reform is inevitably consequent, and the settlement of the constitution on the democratic basis certain.']
[Footnote 224: Hallam, 'Constitutional History,' c. xvi.,
[Footnote 225: 'Semper in republica timendum est ne plurimum valeant plurinn.'-Cicero.]
CHAPTER X. Abolition of Slavery.-Abridgment of the Apprenticeship.-The East India Company's Trade is Thrown Open.-Commencement of Ecclesiastical Reforms.-The New Poor-law.-State of Ireland.-Agitation against Tithes.-Coercion Bill.-Beginning of Church Reform.-Sir Robert Peel becomes Prime- minister.-Variety of Offices held Provisionally by the Duke of Wellington.-Sir Robert Peel Retires, and Lord Melbourne Resumes the Government.-Sir Robert Peel Proposes a Measure of Church Reform.-Municipal Reform.-Measures of Ecclesiastical Reform.
Apart from the consideration of the abstract principle, on which the advocates of Parliamentary Reform had insisted, of the light of many classes hitherto unrepresented to representation, they had also dwelt on the practical advantage which might be expected to ensue from the greater degree in which public opinion would henceforth be brought to bear on the action of the Houses, and, by a natural consequence, on the administrative government also. And the bill had hardly passed when this result began to show itself, not only in transactions of domestic legislation, but in others which affected our most remote dependencies, both in the East and West. We have seen in a previous chapter how Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he had not ventured to grapple with the institution which gave birth to that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged. It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an anomaly, and a glaring inconsistency, in any British settlement. The law, as we have seen, had been laid down as absolutely settled, that no man within the precincts of the United Kingdom could be a slave; that, even had such been his previous condition, the moment his foot touched English soil he became a free man. By what process of reasoning, then, could it be contended that his right to liberty according to English law depended on what portion of the British dominion he was in-that what was incompatible with his claims as a human being in Kent ceased to be so in Jamaica? The sentiment that what was just or unjust in one place was just or unjust in every place; that a man's right to freedom did not depend on the country of his birth or the color of his skin, had naturally and logically been widely diffused and fostered by the abolition of the slave-trade. It was but a small step from admitting that there could be no justification for making a man a slave, to asserting that there was an equal violation of all justice in keeping one in slavery; and this conclusion was strengthened by tales, which were continually reaching those most interested in the subject, of oppression and cruelty practised by the masters, or oftener by their agents and overseers, on the unfortunate beings over whom they claimed power and right as absolute as any owner could pretend to over any description of property. They made so general an impression that, ten years before the time at which we have now arrived, a society had been formed in London whose object was the immediate extinction of slavery in every British settlement; and Canning, then Secretary of State, had entered warmly into the general object of the society; not, indeed, thinking the instant abolition practicable, but inducing Parliament to pass a body of resolutions in favor of at once improving the condition of the slaves, as the best and necessary preparation for their entire enfranchisement; [226] and the next year, 1824, the subject was recommended to the attention of the Houses in the King's speech, and an Order in Council was issued enjoining the adoption of a series of measures conceived in the spirit of those resolutions, among which one was evidently meant as a precursor of the slaves' entire emancipation, since it gave the 'negro who had acquired sufficient property' a title 'to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife and family.' And it was, probably, from regarding it in this light that the planters (as the owners of estates in the West Indies were generally called) selected that provision as the object of their most vehement remonstrances. But, though they were not so open in their remonstrances against the other clauses of the order, they did worse, they disregarded them; and the stories of the ill-treatment of the slaves were neither less frequent nor less revolting than before.
