sunken, withered, impious, infernal island-where God's temples are demolished-from which holy missionaries are banished—and where 20,000 converted slaves are deprived of a place in which to worship God-there was not justice to be found in the Island of Jamaica for a poor black woman, upon whose body was barbarously inflicted. 200 lashes. Finally, Mr. Taylor wrote to Lord Goderich; and his Lordship after examining the evidence, concludes;

Thus every effort was abortive, and thus it has been proved, that an attorney for an absentee proprietor may for months persevere in his attempt to obtain redress for an act of oppression committed on a slave under his charge, but unavailingly. The strong impression made upon my mind by the conduct of the Clarendon magistracy, coupled with similar proceedings in other parochial authorities, is, that Councils of Protection are a mockery, and that where slave evidence is rejected by law, the slave has scarcely the shadow of protection from ill treatment.'

I trust this documentary evidence will be deemed conclusive, and I hope the worthy deputation will state with what facts we illustrate the nature and practice of their darling system. They will send intelligence to St. James's street of this night's proceedings, and I fancy I see the conclave now assembled. Two sheets of letter post, closely written on both sides, is read. Irwell street Chapel crowded great deal of the intelligence of the town present-three gentlemen in the pulpit besides the lecturer-the lecturer's friend attending with a blue bag filled with Parliamentary papers. (Laughter.)

I will now refer to a case which occurred on Lord Combermere's estate. And who is his Lordship? He is a large owner of West India property-a most humane man, and who selected his servants on his slave estates with the greatest care; yet what did his manager do? Why, he slaughtered the slaves on the estate by wholesale, so that in ten years, according to his system, the whole of them would have become extinct. The man was accused of being guilty of twelve murders-some of them were called manslaughters; yet there was not to be found in Nevis, or St. Kitt's, a jury who would find a bill against this man, that he might be put upon his trial. Lord Combermere at length heard of his atrocious conduct, and wrote to Lord Goderich on the subject. He says,

I have to thank you very much for your letter of the 20th instant, together with papers relating to the abominable conduct of Mr. J. Walley, a

manager upon my estate at Nevis. Upon my return from the East Indies I received letters from Governor Maxwell, and from Mr. Swindall, (who manages my St. Kitt's property, and is agent also for that in Nevis,) detailing the oppressive and inhuman conduct of Mr. Walley towards the negroes, and informing me that Mr. Swindall had, immediately the facts came to his knowledge, turned Mr. Walley away from the management of the Stapleton estate. I do assure you, my dear Lord, that this circumstance gave me considerable pain, and occasioned me much surprise; for when I was Governor of Barbadoes I visited my estates in St. Kitt's and Nevis, and placed new people in the management of them. I contributed the use of the plough and wheel-barrow for manual labor, and gave strict orders that the slaves should not be hard worked, and that they should be well clothed and fed, and all their comforts attended to. It was most gratifying to me, after my return from the East Indies, that my instructions had been implicitly obeyed, and that no estates in those islands were in such fine order as mine, or the negroes so contented and happy. The gross and inhuman conduct of Mr. Walley, has given me much pain; and your Lordship may be assured that no expense or trouble on my part shall be spared in order to assist in bringing this criminal to justice: but I fear we cannot expect a jury at Nevis or St. Kitts to do their duty. Your Lordship knows me too well not to feel confident that every thing was done by me to bring this man to punishment, when I heard of his misconduct; but unfortunately I did not return from the East Indies till after his trial had taken place. I hope something will now be done in order to make an example of such a miscreant, and I have only again to assure you, that I have nothing so much at heart as the welfare and happiness of the negroes upon my estates, and Gov. vernor Maxwell and Mr. Swindall well know how anxious I have been respecting their treatment, &c. I need not add, that every effort shall be used by me for guarding against a recurrence of "such bad treatment of slaves upon my estates."

That's the same law for the master as the slave! (Hear, hear.) We shall see presently what is the law for the slave. Mr. Borthwick talked of the planters' wives, and of the planters' daughters, and he panegyrized the ladies of England, and talked of their virtue and beauty, but his compliments fell silent to the ground. He was doing that which never will succeed-he never will flatter the women of England into an approbation of slavery. (Tremendous cheering, mingled with shouts of bravo.') 'There were ladies in the West Indies,' he said, 'as fair as you, who have hopes, and fears, and sympathies in common with your own.' And is there not, I would ask, a negro heart, a negro's home, and a negro's wife? Has not the negro hopes, and fears, and sympathies? Women of England! I will never celebrate your beauty, your sympathy, your virtuous endearments, until you grant to me, that a negro's wife is as fair in the eyes of her husband as you are in yours. (Loud applause.) A planter said to a boy, the son of a slave, is your mother beautiful?'

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his reply. 'Can a mother be anything but beautiful in the eyes of a son?' (Loud cheers, and a cry of 'one cheer more.') Ought we not, Mr. Borthwick observes, to proceed so as to secure safety for the slave and the interest of the master? Yes, Mr. Borthwick, we ought to save the slave from the inhuman fiends in the Bahamas, from the whips, the pegs, the field-stocks, the collars of St. Lucia-save the slaves from the bullets of Col. Grignon, and from the fangs of the magistrates of Jamaica. (Applause.) It was recommended to the Governor of Jamaica by the editor of the Jamaica Courant, to accept of a cargo of blood hounds from Cuba, to hunt down the negro.—Save him therefore from this sanguinary editor and the fangs of his blood-thirsty agents!

