count of the Company long since) now here." "A very large body of Caffres were formerly imported by the Company when the settlement (Fort Marlborough) was first established, who had been brought from Madagascar and the coasts of Africa.” And at page 344, par. 113, we are pointedly informed, that "there are VERY MANY NATIVES of AFRICA in the provinces under the Bengal Government, that have been imported by people now holding them as slaves, or that have been since transferred by re-sale, and under the operation of a different system of law."

How African slaves came to India without an African slave trade-without being "forcibly dragged from their country," the wise heads who write on such subjects in India must be left to explain, while I proceed to remark, that at page 929, we find, that so late as 1825 the practice of kidnapping children in the Government of Madras, in order to export them to the eastward as slaves, existed; and page 380 tells us very plainly, that in 1824, not only a slave trade betwixt Africa and India existed, but also a slave trade betwixt India and Africa. The Magistrates of Calcutta, 22d March, 1824, thus address W. B. BAILEY, Esquire, Chief Secretary to Government :"The Magistrates have received information, that persons are occasionálly brought to Calcutta, or removed therefrom, in Arab ships, and SOLD AS SLAVES; and they deem it right to apprise you, and all persons connected with Arab shipping, of the heavy penalties and punishment which will be incurred by a violation of the law."

The great length to which the extracts and remarks have already extended, prevent me from dwelling upon the severities and cruelties which, in the pages alluded to, appear to be practised on the slaves in India; but these amidst the votaries of a barbarous and cruel superstition, and a population so ignorant and so degraded as the population of Hindostan generally are, may readily be conceived to be very great, and, moreover, that but few of the acts of barbarity come to the knowledge of the proper tribunals.

But not only does personal slavery exist in the territories of the East India Company to a great extent, but the East India Company, as a corpo

rate body, are to this day the proprietors of a great number of slaves. In St Helena, and in some of their Eastern dependencies, we find this the case; and in all the islands and possessions conquered in the Eastern seas during the late war, the Company acquired a great number of public slaves, not one of whom they liberated, but restored to succeeding governments, as the islands and possessions were restored after the general peace. In Java, in Banda, in Amboyna, this was particularly the case; nor is this all; we actually find the East India Company, the lords and rulers of India, not only deriving their revenue from the sale of slaves, and the separation of families to raise it, but we also find them telling us, that without slaves the land cannot be cultivated, and without cultivation, that no revenue could by taxes be raised.

This

It becomes, therefore, necessary, to the further application of our subject, to enquire what the Government of India and the East India Company really is. The latter is the Government of India, and the Company is again composed of individuals in this (chiefly) and other countries, who hold each a certain proportion, more or less, of stock or capital in this great mercantile concern, which has overrun, and at present overawes, the most populous and extensive region in Asia. Company of individuals choose a certain number of Directors, resident in London, whose word gives laws to India, and to whom all the Governors, and the authorities thereof, are amenable and subject. In looking over the list of East India proprietors for the year 1829, who are entitled to vote, I perceive that a very great number of them reside in CLAPHAM, and the adjacent parts of Surrey, which parts are the most remarkable for their inveterate hostility against the British West Indies, including, no doubt, in the hostile bands, the East India slave proprietors who are there resident. Although the names of many of the anti-colonial adversaries are unknown to me, still, in looking over the list alluded to, I find several of the more active, together with the names of many persons of rank; and if my personal knowledge of the anti-colonial societies was more extensive, I should

undoubtedly be able to array before your Grace and the country a greater number of the Eastern slave-masters then I at present can, and who evince from ignorance and hypocrisy such bitter hostility against the British West Indian colonies, and who are yet such excellent men in their own eyes, and so entirely clear from the pollution and the gains of personal slavery, as they and their champions believe, or attempt to make this country believe. I extract the following names:

His Grace the Duke of Wellington.
William Wilberforce, Esq.
Lord Bexley.

Joseph Henry Butterworth, Clapham.
The Earl of Caledon.
Admiral Codrington.

Edward Collins, Esq. Frolesworth,
Leicestershire.

Rev. Christ. Rigby Collins, Lanim, Wilts.

Robert Downie, Esquire, M.P. Char

lotte Square, Edinburgh. Rev. Edw. Bishop Elliot, Trinity College, Cambridge.

John Forbes, Esquire, M. P. Fitzroy
Square.

Admiral James Gambier.
The Right Hon. Charles Grant.
Mr Benjamin Arthur Heywood, Man-
chéster.

The Right Hon. Richard Ryder, Lincoln's Inn.

Mr William Smith, Curzon Street.
Henry Sykes, Esq. Hull.

Daniel Sykes, Esq. Rogwell, Yorkshire, &c. &c. &c.

