such crimes beef committed, the civil magistrate in the West Indies is always ready enough to punish them; nor is the bringing slaves to judicial punishment attended with any trouble, expense, or delay. Mr. Huggins had therefore no excuse for taking the law into his own hands, if the of fence had been of a public kind. But it is understood to have amounted to no more than the private fault of non-obedience to unlawful commands of the master or his agents, or, at most, to desertion from the estate.

"This gentleman, however, was resolved on a vengeance, not only extra-judicial, but such as no magistrate, even in cases of the most heinous public offences, is empowered by law to inflict.

"Here it is necessary to say something of the mode of corporal punishment to which Mr. Huggins had resort, and its limitation by the colonial law.

"The ordinary punishment of slaves, is a whipping with the cart whip, or, as it is called in Jamaica, the Cattle Whip, because it is the same which the drivers of carts or waggons in the West Indies apply to their mules or other cattle when working in a team. The same instrument coerces the labour of slaves in the field; but when applied as a punishment - for past faults, and in a solemn way, its infictious are much more severe. The slave, instead of receiving a lash or two horizontally, or obliquely, over his jacket, shirt, or trowsers (which, nevertheless, is sufficiently painful), is laid down on the ground, his arms and legs being extended, and generally held down, and his body laid bare from the back downwards. The lash is then applied vertically, by the driver or executioner, who stands at the proper distance to make the

sufferer feel the full power of his torturing instrument. The report of the lash is louder than that of the long whalebone whips of our London carmen; and its effect so severe (except when the drivers are humanely for bid to cut, as the phrase is), that blood is drawn, and the skin stripped off, by every lash; till at length, if they are numerous, the poor victim's flesh, from the small of the back or hips down to the middle of the thigh, is not only excoriated, but cruelly mangled and torn. Such deep incisions are often made, that the parts, after they are bealed, retain a shocking appearance during the rest of life.

"From this account of the punishment, it will not seem strange that the number of lashes has been limited, by general practice as well as law, to a number less than forty. In most of the penal slave laws of the colonies, there is no medium in the scale of punishments, when inflicted by judgment of law, between thirty-nine lashes of the cart whip, and mutilation, banishment, or death; and ten or twelve lashes are in general held an adequate punishment for common domestic offences—at least by merciful masters. The meliorating acts, as they are called, for the protection of slaves, have in this respect attempted, or affected, to controul the master's authority; and the acts of the Leeward Islands already referred to, in the fourteenth section, has enacted, That if any person shall" cruelly whip" his slave, he shall be liable to an indictment in the superior court of criminal jurisdiction of the island, and, on conviction, shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court. The slave, so cruelly whipped, is also, if it be thought necessary for his protection, to be sold to another master.

"After these explanations, the nature of Mr. Huggins's conduct will be better understood.

"Not content with gratifying his vengeance by punishment within the bounds of bis plantation, where he might have laughed at public justice, by suffering none but slaves to witness his oppressions; he was resolved to shew his contempt of the law, and of the feelings of his more humane fellow-colonists, by making the public market-place of Charlestown, which is the seat of the insular courts and government, the theatre of a dreadful execution upon his unfortunate slaves.

" Accordingly, on the 23d of January 1810, he went, attended by two of his sons, on horseback, with upwards of twenty of his devoted victims, men and women, in custody of the drivers, through the streets of Charlestown, to the market-place; and there proceeded to indulge his cruelty to the utmost, during more than two hours, in the face of day, and in the sight and hearing, not only

of free persons, but magistrates, who offered him no interruption.

"To one negro man he gave, by the hands of expert drivers, no less than three hundred and sixty-five lashes; to another, one hundred and fifteen; to a third; one hundred and sixty-five; to a fourth, two hundred and fifty-two; to a fifth, two hundred and twelve; to a sixth, one hundred and eighty-one; to a seventh, one hundred and eighty-seven;-to a woman, one hundred and ten; to another, fifty-eight; to a third woman, ninety-seven; to a fourth, two hundred and twelve; to a fifth, two hundred and ninety-one; to a sixth, eighty-three; to another, eighty-nine; and to various other women and men, various other cruel measures of the same punishment.

"The poor sufferers were, of course, dreadfully cut and mangled; but they were conveyed to the plantation of their savage master, and attended by his surgeon, who, at his request, had been present at the execution, and who, though a justice of peace, had not interfered, as such, to prevent or forbid the crime. By his evidence at the trial which afterwards took place, it would appear that none of them died, though he admitted that many of them had suffered severely from fevers, the effects of their punishment. But by a subsequent account from the island, it appears that one of the women who was the most severely whipped; has died since the trial, or has since been discovered to be dead.-Either this, or some other female sufferer, cried out during the whips ping, that she was with child, but was disragarded, and her punishment went on. Among the circumstances of cruelty which have been mentioned, one of the drivers was brother to one of the men whom he was compelled to lacerate in the presence of the unfeeling master.

"At the tinie of this outrage on humanity, public decency, and law, no less then seven magistrates were in Charlestown. Two of them, the Rev. William Green, who holds two livings in the island, and is a justice of the peace, and the Rev. Samuel Lyons who also holds two livings there, and is a member of the council, were within hearing of the lash, and inust have known of the cruel and illegal cause, yet did not at all interpose. The same has been already remarked of the surgeon, Dr. Cassin. He admitted, at one of the trials which took place, that he was sent for by Mr. Huggins to attend in his professional character, and that having counted two hundred and thirty-six lashes given to one of the negroes, he said he thought it was enough; but Mr. Huggins replied, he CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 115.

did not want his advice, unless he thought the man could bear no more, on which he, the witness, retired: Another justice of the peace, Mr. Edward Huggins, jun. was seeh looking on at the execution the greatest part of the time.

"But though some of the magistracy of the island were thus negligent of their duty, and appeared to regard the meliorating act, as all such acts, it is to be feared, are regarded in every island which has passed them, viz. as laws never meant to be obeyed; the House of Assembly at Nevis, to its honour, considered this transaction as one that they were bound in humanity, and from regard to the credit of the colony, publicly to reprobate, and to make the subject of legal investigation. On the 31st of January 1810, eight days after the fact, they came to a resolution to that effect, which they ordered to be printed, and to be transmitted to England, and circulated throughout all the Islands, together with the evidence laid before them as to the facts of the case.

"The Council concurred in this resolution, except as to the printing and publishing the minutes; but they had been published previously to this opinion of the Council; in the Gazette of St. Christopher, by order of the House of Assembly.

"It should here be observed; that as there is no newspaper at Nevis, the Gazette of St. Christopher is the common organ of all official publications by the Government of Nevis.

Perhaps to publish the evidence at all in that stage of the proceeding was premature; but the Assembly seems to have thought that the audacious publicity and notoriety of the act demanded from them a public reprobation of it, lest it should redound to their own disgrace, and be a subject of scandal in Europe. Whatever credit, however, the resolution may reflect on the individuals who passed it, the event has too well proved that the society in general does not deserve to share in it.

"An indictment was preferred, and found against Mr. Huggins, on the Act of the Leeward Islands before referred to; and early in May, 1810, it came on to be tried in the Court of King's Bench and Common Pleas at Nevis, when the facts, as here stated, were fully proved; and indeed not disputed on the part of the defendant. He contented himself with attempting to prove that the slaves had been disorderly; but nothing like forcible resistance to the master's authority, or even mutinous or disrespectful language to him, or to any white person, was proved against them by any of 3 L