secure them. I entreat gentlemen, therefore, to put out of their minds the abstract question of the slave trade, and all the discussions and feelings which belong to it; I entreat them to consider this question in its true light, as a new question arising out of a new state of things in the colonial world, and as one which it would become us equally to consider, whether the old slave trade were to exist or to be abolished, or to be partially restrained. Whatever may be the fate of the existing slave trade, the question of creating a new slave trade for the cultivation of new land in a new colony, is fit matter for separate discussion; and the question of, whether this be the only, or the best mode of turning the island of Trinidad to good account? is one which it becomes us seriously to investigate, and to investigate now. When grants or sales have taken place, it will be too late. There will then be vested interests to set up, in bar of any decision upon the subject of this new slave trade; or those individuals who vest their property in Trinidad, in the hopes of the slave trade being confirmed to them, will have to complain that the contract of government is broken. I wish government to keep its faith; I wish the House of Commons to preserve its character; and this can only be done by pausing to examine, before Trinidad is hastily put out of their hands. The object of the motion thus defined, there are naturally two distinct branches into which the considerations belonging to it divide themselves. First, how far is the House pledged not to adopt any measure that may tend to create a new slave trade, and how far is the cultivation of Trinidad, in the manner proposed, likely to interfere with those pledges? Secondly, what is the best account to which Trinidad can be turned, in every view of colonial and national policy? To prove what were the recorded opinions and pledges of the House, Mr. Canning desired that the resolution of the House of Commons, of the 2nd of April 1792, "That the slave trade ought to be gradually abolished," should be read; and also the address of that House, of the 6th of April 1797, praying, "That his majesty would direct such measures to be taken as should (among other things) gradually diminish the necessity, and ultimately lead to the termination of the slave trade;" together with his majesty's gracious answer to that address, "That he would give directions accordingly." [They were read accordingly.]-Before he proceeded to comment on votes of the House of Commons, it would perhaps be expedient, as there were many members of the House who might not have assisted at the passing of them, shortly to notice their history.The first of them, the resolution of 1792, was moved by a right hon. friend of his (Mr. Dundas), who was certainly never supposed to be indifferent to the interest of the colonies, or to the utmost practicable extent of colonial cultivation. Yet such was the spirit in which this resolu tion was conceived, so far was the framer of it from having any view to the laying a new basis for the trade in slaves, by bringing new land into cultivation, that it was expressly stated by him as part of his plan, to appoint a commission to ascertain the losses which actual West India proprietors might sustain from being prevented from bringing uncleared land, already their private property, into cultivation; so strictly was it intended to guard against any increase of the slave trade by an increase of cultivation. The address of 1797 was as little the fruit of enthusiasm and wild speculation: it was moved by an hon. friend of his, now near him (Mr. Charles Ellis), himself a West India proprietor, and acting in this instance, as he was sure his hon. friend would readily acknowledge, as the representative and organ of the whole body of West India proprietors in parliament. The object of this address was, to give to parliament and the country the assurance that the West Indians themselves laid claim to the continuance of the slave trade only till such time as they should be able to continue their cultivation on the then existing scale without it; not to increase the slave trade beyond its actual bounds, still less to uphold the principles or defend the justice of it; but, on the contrary, to give a pledge of their desire gradually to diminish, and ultimately to abolish it, whenever that could be done consistently with those vested interests which they conceived to be guarantied to them by the faith of parliament and of the country. Such was the object of that address; and the benevolence and ingenuousness of the character of him whom they selected to bring it forward, were undoubtedly the best securities that could be offered to the House for the sincerity of those who promoted and those who concurred in it. -I appeal, then, to my hon. friend (said Mr. Canning), whether or not, on the principle of the address which he then moved, he does not feel himself bound, and not himself only, but all those whose sentiments he spoke, and all whose concurrence be obtained on that occasion, to vote in support of a measure, the object of which is not only strictly conformable to the spirit, but falls much within the letter of his address; which goes not even to diminish the old slave trade, but to prevent a fresh one from being instituted, more enormous in its extent, and more aggravated in its evils? I appeal to those moderate men who supported that address of my hon. friend, and the resolution of 1792, which I before referred to, who hailed that proposition (the resolution of 1792) as the first moderate practical measure which had been brought forward for the sanction of parliament, as equally remote from enthusiasm on the one hand, and from a cold-blooded, hardhearted approbation of a trade, "to the horrors of which," as they emphatically said, "no words could add," on the other hand;-I appeal to them whether they can withhold their assent, I desire them to tell to me on what principle they