Every one of these individuals, my Lord Duke-all the individuals composing the East India Company, who are incorporated with it, own its stock, and receive dividends therefrom, are as much slave proprietors as any individuals connected with West India property. It ill becomes any one connected with the East Indies, therefore, to revile their brethren and their fellow subjects in the West Indies, because they cultivate their lands with African slaves, which their countrymen bought in Africa by Act of Parliament, and sold to them; and henceforward it is to be hoped, if common sense and common honesty are attended to, that we shall hear no more boasts about the superior purity of the East Indian sugar, and East Indian establishments-no more such boasts as VOL. XXVI. NO. CLXII.

that put forth by Mr Clarkson, that Great Britain can obtain sugar from India "not stained with blood"-that the East India Company "dispel the clouds of ignorance, superstition, and idolatry, and carry with them civilisation and liberty wherever they go." (Pamph. 1823, p. 57.)-Whereas we perceive an enormous mass of personal slavery existing in India, which that Company tell us they cannot, and which they have no right to remove; while of the individuals who compose this mass of personal slavery in India, we are told, by the Papers so often referred to, (see p. 844,) that they are so sunk in mental ignorance, that THEY SACRIFICE TO THE DEVIL ONLY!" "they have priests, performing the ceremonies themselves!!"

no

I do not, my Lord Duke, revert to the subject of personal slavery in the East Indies, neither do I adduce these facts in order to reproach, to revile, to insult, to blame, or to injure any one in, or connected with, that quarter of the British Empire; but I adduce them, merely to undeceive a credulous public, deceived by men who make deception a trade, and to shew that our persecuted and calumniated West Indian Colonies are not the only spots in the dominions of civilized nations, or in the British dominions, where personal slavery is known, established, and recognised by law, as a rank in society. Degraded, however, my Lord Duke, and ignorant as the Hindoo, and the Hindoo slave are, still it must be acknowledged that, in the scale of human nature and human intelligence, the Hindoo slave is a being greatly superior to the rude African savage, who has been carried to the western world, and there placed in a state of slavery. According to the late Mr Kenneth Macauley, the Africans brought into Sierra Leone, and emancipated there, were all of them “barbarous natives of barbarous statesenslaved for crimes" in Africa. It was the same description of persons which the people of England tore from Africa and planted in their Western Colonies; but to give your Grace a more correct idea than even Mr Macauley, in the short pithy reference, has done, of what they were when first planted in the Islands of

the Western Archipelago, I shall adduce the delineation given by an actual observer, the able writer of an article, entitled, "The British Set tlements in Western Africa," and inserted in Blackwood's Magazine for September last, and which description, be it observed, refers to the superior classes of Africans, those who have had the greatest intercourse with European civilisation, and who, from their superior morality and in telligence, stand above the reach of the law, which in Africa enslaves criminals "for crimes." After informing us how the Ashantees were beat back by the bravery of the few white troops, who were left to perform every species of labour in that pernicious climate, he adds:

"Not a man of our Allies could be influenced to pursue them; prayers and rewards were offered in vain; Mr Wilber

force's Brothers' showed fight against the British when urged to it; they were too busy in searching the dead for gold dust, and in cutting out the jawbones of the wounded, to decorate their persons, to attend to the representations of those who had saved their lives, and who were anxious they should pursue their inveterate foes for their common safety. The barbarities exercised by the people amongst whom the English had resided for more than two centuries is beyond belief. The heart of an Ashantee chief was taken out, divided, and eaten amongst the 'poor black' chiefs, his jaw-bones were taken out, and hung on the drums; whilst living, his ears were twisted to the back of his head, and fastened with a skewer, whilst his fingers were cut off at the joints, the flesh eaten, and the bones hung as a necklace, whilst reeking with blood, round their necks. These barbarities were performed by people who had lived long with the English, had attended the schools, and whose children were, at that moment, attending the English school, and frequenting the church at Cape Coast Castle! All these men, too, who had seen the advantages of education and civilisation-of whom fine paragraphs had appeared in the Missionary Magazines-spoke in the most exulting manner of eating the hearts of their enemies; squeezed their hands as if in the act of drenching the blood, and smacked their lips with the twang of enjoyment that Mr Buxton might be supposed to feel at a tit-bit of venison the first season, at one of the numerous dinners given for our 'brethren in darkness' in Africa!!"

Yet the beings whom we have been contemplating are by no means so brutal and debased as those generally carried from Africa to our Colonies. The latter are the offscourings-the criminals of the former; and really, my Lord Duke, it is those British subjects, who had been bred and educated in the most unsophisticated and innocent parts of this country, and others, who have been accustomed to the more polished portions of society in it-it is they, my Lord Duke, who, encouraged by their country, forsake their native land, and plant themselves, their capital, their knowledge, their industry, and their civilisation amongst such brutes and barbarians, and the descendants of such savages, and such barbarians-it is these British subjects, my Lord Duke, and not the Africans, who are the slaves in the West Indies; and, let their country, and Africa, are posi the Anti-colonists say what they will, tively indebted to them for reclaiming and making such a ferocious rab ble peaceable, industrious, and civilized, useful to themselves, and useful to society.

