his witnesses. The whole offence brought home to them was, their absenting them selves from the estate at night, to avoid carrying out dung by moonlight; and even in this offence some of the sufferers were not

implicated. One of them had only neglected his duty as a watchman.

“It may seem strange, after reading the act on which the indictment was founded, that any evidence of this kind should be received, since no offence on the part of the slaves could justify the cruel conduct of the master. But it will be thought still stranger, perhaps, that the defendant's counsel should argue to the jury against their obligation to respect the act itself, speaking of it in the most contemptuous way, and intimating that it was passed merely to satisfy the clamours

of some individuals in England, whom it was

necessary to appease. Such, however, appears to have been the nature of the defence; and the detence was effectual. Mr. Huggins, after a short deliberation by the jury, was acquitted!!!

may

" It be thought, that at least the of fender will be discountenanced hereafter by the more respectable members of the society. On the contrary, a party was making in his favour, to turn his opponents out of the Assembly at the present year's election, and place in their stead a majority, who may expunge the resolution recorded against him; and by the last accounts, two of his sons were just returned. The president of the council, being his son-in-law, is the less inexcusable for taking an active part on his behal; and the influence of his own pro perty and possessions in that small island is very considerable. But in the West Indies

a master, prosecuted for the abuse of his

power over his slaves, is always sure to find

zealous partizans in abundance, among the many who are conscious that the case may

be their own.

"Mr. Huggins is so well aware of this, that he has not been content to stand on the defensive. He has prosecuted, in St. Chris topher, the printer of the Gazette in that island, for inserting the minutes sent to him by order of the Assembly; and the prose cution has been so popular there, that one jury staid out of court a long time (it is said three days) because they could not agree in finding the defendant not guilty, though satisfied of his innocence in point

of intention.

"A juror at length was withdrawn, and a second trial afterwards had, when the fol Jowing verdict was found: Guilty of pub lishing a libel, issued by the House of As.

sembly of Nevis, under a mistaken opinion that it was not a libel, and that the autho rity of that body justified his publishing their resolutions."

"The printer was sentenced to a month's imprisonment, and to find bail to keep the peace for three years." pp. 43—60.

The above statement is fully confirmed in all its parts by papers which have been laid on the table of the House of Commons, (many of which are inserted in the Appendix to this Report), and particularly by the notes of evidence taken during the trial by the counsel employed, not only for the prosecutor, but for the defendant; the letters of Governor Elliott to the Earl of Liverpool; and the letters of J. W. Tobin, Esq. a planter of Nevis, to the Governor.

It ought to be known, that to the exertions of the gentleman who has just been mentioned, Mr. Tobin, it is owing, that these atrocious proceedings have attracted the notice of government and the public. MrTobin is himself a West Indian planter; but he has nobly emancipated himself from those shackles of prejudice by which most around him continue bound; and he has dared to be singular enough to advocate, in a West India colony, the cause of the To his lasting oppressed negro. praise be it recorded, that he has spared no pains, and scrupled no sacrifices of personal ease and comfort, to bring to light and to punish

ment the atrocities of which we have

given an account; and though assailed, as might have been expected, with the vilest slanders, as well as with threats of legal prosecution, he has continued to pursue, with a firm and unbending mind, his honourable course. He has, indeed, one peculiar source of protection from personal violence: he is blind, and cannot therefore be called out to

pay with his life the forfeit of his humanity. But this defect, on the other hand, serves to make his exertions, and the mental elevation which has dictated them, the more meritorious.

Before we close this review, we

shall have the gratification of recording a second instance of the same manly and generous spirit, which has recently occurred in another of our islands.

Mr. Tobin, in writing to Governor Elliott on the subject of Huggins's conduct, has thrown additional light upon it.

