had there been solemnised between slaves down to the close of 1822. On the whole, therefore, it will appear that Mr. Wilberforce was completely justified in affirming, that the slaves were "strangers to the institution of marriage ;" and that the fact of Mr. Bridges having, subsequently to October 1822, solemnised 187 marriages of slaves, (the whole proof he adduces to shew that Mr. Wilberforce's statement was unfounded,) does in no way invalidate that statement. In fact, they were celebrated after Mr. Wilberforce had printed his pamphlet; and, after all, it remains to be ascertained whether these marriages are any thing more than a mere unavailing ceremony, conveying no legal rights whatever to the parties, and binding them by no legal obligations; or whether they constitute what is understood in this country by a marriage.

Having disposed of two of the points, religious instruction and marriage, which Mr. Bridges makes the ground of his attack on Mr. Wilberforce, we now come to the third point, on which he tells us that he has proved Mr. Wilberforce's statement to be unfounded; we mean that of the Negroes being worked like cattle under the whip. The following passage, however, contains the only remark which Mr. Bridges makes on this subject; and it certainly sounds more like an admission than a denial of the practice.

"Your very natural and humane anxiety to abolish the use of the whip meets only the desire of every possessor of slaves, and by many of them it has been abolished. The treadmill holds out a very excellent substitute, and probably your wishes in that particular you will find forestalled. Yet, as if you considered the lash cruel and ignominious only when applied to the Negro race, you seem to overlook its continuance in the army, navy, and courts of justice at home, where its use is infinitely more humiliating and severe. But your argument, that because

the strongest of them, therefore their punishments and outrages are the more violent, certainly will not hold good in any point. They are not appointed on account of their strength, for they have no work to do, but merely as a reward for good conduct and faithful services; and the very circumstance of their being slaves, liable to be reduced to the ranks by the representations of those under them, whose complaints it is the interest of the master to see redressed, must be a guarantee for their not abusing the temporary power confided to them. The frequent removal of these drivers at the instance of the working Negroes would, if you did not reside at such a distance as to forbid your acquaintance with the economy of a plantation, have rendered your observation on that head totally nugatory." (p. 22.)

This is neither proof nor reasoning; it is pure mistification. We have not even one of Mr. Bridges's hardy denials to stagger us. Mr. Wilberforce's observations he tells us are nugatory. Why? Because drivers are often removed at the instance of the working Negroes. But assuming the fact to be so, which is not a little improbable, why, we would ask, are they often removed? Is it not because they often abuse their power? Otherwise their removal would be an act of injustice. And yet Mr. Bridges would make us believe that there is a secure guarantee for their not abusing their power. Then, he tells us, they are not appointed for their strength, but merely as a reward. They are, it would seem, honorary, and not efficient officers. The work of Mr. Roughley, a Jamaica planter, was published about the same time with the pamphlet of Mr. Bridges; and being a didactic work intended for planters, and not at all of a controversial description, it deserves the more credit. What is Mr. Roughley's view of the subject? "The most important personage in the slave population of

an estate," he observes, "is the head driver. He is seen carrying with him the emblems of his rank and dignity; a polished staff with prongy crooks to lean on, and a short handled, tangible whip." Some West Indians, in this country, are fond of representing the whip as the mere badge of office. But why might not the polished staff with its prongy crooks suffice? It might, and certainly would, if such representations had been any thing else than the grossest fallacies. The driver, whatever Mr. Bridges may choose to think and say of him, is, in Mr. Roughley's estimation, no merely honorary officer, intended for show rather than use. "A bad driver," says Mr. Roughley, " is like a cruel blast that pervades every thing and spares nothing; but when he is well disposed, intelligent, clever, and active, he is the life and soul of the estate." Contrary to Mr. Bridges's view of the case, Mr. Roughley asserts, that to change a head driver is a most momentous affair, and may produce inconceivable mischief to an estate. Should an overseer, however, be obliged to dismiss a bad one, and appoint another, "I must beg leave," says Mr. Roughley, "to lay before my readers my opinion of the proper choice of one. should, in my judgment, be an athletic man, sound and hardy in constitution, of well earned and reputed good character; of an age, and, if possible, an appearance, to carry respect; perhaps about 35 years old, &c." "The junior drivers, if possible, should be men of the same description; but having a good master over them in the head driver, they will be induced to behave themselves tolerably." (p. 79.)