can withhold it,-from a proposition, which is moderate even in comparison with their moderation; which does not injure a hair of the head of the existing slave trade, leaves it to be abolished as gradually as they please, but only prevents a new and rival slave trade from arising, to cross and blast their benevolent intentions. I appeal particularly to those among them who, when the period at which the slave trade was to be made to cease altogether was under consideration, voted either for the year 1796, which was carried, or the year 1800, the longest period to which any man then ventured to propose prolonging its existence; with what face they can stand up and defend a plan for cultivating a new island with new importations; a plan which must make the beginning of the nineteenth century, not the period of the extinction of the slave trade, as they fondly voted it, but the era of its revival, of its new birth, the date from which its warmest and most anxious admirers may cease to fear for its inortality or decay. -- ment. It certainly sets out with great difference of circumstances in this respect that if there be consistency in man, those persons who have been the most violent opponents of every former mensure for the restriction of the slave trade, are bound to support this; the moderate men, and the West Indians. To the West Indians, indeed, I have still other arguments to address,-those of their interest, which are manifestly in my favour; but for the present I am contented to appeal to their consistency. There remain, then, but two classes of persons from which I could apprehend any difference of opinion: the first a small, I hope, and select class, those who admire the slave trade for itself, who deem of it, as Cicero did of virtue, that it requires only to be looked at to be beloved.-"Quæ si videretur incredibilem amorem excitaret sui." With men holding that opinion I can have no argument. It requires a degree of fellow-feeling to be able even to differ in discussion to any purpose. One must settle at what point the difference begins; but such persons must have their minds altogether So differently constituted, their sentiments, affections, and passions must be so unlike any thing that I can conceive, that I avow my incapacity to understand them, and my despair of making them understand me. To their opposition, therefore, I must make up my mind; but I trust to theirs only.-The other class to which I have alluded is one whose opposition I should be concerned to have to encounter; that of those with whom from the beginning I have cordially agreed in opinion respecting the necessity of abolishing the slave trade. I trust it will not be felt by such persons, that the proposition which I offer, because a modified is an unsatisfactory one. I know that in minds of a sanguine cast such a feeling is sometimes apt to prevail; that partially to redress a grievance is often erroneously conceived and represented as giving sanction and establishment to all that part which you leave as you found it; and that this feeling is sometimes even carried so far as to rejoice in any increase of the grievance, from the notion that it must ensure and accelerate the total remedy. But this doctrine is surely to be received with I have said, that the motion which I some qualification. First, indeed, it may have to propose goes on different grounds possibly be true, where those who are to from any other that has heretofore been bear the ill, and those who are to admisubmitted to the deliberation of parlia-nister the remedy, are the same persons. Then I can understand an enthusiastic not quite one twenty-fifth of what re observer saying of those who are labour-mained to be granted. On the island, in ing under oppression, from which they this state of cultivation, were employed, might free themselves, but will not, "I according to his information, confirmed in am glad that they are made to feel still this respect by the papers on the table, more; grind them harder still, and let us 10,000 negroes. The simplest way then see if they will at length be roused to re- of ascertaining the number required to sistance." But is this the sort of case cultivate the remainder, would be to mulwhich we are now to consider? Is this tiply the number already in the island by the road by which alone we look to ar- twenty-five. The result was 250,000. rive at a remedy? God forbid! There This calculation, however (large as it is yet another consideration; that of de- might appear to gentlemen), was less than gree. If the augmentation of evil would would be found to be the result of a comaccelerate the remedy in such a degree as parison of Trinidad with the island of that the proportion of evil incurred in the Jamaica. In Jamaica, in the year 1791, whole would be less than if you had ac- there were about one million of acres in quiesced in partial redress, at the risk of cultivation, of which about 350,000 in leaving what was unredressed to last the sugar (the remainder in the minor staples, longer, there might be some ground for coffee, cotton, &c. and in provision rejecting partial measures; but is not this grounds, &c. for the supply of the sugar at best a hazardous experiment?