Such as they have been described are the people whom the bloody. minded writer in the Westminster Review declares, that he, and the people of England, would lead, and would head, to rob and to butcher the white British subjects in our Colonies. But I must give you the assault in his own words, (p. 287.) "Will these men never know the ground on which they stand? Can nothing make them find out, that the universal British people would stand by and CHEER ON THEIR DUSKY BRETHREN TO THE ASSAULT, if it was not for the solitary hope that the end may be obtained more effectually by other means? In other and plainer words, my Lord Duke, if England did not feel herself sufficiently strong to rob her children and her subjects, settled in the Colonies, she would excite their barbarous slaves to assassinate them!!" I pass over the bitter libel here uttered against "the universal British people" without further remark, to observe, that the man who could utter such a savage threat, and recommend such brutal proceedings, must be, " according to the flesh," a brother to Esther Hibner, whom your Grace may probably remember was,

was, he might ask Mr Stephen. This was done, and the reply of the law adviser of the colonial office was,that the matter belonged to the Home Office, and that they in the colonial office had nothing to do with it! Thus the matter passed quietly. Had the objects of the act related to Blacks, Mr Stephen would soon have made the Home Office look into the matter, and as we proceed, we shall see pretty clearly how much Mr Stephen has to do with the government of New Holland.

The fact, my Lord Duke,thus stands confessed, that Englishmen by the laws of England are at this moment constituted and held property-assignable property, in ABSOLUTE RIGHT to their countrymen; and if Englishmen can thus be constituted slaves, why should the same laws and the same lawgivers declaim against Africans being constituted property? I shall be told that these Englishmen are criminals. Be it so. The Africans sold into slavery are also criminals, sold under their laws, with this difference, that the laws of every nation in Africa recognise slavery as legal, while no law exists in England by which free-born Englishmen can be reduced to a state of personal bondage. Yet, by act of Parliament, thousands, males and FEMALES, at this moment are so, without our Buxtons, our Broughams, our Stephens, our Mackintoshes, and our Lushingtons ever raising their voice against it; and how they are worked and how they are treated," worked under the lash" in that state, every New Holland newspaper which we take up tells us in the most pointed terms. I hold in my hand the "Sydney GazetTE" of the 23d June, 1828, in which I find an official advertisement, dated "PRINCIPAL SUPERINTENDENT'S Office, Sydney, 20th June, 1828," announcing the absconding of no fewer than sixty-three white convicts or slaves, and calling upon all the constituted authorities to apprehend them, and “lodge them in safe custody." After describing most minutely every mark, feature, and peculiarity on or about these convicts, composed of English, Scotch, and Irish, the description of each is wound up by stating how frequently he had before run away (two, three, four, five, and even six times) from the "Road Gang," or from the "IRON GANG," as might be; the greater pro

portion, however, are from the latter Gang"-"THE IRON GANG;" and the Gazette of that settlement tells how frequently and how severely these white slaves are flogged, almost atthe will and the caprice of their masters!

These references, my Lord Duke, are not adduced either in praise or in support of slavery in the abstract, or of the establishments in New Holland; but these are adduced as facts, in order therefrom and thereupon to observe, that if it is neither illegal nor criminal to punish white male and female English criminal slaves in New Holland, it cannot surely, either in reason or in justice, be deemed ille-. gal, dishonourable, or criminal to punish criminal black slaves in the West Indies, in a similar but certainly in a milder manner.

A letter from Mr WARD, British› consul at Vera Cruz, to the late Mr Canning, giving an account of the success of sugar cultivation by free labour, as it is termed, in Mexico, has for some time past been making, as invulnerable and invincible, the circle of the anti-colonial press of this coun-. try. A more flimsy and vulnerable document, however, has scarcely ever come in my way. It is only necessary to knock the brains of one part of it against the brains of another part of it, in order to shew the absurdity, the error, and the ignorance of the whole. But in doing this my limits compel me to be brief..

Mr Ward became British consul at Vera Cruz, after Mr Canning had called the "New World into existence," and at the time when that great statesman took it into his head that he could, with ease, facility, and safety, change, by the mere substitution of free labour for the compulsory labour, the state of society which Great Britain had established in the West Indies, with advantage to every one in them or connected with them; and when every sort of information which went to support the theory and the views of the British cabinet, was greedily sought after and eagerly credited by that cabinet; and when all such information, no matter how crude or how collected, became the certain passport to praise, to honour, and to reward.

According to Mr Ward, this free labour Garden of Eden is situated about fifty miles distant from the city