He

As for the hackneyed argument drawn from the use of flogging "in the army, navy, and courts of justice at home," it might furnish a defence for the practice of judicially punishing the slaves with the whip; though one bad practice is ill defended by another; but it can furnish no defence for arming masters, overseers, and drivers, with the power of in

flicting the lash at their discretion, for any offence or for no offence, and that without the slightest responsibility for the exercise of that discretion. The law of Jamaica, and of most of the islands, limits, it is true, the number of lashes which an owner, attorney, guardian, executor, administrator, or overseer, may inflict, to 39; and the number which may be inflicted, in the absence of such persons, to ten at one time, or for one offence. The law therefore actually exempts from all legal responsibility the punishments of the driver to this extent, at one time, or for one offence; and it further leaves him at liberty to renew them as often as he pleases, while, in that respect, it lays a restraint on the owner and overseer. The owner or overseer, we admit, may restrain the driver, and may even prohibit his inflicting the lash at all; but we speak now of what the law leaves the driver or any one else at full liberty to do, to whom the owner or overseer may choose to delegate his authority. It may obviate, however, all doubt on this point to give the law as it stands in the 27th and 28th clauses of the Consolidated Slave Act of Jamaica, passed in 1816:

"And in order to restrain arbitrary punishment, be it further enacted, that no slave in any plantation or settlement, or in any of the workhouses or gaols in this island, shall receive more than ten lashes at one time, and for one offence, unless the owner, attorney, guardian, executor, or administrator, or overseer of such plantation or settlement, having such slave in his care, or supervisor of such workhouse, or keeper of such gaol, shall be present, and that no such owner, attorney, guardian, executor or administrator, or overseer, supervisor, or gaol keeper, shall, on any account, punish a slave with more than 39 lashes at one time, and for one offence, or inflict or suffer to be inflicted such lastmentioned punishment, nor any other number of lashes on the same day,nor until the delinquent has recovered from the effects of any

this, that the substitute really found for the whip, wherever it has been laid aside, is only some instrument of coercion which happens to bear another name, but which is not less efficacious in enforcing labour; perhaps the prickly bush, called ebony bush, which though not so tremendous in its sound or in its permanent effects as the cart-whip, must nevertheless be exceedingly painful, making the blood to start at every application of it? Such seems to have been the impression of Mr. Barham. "Nothing could be easier," he says, "than to abolish the use of the whip; but those who call for this abolition always end by proposing some other means of coercion, some other instrument of punishment, less decried perhaps, but which is to be equally effectual. What will the slave gain by this? It were better that his chains should appear in their full deformity than that they should be gilded over." Mr. Barham, it is well known, is a considerable planter, and has seen slavery with his own eyes. Mr. Bridges therefore cannot object on that ground to his testimony.

But Mr. Bridges, while he admits that a substitute for the whip is necessary, and while he chooses to conceal from us what substitute has actually been provided in those many cases where the whip, ac cording to him, has been abolished, insinuates that the treadmill holds out a very excellent substitute; but then he leaves it a little ambiguous whether it has been already adopted as such, or has only been proposed for adoption. We assume, however, that it is nothing more than the humane suggestion of Mr. Bridges himself, who, in the plenitude of his Christian charity, proposes that the labour of the slave should be stimulated, and any failure in their tasks punished, by that contrivance which forms the secondary punishment of criminals in this country. Such a proposal, however, besides being most unjust, is altogether extravagant and impracticable. Not only

has no such substitute for the whip been introduced into Jamaica, but no such substitute can be introduced with any effect. The project is perfectly ridiculous. But Mr. Bridges, who admits the necessity of a substitute, ought to have told us-we hope he will still tell us what is the substitute actually employed by the many planters who, according to him, have abolished the whip. We are persuaded the only substitute that any one of them has thought of has been a new instrument of correction, as Mr. Barham intimates; or the institution in some cases of task-work, which, if imposed with judgment and moderation, would unquestionably be an improvement, but which, if immoderate and excessive, as in Demerara, would prove a greater curse to the slave than the driving whip itself. No one, not even Mr. Bridges, seems to have dreamed of substituting reward and encouragement for punishment, terror, and exaction.