"Coming from a country where the foun tains of justice still remain pure, and the liberty of the press is respected, your Excellency must, I am persuaded, on your arri val here, have experienced the same feelings of surprise and indignation, which the re spectable part of this community did, on hearing a VERDICT of ACQUITTAL pronounced against one of the actors in that bloody scene! The evidence on the trial was still stronger than in the affidavits; for it appeared, not only that several of the negroes received more than two hundred lashes, but that a still severer torture was inflicted on one of them, by the continued application of two cart-whips, to make him confess, what he persevered in declaring he was ignorant of; and this was sworn to by two respectable witnesses. One of the women received two hundred and ninety-two lashes. She is still alive! But, another, of a weaker frame, and whose punishment was far less, died, after a lingering illness, the 22d of June last. Had they all died, the act by which they suffered being, according to the declaration of that jury, a legal act, the authors of it would have been perfectly GUILTLESS; and every overseer in the country, however ignorant or brutal, left at full liberty to whip, mutilate, and destroy, at his pleasure, the slaves committed to his charge. But, fortunately, the verdict of a jury makes no precedent in law; and CRUELTY, by the English law, which is in full force here, is still cruelty. It was not defined by our ancestors, or its limits marked out by line and compass, but left to the heart of inan to determine: and deeply it is to be lamented, that in this small community such an appeal is found in sufficient."

"Mr. Huggins, the author of these evils, when I was here sixteen years ago, was then as distinguished for his cruelty as in the present day, and his conduct held in abhorrence by every good man in the community, and by no one more than by Mr. Cottle, since become his son-in-law, neither deficient himself in understanding or hus manity. Mr. John Stanley, late attorney. general for these islands, some years since,

assured my father, that he was examined before a committee of the House of Com. mons respecting a murder committed by Mr. Huggins, who has not scrupled to acknowledge to a friend, that he shot a negro. It was understood at the time, that the body had been thrown into a negro hut, and burnt with it. An inquest was taken on the body of another negro, who died shortly after a most inhuman flogging; but the overseer, who is still in the island, refused to give any satisfactory evidence to the grand jury who examined him. Two wretched suicides, weary of life and the sufferings they endured, have been taken out of a cistern with their chains about them. Not whips and chains alone, but iron collars armed with spikes, have been used, and I believe still are, as instruments of punishment by this man. Ignorant and brutal as he is, he has amassed an immense fortune, and still is grasping at the possession of more land and Riore negroes. His doctrine was, that it was cheaper to buy negroes than to breed them. He has publicly boasted of five attempts against his life by poison; and there are medical men who well know the facts. In the first six months after he took possession of the estate called Pinnings, nine negroes died without any epidemic disease. A wretched old woman came to me a few days ago, to tell me she was compelled to work in the field. She was a favourite` house-negro in her former master's family, and had nursed one of his children. Being ordered to throw a mixture of gunpowder and salt-water on the mangled bodies of the negroes whipped in the market-place, she refused, and incurred the displeasure of her master; and her intellects have since been evidently disordered. An English groom, who had been witness to many of these shocking scenes, quitted the estate with horror, and returned to England, where his testimony will have some weight, as he bears a very good character. The negro, Fanny, who died, had not been accustomed to hard work for many years before Mr. H. got possession of the estate: but he put her into the field, and she was one of those ordered to carry out dung by night. She never worked with the hoe again after the whipping, and died of an atrophy. Of the three who composed the jury on the inquest, two were on the jury which acquitted Mr. Huggins; and the coroner was one of the magistrates, who, with unconcern, beheld the flogging in the marketplace. This inquest was never returned to the Secretary's office, as is usual, and was not to be tound when called for by the grand

jury, who, fortunately for the country, did not present either of the Mr. Huggins's, or we shou'd have witnessed a trial more scandalous than the last." pp. 81, 84, 85.

A letter accompanies these heartsickening communications from the Earl of Liverpool to Governor Elliott, in which he states, that the narrative of Mr. Huggins's unparalleled severity had made the deepest impres sion on the minds of his Majesty's government. "It might have been hoped," observes Lord L. " that the fear of disgrace attendant on an outrage of humanity, so publicly exhibited, would have been sufficient, in any civilized country, for its prevention; but it never could have been supposed possible that so flagrant a violation of the clause of the act, called the Melioration Act, could be submitted to the cognizance of a court of justice, and be exempted from the punishment which the judge is empowered to inflict on conviction of the offender." Had his Lordship passed a few years in the West Indies, and been acquainted with the interior structure of a West Indian community, his surprize would have been somewhat differently placed. It would have been excited by the novel circumstance of an accuser and prosecutor having been found there, bold enough to unveil such a transaction, rather than by the impunity which has attended it.