I shall presently call Mr. Borthwick to an account on the subject of manumission. I ask for safety for the slaves when they are engaged in the worship of GOD-I wish protection for the missionary-I desire to save Mr. Knibb's deacon from the scourge. The interest of the planter ! What is he now? A bankrupt. What has he been for years? A pauper. What have we, the people of England, done for him? We have given him more money, in hard cash, for his support, than is subscribed for all our missionary, bible, and tract societies, and all our private and public benevolent institutions, if their amount were doubled or trebled. And yet Mr. Borthwick says, that we don't care for the planter. Ungrateful man! Not care for the planter? We nourished and brought him up, and in so doing, we corrupted him. Mr. Borthwick talked of slavery dying a natural death. Yes, it might have done, years ago, had we withheld our money. We suckled the monster, and are still sustaining him at the cost of millions annually. That gentleman knows, or ought to know, that it is not in the concentrated wisdom of Parliament, to legislate for the Planters, unless slavery be abolished. We can only pluck him from ruin by extinguishing the system, and restoring commerce to its uncorrupted and legitimate foundations.

The system has been proved to be a ruinous one, and how is that ruin to be avoided? Hear the remedy, ye wise men of St. James's street! Lord Goderich tells you not to despair, but to retrace your steps. In a despatch to the Earl of Belmore, dated 6th June, 1831, he says,

The existence of severe commercial distress amongst all classes of society connected with the West Indies is unhappily but too evident. Yet what is the just inference from this admitted fact? Not, certainly, that the proprietary body should yield themselves to despair, and thus render the evil incurable; but that we should deliberately retrace the steps of that policy which has had so disastrous an issue. Without denying the concurrence of many causes towards the result which we all so much deplore, it is obvious that the great and permanent source of that distress, which almost every page of the history of the West Indies records, is to be found in the institution of slavery. It is vain to hope for long continued prosperity in any country in which the people are not dependant on their own voluntary industry for their support; in which labor is not prompted by legitimate motives, and does not earn its natural reward; in which the land and its cultivators are habitually purchased and sold on credit; and in which the management of that property is almost invariably confided by an absent proprietary, to resident agents or to mortgagers, who are proprietors only in name. Without presuming to censure individuals for the share they may have taken in maturing this system, I cannot but regard the system itself as the perennial spring of those distresses of which, not at present merely, but during the whole of the last fifty years, the complaints have been so frequent and so just. Regarding the present Orders as a measured and cautioned, but at the same time, a decided advance towards the ultimate extinction of slavery, I must, on that account, regard it as tending to the cure of the pecuniary embarrassments which it is said to enhance.'

In our friend's reply he distinctly stated, that it was not the wish of the planters to maintain slavery an hour beyond the time when the slaves were fit for freedom. If they were to consult economy, he said they would do it instantly. They acknowledge that slave labor is unprofitable. And now I will pin down my honorable opponent on this point. On the score of economy, they would manumit their slaves, because two thirds of them are children or aged, and therefore unable to work: WHAT THEN BECOMES OF THEIR CLAIM TO COMPENSATION? (Loud cheers.) But why do they not liberate the population? Hear it my friends and believe it if you can, they retain them from motives of the purest humanity. Compassion for the infant-sympathy and tenderness towards the aged and infirm, are the reasons why they defend the system. Hear it ye British matrons!-Ye know not the duties of the nursery.-Ye could not, or ye would not, train up your piccaninnies in the way they should go.-They would starve if they were f rec.- -The negro mother would forget her sucking child,' she would not have compassion on the son of her womb,' and therefore the West India Committee feels constrained, from principles of heavenly charity, to care for these infant outcasts. (Tremendous applause.) Hear it ye modern philanthropists! Yours is a misguided benevolence.

Ye know not what ye do. Slavery is based upon humanity. The old would want wine. Wine did I say ? Mr. Borthwick told you they had wine. But I suppose this wine is to be found in the spacious habitation the same gentleman described. (A loud laugh.) A dwelling consisting of four parlors and a saloon (renewed laughter ;) and when instead of the destitute cabin of the slave, you find this delightful and commodious retreat, then, and not till then, will you find the negro regaling himself with wine, supplied him by his most amiable master. (Great cheering.)

My learned opponent then proceeded to a discussion on the sinfulness of slavery, and you recollect how hard he labored this part of his argument. He went to the 25th chapter of Leviticus, and hung his whole defence of the abstract principle, upon the 45th and 46th verses.

'Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession.

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possesssion; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but, over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another.'

Now he knows, or ought to know, that this slavery has ceased, and has not lasted for ever. He knows that the Jews have not slaves now. If they now retained the Canaanite and the Hittite in slavery, he might found an argument on the passage. But he who gave the command, at the same time knew when their dispensation would end; and he provided in its stead a dispensation of love. (Great cheering.) But my opponent did not quote other parts of that law. Why did he not also quote this passage from the xxi. chapter and 16th verse of Exodus?

And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.'

(Great cheering followed the reading of this passage.) He knows, or should know, that according to his own argument, there ought to be no slavery but by the express command of God. Let him, then, quote his authority for our holding the negroes in slavery. (Applause.) Let him not ground his advocacy on the state of servitude in Judea. As fared the master so fared the slave. If the master had white bread the slave was not to have brown-if the master had old wine the slave had not new-if the one