We have said that some West Indians have been hardy enough, trusting to the ignorance of colonial matters prevailing in this country, to affirm that slaves in the colonies are not worked like cattle under the lash. We might confidently refer, in proof of the existence of the practice, to the vulgar argument resorted to on all occasions, when the subject is pressed on West Indians in private; "The Negroes won't work without the whip." We might adduce the whole current of the evidence on this subject, from the examinations before the Privy Council in 1788 to the present day. We might refer to every writer of credit who has visited the West Indies, from the Rev. James Ramsay to the Rev. Thomas Cooper; and all of whom, during a period of forty years, have successively affirmed the prevalence of the practice. We might even refer to the violent publications in almost every colony of the West Indies during the past year; in some of which we should have met with a

flat denial of it, did they not know that it was too notorious to be denied. Their attention, be it also remembered, had been particularly excited to this subject, by the circular letters addressed to the local authorities by Lord Bathurst."With respect," says his lordship, "to the practice of driving slaves to their work by the sound of the whip, and to the arbitrary infliction of it by the driver as a stimulus to labour, I am disposed to trust to the Court of Policy to originate measures for the cessation of this practice, which, I need not state, must be repugnant to the feelings of every individual in this country. "As an immediate measure, I cannot too strongly recommend that the whip should no longer be carried into the field, and there displayed by the driver as the emblem of his authority, or employed as the ready instrument of his displeasure." This letter was written on the 28th of May, 1823. It reached all the West-Indian islands in the course of the succeeding July. Ample opportunity had been given for commenting upon it previous to the meeting of Parliament; but has a single governor, or has a single set of resolutions, in any one island of the West Indies, ventured to tell Lord Bathurst that he was deceived in assuming the existence of any such practice? We will be bold to say not one: and yet, if they could, would they not, one and all, have united in repelling so gross an imputation on the humanity of their system as this very instruction of Lord Bathurst implied? So far indeed was this from being the case, that on the 16th March, 1824, Mr. Canning in the House of Commons, and Lord Bathurst in the House of Lords, speaking in the presence of numerous West Indians, not only gave no intimation of any such denial, but, assuming it to be an actually prevalent practice, they proceeded to legislate for its abolition in Trinidad, as a prelude to its abolition in every other colony. Mr. Canning stated it to be an ob

ject of the Order in Council "to abolish the use of the whip as a stimulus. to labour; he meant that cruel and degrading use of the whip which placed the labouring slave on the same footing with brute animals;" he meant "the use of the whip when it was brandished by the driver over the slave in the field, ready to be applied to the brute nerves as an incitement to labour,"&c. Was one West-Indian voice raised to repel the charge against their system implied in this regulation, and in Mr. Canning's comment upon it? Now what was it that Mr. Wilberforce had said? "The Negroes are worked like cattle under the whip." The truth of that statement, it will now be granted, requires no further proof, notwithstanding the declaration of Mr. Bridges that he has shewn it to be unfounded. It is a settled case.

But then it will be alleged, that, although the whip is carried into the field, yet it is very rarely applied as a stimulus to the bodies of the slaves. If we were to grant this, it would only prove that the terror caused by its presence prevented the necessity of its actual infliction; and we are not sure that its brutalising effect would be materially lessened by that circumstance. It would still be true that the whip is the stimulus, and the only stimulus, to labour in the field, while as an instrument of severe punishment it may be employed by the owner, overeser, &c. to the extent of 39 lashes without control and without responsibility. Now let us suppose that, instead of the island of Jamaica, it was the county of Cornwall, which was subject to such a law. Let us suppose, that in that county, every proprietor of land, or of mines, or of manufactories; every bailiff, or overseer, or head of an establishment, having servants under him; every attorney, guardian, executor or administrator; every supervisor of a work-house, and every keeper of a gaol, might at their own discretion for any offence, real or imaginary, cause to be stripped