The view which Governor Elliott takes of the subject, in a letter which does not appear in this Report, but which is among the papers laid on the table of the House of Commons, is exceedingly just. The root of the evil, he remarks, lies deeper than in the remissness or culpability of the individuals who conduct the government of those islands; and he represents it as originating in the very frame of society. The acquirements of education among the white inhabitants, Consisting of " managers, overseers, self-created lawyers, self-educated physicians, and adventurous merchants, with little real capital and scanty credit, are very unequal to the task of taking a share in the go

vernment." And be it remembered, that to this class, so constituted and so qualified, the most important functions of government are entrusted. "The prevalence of principle, either moral or religious, is also (he fears) not to be fairly calculated from the repetition of the hackneyed expres sions, of which an ostentatious use is frequently made in addresses, and on all occasions meant to meet the public eye at home. To collect from such a state of society," con tinues the Governor," men fit to be legislators, judges, or jurymen, is perfectly impracticable."

We are happy to perceive that lord Liverpool, with an expression of becoming indignation, has conveyed to Governer Elliott, the commands of the Prince Regent, to remove from their honourable situation, any magistrates who actually witnessed the atrocities of Mr. Huggins without interference, and who have no better justification of their conduct to allege, than ignorance of the duties attached to their office; and he desires that this may be done "with that degree of publicity that may mark to the community to which they belong, his Royal Highness's reprobation of such culpable remissness on their part.'

So much space has been already occupied with the evils of the West Indian system, that there are some important features of it which we shall be obliged to leave almost wholly untouched. We allude particularly to the insufficiency of food; and to the system of coercing the labour of the negroes by means of the cart whip, which is universally prevalent in the West Indies. Particular instances of such cruel conduct as that of Mr. Huggins are only of occasional occurrence. The two evils which we have now mentioned, on the contrary, are of regu lar, unceasing, and therefore most powerful operation. During the hours of labour, the negroes are actually driven to exertion, by either the application, or the dread, of the impending lash, in the same way a

any country whether barbarous or civilized, nine-tenths at least of the whole mass of the population;-it then becomes the indispensible duty of those who have too rashly delegat

a team of horses is driven in England, And while they are thus incited by brute force, in a climate requiring indulgence, to efforts far beyond their strength in respect both of intensity and duration, their allowed such a power, to inquire into its ance of food is, in a vast number of misapplication, and, if some less cases, exceedingly scanty and inade, summary remedy does not promise to quate, as we should be prepared be efficacious,even to annul the grant, to prove from documents furnished Is it to be endured that the five or by the West Indians themselves, six hundred white inhabitants of On this branch of the subject, how, Nevis, for example, shall combine ever, we cannot at present dwell. to reduce to the condition of brute beasts not less, perhaps, than ten thousand of their fellow-subjects? and, though depending entirely on the naval and military force of the mother country for the means of safety from internal revolt, shall yet question the right of Parliament, even to take cognizance of their internal administration, however flagrantly unjust and oppressive it may be proved to be; because, forsooth, they have, at some time or other, received what they chuse to call a British constitution! The principle has been fully admitted, that if the electors of a particular borough should grossly abuse their privileges, they may be disfranchised by act of parliament; and instances have occurred, even in our own memory, of the disfranchisement of boroughs, which contained many more voters than Nevis contains free inhabitants. Why should the charter of Nevis be held on a dif ferent tenure? Besides this, the charters, or constitutions, given to the different islands, expressly sti pulate that nothing shall be enacted by their legislatures, and therefore, by inference, that nothing shall be in force as law, which is inconsis tent with the laws of England. On this ground alone, there is not a single charter granted to a West India colony which has not been forfeited; for there is not a single colony in which the gift of what is called a British constitution has not been employed as the means of establishing a system of tyranny and despotism, not merely alien to the liberal spirit of British legislation,