Fresh Orders in Council, avowedly designed as the stepping-stones to eventual emancipation, were issued; and one which reached the West Indies at the end of 1831 was, unhappily, so misconstrued by the slaves in Jamaica, who regarded it as recognizing their right to instant liberation, that, when their masters refused to treat it as doing so, they broke out into a formidable insurrection, which was not quelled without great loss of life and destruction of property. The planters were panic-stricken; many of them, indeed, were almost ruined. The colonial Legislatures, [227] which had been established in the greater part of the islands, addressed the ministers with strong protests against the last Order in Council; and the mischief which had confessedly been already done, and the farther mischief which was not unreasonably dreaded, were so great that the cabinet consented to suspend it for a while; and the House of Commons made a practical confession that the planters were entitled to sympathy as well as the slaves, by voting nearly a million of money to compensate those of Jamaica for their recent losses.
But out-of-doors the feeling rather was that the insurrection had been caused, not by the unreasoning though natural impatience for freedom entertained by the negro-whom Canning had truly described as 'possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect of a child'-but by the slackness and supineness of the local Legislature, too much under the influence of the timid clamors of the planters to listen to the voice of justice and humanity, which demanded to the full as emphatically, if somewhat less vociferously, the immediate deliverance of the slave. The object, however, thus desired was not so free from difficulty as it seemed to those zealous but irresponsible advocates of universal freedom; for, in the first place the slaves were not the only persons to be considered; the planters also had an undoubted right to have their interests protected, since, however illegitimate property in human beings might be, it was certain that its existence in that portion of the King's dominions had been recognized by Parliament and courts of justice for many generations, and that suddenly to withdraw a sanction and abrogate a custom thus established, and, as it might fairly be believed, almost legalized by time, would be not only ruinous to the planters, who would have no other means of cultivating their lands, but, as being ruinous to them, would also manifestly be most unjust. Even in the interests of the slaves themselves, instant emancipation before they were fit for it might prove to them a very doubtful blessing. The state, too, and the general interests of the kingdom had to be considered, for the shipping employed in the West India trade, and the revenue derived by the Imperial Exchequer from it, were both of great amount. It was a very complicated question, and required very cautious handling; but it was plain that the people were greatly excited on the subject. One or two of the ministers themselves had deeply pledged themselves to their constituents to labor for the cessation of slavery; and eventually, though by no means blind to the difficulty of arriving at a thoroughly safe solution of the question, the ministry decided that 'delay was more perilous than decision,' and they brought in a bill, in which they endeavored to combine the three great objects-justice to the slave, by conferring on him that freedom to which he, in common with all mankind, had an inviolable right; justice to the slave-owner, by compensating him fairly for the loss of what (however originally vicious the practice may have been) he was entitled by long usage and more than one positive law to regard as property; and a farther justice to the slave, that justice which consists in being careful so to confer benefits as to do the greatest amount of good to the recipient. The first object was attained by enacting that those who had hitherto been slaves should be free; the third was arrived at by making the freedom thus given, not instantaneous, but by leading them to it, and preparing them for its proper and useful enjoyment, by a system of apprenticeship. The slave was to be apprenticed to his master for seven years, receiving, partly in money and partly in kind, a certain fair amount of wages, and having also one-fourth of his time absolutely at his own disposal. And the second was secured by granting the planters the magnificent sum of twenty millions of money, as compensation for the injury done to them; or, in other words, as purchase-money for the property they were compelled to surrender. The apprenticeship system did not wholly succeed. The slaves were not sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the character of the new arrangement; and, as the light in which it appeared to them was rather that of deferring than of securing their emancipation, it made them impatient rather than thankful. In the majority of cases it proved difficult to induce them to work even three-fourths of their time, and eventually the planters themselves were driven to the conclusion that it was best to abridge the period of apprenticeship. By the act of the colonial Legislatures themselves it was shortened by two years, and the emancipation was completed on the 1st of August, 1838.
Still, though on this single point the success of the scheme did not fully correspond to the hopes of those who had framed it, it was one which did great honor to their ingenuity as well as to their philanthropy (Lord Stanley, as Colonial Secretary, being the minister to whose department it belonged). And the nation itself is fairly entitled to no small credit for its cordial, ungrudging approval of a measure of such unprecedented liberality. Indeed, the credit