-and estates); Jamaica at that time contained may not the augmentation of the evil be so upwards of 250,000, perhaps nearer great, in the first instance, as that no man 300,000 negroes. The proportion of would be justified in consenting to it on sugar cultivation being taken in each inso precarious a hope of ultimately hasten- stance as the criterion of the requisite ing the remedy. Let us see then what is negro population, it would hardly be the degree of increase to the slave trade thought an exaggerated statement, if which will be occasioned by bringing when Jamaica, for 350,000 acres of sugar, Trinidad into cultivation, according to employed, say only 250,000 negroes, he the plan in the papers on your table? considered only the same number as required for 420,000 sugar acres in Trinidad. In fact, he might assume a much larger number; and for the data on which he proceeded with respect to Jamaica, he desired to observe that he relied for the most part on the statements of Mr. Bryan Edwards (a gentleman, of whose memory he meant to speak with great respect, and of whose support to the present motion, had he been still living, he should have felt himself very confident, so much impressed was that gentleman with the conviction that the system of negro colonies had been pushed already to an extent beyond which it could not go without imminent danger). He took Mr. Edwards's statements, though certainly below the truth, in respect to the negro population, in preference to those of the report of the privy council, which would have justified him in a much larger calculation; both because Mr. Edwards's being lower, he was the less liable to a suspicion of exaggeration in choosing them, and because, being before the public, there was the better opportunity for every gentleman who wished it, to follow him in his deductions, and to correct him if he was wrong. 250,000, then, was the least amount of negroes required for cultivating the pro The right hon. gentleman here entered into a statement, from the papers before the House, of the quantity of land remaining to be granted in Trinidad, in order to form some estimate of the number of negroes that would be required to bring it into cultivation. "There remained to be granted 2,720 allotments of land, of 320 acres each, amounting in all to 876,400 acres ; of which near one half, or 420,000 acres, were stated to be fit for the cultivation of sugar. He particularized this, because the sugar cultivation was that which required so much the greatest proportion of negro labour, that it in fact might be taken as regulating the importation. From the same authority it appeared, that the estates already granted (by the Spanish government, for no grant had been made since the island came into the possession of the crown of Great Britain) were in number 400. The quantity of each estate was not specified in the papers on the table, but from authority on which he relied the more, as he had found it correct in every particular where those papers afforded the means of comparison, he was enabled to state that the whole amount of the land in cultivation was somewhere about 34,000 acres, or in all former instances been associated with the continuance and extension of the slave trade, in this instance were entirely the other way; he meant the interests of the established West India planters. jected allotments of Trinidad. But was this all? Nothing like it. The question was not as to cultivating only, but as to clearing and bringing into cultivation, into sudden cultivation, if the whole were to be disposed of, according to the plan in contemplation, to the best bidder at one time. It had required a century and a half to bring Jamaica to its present state of cultivation. But was it to be supposed that at the present day, with such a command of capital, with the spirit of enterprise so much alive, Trinidad would be brought into cultivation so gradually? But in this gradual progression, what was the amount of the importations from Africa which had been required to cultivate Jamaica? Of this, for a certain portion of the time, for eighty-seven years, from the beginning of the last century, Mr. Edwards gave a statement, which he (Mr. E.) averred to be correct. In the year 1673, the negroes in Jamaica were 9,400 in number, within a trifle the same number that the papers on the table assign to Trinidad. In the year 1791 they amounted to 250,000, the number required for Trinidad. From the year 1700 to 1787, the numbers imported from Africa amounted to 610,000. In Jamaica, therefore, there had been required a recruit of 610,000 (without reckoning any thing for the years preceding 1700, or subsequent to 1787), in addition to the natural increase upon the island, to bring up a population of 9,400 gradually to 250,000. Add to this computation the immensely increased mortality from pushing the cultivation of Trinidad with the rapidity with which it would be pushed by purchasers anxious to turn their capital as quickly as possible; add the waste of lives in clearing new lands (the most unwholesome and destructive part of the agriculture of the West Indies), and from employing newly-imported and unseasoned negroes (another infallible cause of aggravated mortality); and if with these additions he were to assume one million of negroes as the lowest amount that would be to be imported from Africa before Trinidad was as effectually cleared and cultivated as Jamaica, he was persuaded that he could not be accused of exaggerating the calculation. One million of human beings to be swept from the face of the earth! And for what purpose?-to gratify what interest?-to comply with what necessity? There was no pretence of necessity; and the interests which had [VOL. XXXVI.] He had before said, that if he failed in his appeal to the consistency of the West Indians, who brought forward the address of 1797, he could successfully appeal to their interests. But he would not suppose that he had failed: he believed, he might say he knew them to be ready to redeem their pledge, to stand the test of that day's vote. He would, therefore, direct his argument respecting their interests, not to them, but to those gentlemen unconnected with the West Indies themselves, who had yet always made West Indian interests the plea and pretence for their votes in favour of the slave trade. This day afforded a test of their sincerity also. Was it indeed true, that they had always hitherto been compelled to give a reluctant consent to the continuance of the slave trade, only because they felt themselves bound in justice to take care that the vested interests of the colonists should receive no injury by a hasty abolition? Did they endure an evil they abhorred, only because its continuance was indispensably necessary for the protection of an interest which they regarded? What then would be their plea now? now that the interests of the established West Indian was to be prejudiced by the very same act that created an enormous extension of the evil? now that the only effect of increasing the slave trade by the cultivation of Trinidad would be, to raise up rival establishments to meet the old colonists in the market?