But what, it will be asked, is the remedy which it is in the power of Parliament to apply to these admitted and enormous evils? Has not the mother country resigned to her colonies, by formal acts, the right of interior legislation; and does not the case of America fur nish a practical and conclusive illustration of the danger of interfering with such a right? We re ply, that the contest with America was a contest respecting taxation, and not legislation. If we were to admit in the fullest extent, that the population of every British colony inherited an exclusive right to tax themselves, yet no such right of legislating for themselves can be inferred from the principles of the British constitution, and still less from the universal usage in similar cases. In truth, the laws of Great Britain, are, ipso facto, the laws of every British colony, until either by charter, or by act of parliament, a power of local legislation is conferred upon it, or rather delegated to it. It hardly requires an argument to shew, that if this power should be systematically abused to purposes directly at variance with those for which it was conferred ;if instead of being employed for the only legitimate ends of all govern, ment-the protection of subjects, and the maintenance of their just rights by an equal and impartial administration of the laws-it is made the instrument of subjecting to the extremity of degradation and wretchedness, to the most grinding oppression which has ever disgraced

but revolting to every feeling of common humanity.

But the objection we are considering stands opposed to precedent as well as to principle. Innumerable are the acts to be found in the statute books of this country, which go directly to legislate for the colonies; and even the famous declaratory act of Mr. Grenville, while it renounces the right in the impe. rial parliament of taxing the colonies, is so far from renouncing the right of legislating for them, that it solemnly affirms the existence of such a right, and the determination of Parliament to maintain it inviolate.

It would carry us too far from our present purpose, were we to discuss at large this important, but greatly misconceived, subject. All we propose to do is to enter our protest against that novel and mischievous doctrine, which, for the purpose of saving in its integrity the right of individuals to oppress and crush, for their own emolument, thousands and hundreds of thousands of their fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, would divest the imperial parliament of all authority to inquire into the exercise of powers which itself had incautiously delegated, or to redress and prevent wrongs, which, but for the protection it affords to the wrongdoer, would not be endured by the sufferers, perhaps, for a single day. For our own parts, we should be reluctant to have recourse to the violent remedy to which we have thought it right to advert; and we should there, fore rejoice if the colonial legislatures would themselves begin the work of reformation. But we do not see how Parliament can avoid looking into the case, now that it has forced itself into notice, without a complete dereliction of its duties. To the disgrace of Great Britain and her colouies, the British slave code is more severe in its provisions than, perhaps, any other. Compared with it, the code promulgated by the Spanish government is freedom itself. A copy of this code has been laid on

the table of the House of Commons, and is inserted in the Appendix to the present Report. We will briefly notice its principal provi- . sions.

Every master is obliged to instruct his slaves in the principles of religion, taking care to explain to them the Christian doctrine every holiday, on which they are not to be obliged, nor even permitted to work, either for themselves or for their masters *, excepting at the time of the crop. The justices of the district, and the magistrates, are to determine the quantity and quality of food and clothes to be given to the slaves by their masters. The justices and magistrates are also to regulate the work to be done in the course of the day; giving the slaves two hours of each day for their own use and advantage; taking care that no slave shall be required to work who is sixty years old, or younger than seventeen; and that the women shall not be employed in any business which is not conformable to their sex, or in which they must mix with the ment. Their times of diversion, the commodiousness of their houses, the sufficiency of beds and bedding, and the erection of proper infirmaries are made the subject of specific regulations. Masters must not allow the unlawful intercourse of the sexes, but must encourage matrimony; nor must they hinder their slaves from marrying with those of other masters. And in case of such marriage, the wife shall follow her husband, whose master shall buy

In the English islands, Sunday is the universal market-day. On that day also, the slave is, in many cases, compelled to labour for the purpose of raising food for himself and family. The master's avarice will not allow him even this respite from toil, which the Almighty has mercifully provided both for man and beast.

In the English islands, the women not only work in the same place with the men, but in general are compelled to perform the same kind and quantity of agricultural labour.