in the adoption of the measure opposed. If so, dum tacent clamant; their incapacity to speak for themselves, is equivalent to a host of petitions: the popular voice is virtually on that side.

To deny this, would be to adopt the principles of W. Indian legislation, and to suppose that laws ought to be made for the sake of the privileged order alone.

The measure was also represented in the petitions and remonstrances from Trinidad, to be objectionable in point of expense. The charges of the registry were provided for in the Order in Council by some very moderate fees to be paid on returns and official certificates; and in the general disposition to quarrel with the measure at large, the produce of these fees was magnified by the complainants beyond all bounds of probability. Such an objection as this, however, if well founded, might have been easily obviated without sacrificing any thing essential to the plan of a registry itself. It need not, therefore, be further noticed here.

The personal duties imposed on the owners were also complained of as unreasonably onerous. It is natural enough for men to be averse to any species of trouble the object and fruits of which they dislike. But surely it is not too much to require of one man to write a few lines once a year, in order that another may not be unlawfully compelled to drudge for him under the whip for life.

All that these gentlemen are called upon to do, is less than every housekeeper in England must perform every year, not merely for the purpose of ascertaining his property and establishment, but for the unpleasant further purpose of paying taxes upon them. Printed blank forms to be distributed by the registrar in the W. Indies, may be filled up by a man who has many slaves, in less time than a gentleman in this country can make his returns for the property tax, the assessed taxes, and the returns under the militia

acts.

In truth, the new personal duties would be less onerous than those which are already imposed in the colonies, by subsisting laws, for which they might be made the substitute. At present, in most of our islands, annual returns of slaves are required for the purposes of internal revenue; and in some of them, the new meliorating acts have required annual returns of the births and deaths on each plantation, with many other specifications, as checks on the inhumanity of masters. That these laws have not been, and were never meant to be obeyed, is an answer to which the supposed objectors will perhaps not choose to resort.

Precedents still fitter to silence such complaints may be found among these insular laws. An act of Grenada, for instance, dated in 1786, obliges all free negroes, mulattoes, and other coloured persons to do the same identical acts for the public manifestation of their numbers, persons, and condition, that are here in question in respect of the slaves. They are compelled to return for registration in a public office, their names, places of abode, ages, sexes, and colour, and those of their children, and moreover the nature

of their claims to freedom. Upon what principle can it be decently denied, that the same publicity ought to be given to the condition of the same race of men, when held in slavery? If such precautions are proper to prevent the unlawful assumption of freedom, surely the unlawful privation of it ought not to be guarded against with less care; especially as the latter is by far the more probable mischief.

To all objections of this class we might also oppose the positive advantages which the owners of slaves will obtain by a registry, in the greater security of their property, and the facility of proving their titles.

To fair creditors and incumbrancers, the advantage will be still greater. Already the registry at Trinidad has been found, in this respect, to produce a very salutary though unforeseen effect, by bringing to light the true property in slaves, which their owners had bought in other persons' names, with a view to protect them from their creditors, and to withdraw them from the estate, when the mortgagees should assert their right to the possession. Frauds of that kind have been frequent in all the islands, when the slaves have been mortgaged with the land, with covenants from the debtor, that all after-born and new-purchased slaves shall be subject to the same incumbrance. The mortgagor in possession has often so managed as to elude those agreements; and when compelled at length to resign the estate to the mortgagees, has stripped it of its most valuable slaves. To such bad practices, peculiarly ruinous to the security of the creditors since the abolition of the slave trade, a general register would be the most effectual bar.

The penal and remedial sanctions, which are provided by the Orders in Council, for Trinidad, and which are essential to the plan of a registry, have also been subjects of objection.

To deprive the master of his property in a slave, which he omits to register, has been thought too harsh. But if such provisions are severe, or unreasonable, how many of our English statutes ought to be repealed? The Navigation Act, for instance, of the present reign, which does such honor to the name of Ld. Liverpool, and all the acts for registering ships which preceded it, must be regarded as oppressive. Various troublesome acts, forms and solemnities are prescribed by these statutes, as to the registration of a ship, the obtaining a certificate from the custom-house, the recital of the certificate upon any subsequent transfer, and the official correction of it upon any changes of ownership or construction: and if these acts are not performed, or these solemnities are not fully and accurately observed by the owners, they not only lose the necessary evidence of their title, but the property itself, if employed in privileged British navigation, and all the other property found on board, are in most cases forfeited and lost.

So the purchaser of an annuity, who gives the fullest value for it, and under the fairest circumstances, forfeits the whole, unless he take care to

1 Printed Acts of Grenada, No. 51, s. 1. 2.

have it registered within a limited time, according to the strict requisitions of the Annuity Act.

Is the liberty of a man and all his posterity, of less value than the privi leges of a ship, or the property of a spendthrift?

It would be endless to cite the examples of a like severity, that are to be found in our statute books. What, for instance, are all the important provisions of the statute of frauds, against parol agreements and trusts, and wills not duly attested, but so many forfeitures imposed on those who suffer by the avoidance of the contract trust or devise, because they, or the parties under whom they claim, omitted to perform certain positive acts required by the law?

The sufficient defence of all such enactments, is, that they are necessary to important political or judicial ends; and that no man can suffer by them, but through a default that might easily have been avoided. It is, however, a further defence in general, and strictly applicable to the case before us, that in precluding the assertion of rights not legally evidenced, the law proceeds on a fair presumption, that they do not really exist. The object is not to take away interests justly acquired, but to prevent the fraudulent acquisition, or claim of them to the prejudice of others.

