The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade | Page 8

In all the consultations which were held before Mr.
Brougham's motion in 1824, he bore an active and useful part. In
pushing the advantages gained by the debate he was unwearied and
successful. Unhappily it pleased Providence that he should not receive
here below the final reward of his long and valued labours; for he was
called to his final repose some months before the Emancipation Bill
passed into a law.

There remains little to add, except that this measure, which was carried
with little opposition in 1833, owed its success in Parliament to the
ample bribe of twenty millions, by which the acquiescence of the West
Indians was purchased. The measure had hardly come into operation,
when all men perceived that the intermediate state of apprenticeship
was anything rather than a preparation for freedom, and anything rather
than a mitigation of slavery. It is due to some able and distinguished
friends of the negro race to state, that they all along were averse to this
plan of a transition state. Lord Howick, then in the Colonial Office as
Under-Secretary, went so far as to leave the department, from his
dislike of this part of the measure. Mr. Buxton and others protested
against it. Even its friends intimated that they wished the period of
apprenticeship to end in 1838 instead of 1840; but there was a general
belief of the preparatory step being necessary,--a belief apparently
founded on experience of the negro character, and indeed of the vicious
tendency of all slavery, to extinguish the power of voluntary labour, as
well as to make the sudden change to freedom unsafe for the peace of
the community. The fact soon dispersed these opinions. Antigua in a
minute emancipated all her slaves to the number of thirty thousand and
upwards. Not a complaint was ever heard of idleness or indolence; and,
far from any breach of the peace being induced by the sudden change in
the condition of the people, the Christmas of 1833 was the first, for the
last twenty years, that martial law was not proclaimed, in order to
preserve the public peace. Similar evidence from Jamaica and other
islands, proving the industrious and peaceable habits of the apprentices,
showed that there was nothing peculiar in the circumstances of
Antigua.
An important occurrence is now to be recorded as having exercised a
powerful influence upon the question of immediate emancipation.
Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, a member of the Society of Friends,
stricken with a sense of the injustice perpetrated against the African
race, repaired to the West Indies, in order that he might examine, with
his own eyes, the real state of the question between the two classes. He
was accompanied by John Scoble and Thomas Harvey; and these able,
excellent, and zealous men returned in a few months with such ample
evidence of the effects produced by apprenticeship, and the fitness of

the negroes for liberty, that the attention of the community was soon
awakened to the subject, even more strenuously than it ever before had
been; and the walls of Parliament were soon made once more to ring
with the sufferings of the slave, only emancipated in name, and the
injustice of withholding from him any longer the freedom which was
his indefeasible right, as soon as he was shown capable of enjoying it
beneficially for himself and safely for the rest of the community.
In these transactions, both in Jamaica, where he is one of the largest
planters, and in Parliament, where he is one of the most respected
members, the Marquess of Sligo bore an eminent and an honourable
part. His praise has been justly sounded by all who have supported the
cause of negro freedom, and his conduct was by all admitted to be as
much marked by the disinterested virtue of a good citizen and amiable
man, as it was by the sagacity and ability of an enlightened statesman.
Both as governor of Jamaica, as the owner of slaves whom he
voluntarily liberated, and as a peer of Parliament, his patriotism, his
humanity, and his talents, shone conspicuously through this severe and
glorious struggle. While such was the conduct of those eminent
philanthropists, some difference of opinion prevailed among the other
and older leaders of the cause, chiefly grounded upon doubts whether
the arrangement made by Parliament in 1833, might not be regarded as
a compact with the planters which it would be unjust to violate by
terminating their right to the labour of the apprentices at a period earlier
than the one fixed in the Emancipation Act. A little consideration of the
question at issue soon dispelled those doubts, and removed every
obstacle to united exertion, by restoring entire unanimity of opinion.
The slaves, it was triumphantly affirmed, were no party to the compact.
But