-But, perhaps, such a rivalry was rendered peculiarly desirable by some change which had taken place in the state of the markets at home and abroad, by some dearth of West India produce, which must be remedied, by some sudden inflammation of West Indian prices which must be reduced by the necessity of raising a revenue from sugar beyond what it at present afforded! These would indeed be poor justifications for the abandonment of principles so broadly stated, and for the forfeiture of pledges so solemnly recorded. But what was the fact? Precisely the reverse in every particular. The quantity of West Indian produce in the home market far beyond the demand; the markets of Europe shut against us; the prices, in consequence, [3 K] so low as to be almost ruinous to the planter; and the duties so far from being likely to flow into the exchequer in greater amount, that they were now obliged to be bonded. He did not mean to say that all this might not change and right itself in time; that the markets of Europe might not re-open, the glut find vent, and the prices rise; but he applied his argument to the now state of things, to the existing interests of the present race of West Indians, of those whose immediate interests had always been found powerful enough with the House to defeat all measures for the diminution of the slave trade; and he must ask, when those same interests were found in opposition to the increase of that evil, by what arguments they were to be prevented from having the same effect? Would you increase the slave trade, would you prejudice the West Indian interest, in order to feed a market already glutted, to lower prices already ruinous to the seller, and to swell a revenue which you are already obliged to bond? In truth, said Mr. Canning, there is now no pretence of interest, none of necessity, in favour of an increased cultivation of West Indian produce, at the price of an increased slave trade. If we consent to the increase of the slave trade for such a purpose at this moment, we do an act not only of voluntary wickedness, but of individual injustice. It may be asked of those who have, at different times, rejected the plea of West Indian interest when urged in favour of the slave trade, how it happens that they now become the advocates of those interests? For this plain reason, that our hostility was always directed against the slave trade, not against the interests connected, or supposed to be connected, with it. And very happy I am, for one, that an opportunity has occurred of putting our sincerity, in this respect, to the test. For myself I can truly say, that if the greatest possible degree of affection and esteem for individuals be a tie of respect and regard for the body to which those individuals belong, there is no body of men to whom I am less likely to feel any thing like personal hostility than the body of West India proprietors, as there is none which contains individuals whom I love and value more highly. But when their supposed (or, as I should say, mistaken) interests came in competition with a great moral and political good, I did not give them the preference. True. But when I find them on the same side, shall it not be an additional incitement to me to endeavour to work that good which now involves, not opposes, the interests of that body of men?-Let us now apply the same test to those moderate men who have hitherto supported the West Indian interest and the slave trade together. As long as they went together, all was well. The slave trade was to be tolerated, because its ally, the West Indian interest, was to be supported. But the alliance is now dissolved: the West Indian interest points one way, the slave trade another. Which will you follow? No disguise; no equivocation now. It is not slave trade and, but slave trade or, the old West Indian interest that you must support :slave trade in all its naked charms, without the cloak of a pretended West Indian interest to hide them. If, in this choice, you take that road which leads to the enormous increase of the evil which you pretended to deplore, and abandon the interests for whose sake alone you pretended, while you deplored, to endure it, what shall be said? What can be believed, but that your affected tenderness for the colonists was all mere hypocrisy; and that at all times, in all periods of the discussion, while regard for colonial interests was on your lips, the secret devotions of your heart were paid to the slave trade? Or will it be avowed, that at the time when these professions were made, we were, indeed, sincere in intending to act up to them, but that we did not then foresee the temptation to which we should be exposed; that we were prepared for common exertions of forbearance; we could have suffered a corner of an old island to lie waste, without thinking too much of the sacrifice to consistency; but that the present temptation is beyond our strength; the fine black mould and watered savannahs of Trinidad hold out incitements which flesh and blood cannot resist, and almost justify a breach of our bond, of which flesh and blood, God knows to what amount, must pay the penalty? Sir, I consider the acquisition of Trinidad in a different light. It seems to me as if Providence had determined to put to the trial our boasts of speculative benevolence and intended humanity, by putting into our power a colony where, if we pursue our old course, it must be purely for its own sake, without the old inducements or the usual apologies. This day is a day of tests: I trust we shall all abide the trial. |