The ship, for instance, when not duly registered, is presumed not to be really intitled to the privileges of British navigation in respect of her construction and ownership; but a foreign vessel fraudulently usurping those privileges. So here, the unregistered negro may justly be presumed not to be the property of the asserted master, but a free man wrongfully enslaved. The assemblies, if they bring forward such unreasonable complaints, might also be referred to their own acts for registering deeds and wills. In most or all the islands, this is required to be done, and in the very troublesome and expensive mode of an enrolment at length in a public office, within a limited time; and the penalty of any default is the loss of the estate granted or devised; in some cases absolutely, and in all so far as the giving a preference to purchasers or mortgagees, claiming under a subsequent but registered title. These acts also extend to slaves; and that even in colonies in which slaves are personal estate; so that in truth a general registry on the principles here proposed, would do little more than provide a clearer specification of the registered property, and extend the same protection to personal freedom which the colonial laws have given to property; and on the same principle, that of excluding frauds by publicity of title.

A register act of this kind, it is true, explodes that more than barbarous maxim, that unprecedented despotism, born of the African slave trade and colonial legislation, which presumes a man's slavery from the colour of his skin; but at the same time, it gives a new and very convenient species of evidence to the true master, for the proof not only of the servile condition, but of his own property in the slave,

If through perverseness or negligence, he will not provide that evidence, in the simple and easy way prescribed to him by the law, it is just, and it is necessary, that he should be debarred from exercising the rights of an owner,

It is impossible to be more tender of those rights, without leaving in extreme jeopardy the far more valuable rights of free men, who have committed no default at all..

The enfranchisement of unregistered slaves, considered as a loss to the contumacious or negligent owner, can require no further defence. But an objection has been started to this course on the ground of local policy. It has been pretended that the enfranchisement of slaves by the operation of a register act, would be dangerous to the peace and safety of the colonies, by increasing too much the numbers of the free coloured class, in proportion to the whites.

Among the decisive answers which may be given to this objection, that which a well informed advocate of the poor Africans would be most desirous to give, and which might well be singly relied upon, is that the political principle assumed is radically vicious and absurd. Though a simultaneous enfranchisement of the whole, or any large proportion of the slaves in any colony, might certainly be attended with much public inconvenience and danger, the progressive increase of the free coloured people, in their proportion to the whites on the one hand, and to the slaves on the other, is so far from being adverse to the public peace and security, that it is in truth the best and only certain way to maintain them.

There is no point in which the self-interested and prejudiced feelings of the white colonists are more demonstrably at war with common sense and experience than in their violent adherence to the opposite opinion. The history of the Spanish colonies alone might serve to convince any thinking man that the larger proportion there is of that middle class, the safer an island is from internal convulsions and foreign conquest; as well as the more valuable to the manufacturing country from which it derives its sup plies.

It is absolutely necessary, unless negro slavery is to be eternal, that those who legislate for the British West Indies should soon come to a right conclusion on this important point; to which end no more is wanting than that they should not take their opinions from the foolish prejudices and noisy clamors of a small self-interested colonial minority, but from the clear voice of reason and experience. If manumissions are to be still discouraged and restrained by the colonial codes, slavery can end only by terrible revolutions, or by dangerous experiments at best; for the only tried, safe, and convenient way to get rid of that odious institution, is progressively to increase the middle class by individual enfranchisement, according to the examples, before adverted to, of other nations and times.

But as it is not convenient here to expose in an adequate manner, the false and preposterous policy of keeping down the free colored population, it may be right to repel the objection last stated, by another answer, which rests on no controverted ground. The shortest reply to it is this: The subject of pretended inconvenience would not in fact arise. The number of negroes enfranchised by a register act, would be as small in proportion to

the whole black population, as the number of ships condemned here for want of a register, is to our whole commercial marine.

Masters will not be such enemies to their own property as to refuse or omit to comply with the requisitions of a register act when they see that it is become an operative law, and know what will be the legal effects of their default.

Here also experience has confirmed the suggestions of reason. In Trinidad au opposition the most general, strenuous, and violent was made to the execution of the Order in Council, from the moment of its promulgation. The opposition was countenanced even by persons in authority there; and many of the largest proprietors, if not a great majority of their body, pledged themselves by public declarations and mutual agreements, that they would never make the prescribed returns of their slaves for the purpose of registration. Nothing could be more apparently hopeless than a general compliance; yet before the expiration of the time first limited by public notification, a very great majority had sent in their returns to the registry. It was thought necessary by the local government to enlarge that time, on account of impediments and causes of delay not foreseen by the framers of the law; and before the extended period had elapsed, all the defaulters complied. It is not known at least that any one owner of slaves ultimately stood out; though a few returns came so late that it was supposed they could not be registered consistently with the general regulations of the law, unless under a special power given to the governor in cases of involuntary default.

If, however, there were any probability that a large number of negroes might become entitled to freedom for non-registration, and if that were a real political evil, it is still absolutely necessary to the general principle of a register act, and to the effectual suppression of the slave trade, that they should be enfranchised. It would be monstrous to presume them to have been unlawfully enslaved, and yet not to set them free; and it would open a door for fraudulent expedients by which the abolition and register acts might both be eluded. Above all, it would tend to diminish very much the self-executing energy of the law.

The cases of default, by tenants for life, by mortgagors in possession, and other masters, having a limited or qualified interest, are capable of another remedy, and the remedy ought to be such as will not prejudice the rights of persons not in possession, or incapable of making the return. The general nature of the provisions made by the Trinidad Order for cases of those descriptions, has been already indicated. In them, enfranchisement is no immediate consequence of the default; yet it must ultimately be made such, if the default be not retrieved, within a reasonable time, on the part of the parties interested in remainder or reversion; for otherwise frauds might easily be committed, subversive of the general object. These special cases, it must be admitted, are rather of delicate and difficult treatment; since a period must be allowed within which the condition of the unregis tered negro is equivocal. He cannot be immediately set free; for that