No More Learning

To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than
nothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around
them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations
has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To
the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed
building. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other room
in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If,
therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set of
people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad
enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most
precious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest
religious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot
be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and
humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of
little or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won
in a most unjust war.

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians;
not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of which
I would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it has
been said, knew that the original founders of these chapels were
Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitarian
doctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitarian
doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop
of London. ) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot
pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he
proves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can
subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who
preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either
Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither
Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great
prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the
history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of
which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779,
the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles
had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly
enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who
refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and
he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the
Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period,
the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as
the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711,
the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In
that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom
they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional
Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a
clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause
it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting
minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant
might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to
the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of
the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of
1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoes
put forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformist
ministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore,
grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the
Unitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground.

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, of
William the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, held
the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, the
preachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity,
they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable and
learned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument so
ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is
well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to
take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a
gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English
Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer.
Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions.
Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together.
What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday,
the sermons should have become less and less like those of the old
Calvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have been
less and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceased
to be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and
hearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then,
perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treated
with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of English
nonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr Fox
Maule. ) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to an
analogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No person
in the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines now
professed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733
and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would
have regarded with horror. I have talked with some of the ablest, most
learned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of our time; and they
all fully admitted that they held more than one opinion which their
predecessors would have considered as impious. Take the question of the
connection between Church and State. The seceders of 1733 thought that
the connection ought to be much closer than it is. They blamed the
legislature for tolerating heresy. They maintained that the Solemn
league and covenant was still binding on the kingdom. They considered
it as a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and Covenant
was not recognised at the time of the Revolution. When George Whitfield
went to Scotland, though they approved of his Calvinistic opinions, and
though they justly admired that natural eloquence which he possessed in
so wonderful a degree, they would hold no communion with him because he
would not subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. Is that the doctrine
of their successors? Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration?
Are they not zealous for the voluntary system? Is it not their constant
cry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate to encourage any
religion, false or true? Does any Bishop now abhor the Solemn League
and Covenant more than they? Here is an instance in which numerous
congregations have, retaining their identity, passed gradually from one
opinion to another opinion. And would it be just, would it be decent in
me, to impute dishonesty to them on that account? My right honourable
friend may be of opinion that the question touching the connection
between the Church and State is not a vital question. But was that the
opinion of the divines who drew up the Secession Testimony? He well
knows that in their view a man who denied that it was the duty of the
government to defend religious truth with the civil sword was as much a
heretic as a man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.

Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists. They are zealous
against this bill. They think it monstrous that a chapel originally
built for people holding one set of doctrines should be occupied by
people holding a different set of doctrines. I would advise them to
consider whether they cannot find in the history of their own body
reasons for being a little more indulgent. What were the opinions of
that great and good man, their founder, on the question whether men not
episcopally ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist? He told
his followers that lay administration was a sin which he never could
tolerate. Those were the very words which he used; and I believe that,
during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered by laymen
in any place of worship which was under his control. After his death,
however, the feeling in favour of lay administration became strong and
general among his disciples. The Conference yielded to that feeling. The
consequence is that now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, those
who glory in the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, what
Wesley declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate. And yet these
very persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry tones that it
is fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which has departed from its
original doctrines to retain its original endowments. I believe, Sir,
that, if you refuse to pass this bill, the Courts of Law will soon have
to decide some knotty questions which, as yet, the Methodists little
dream of.

It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and acrimonious
manner in which too many of the Protestant nonconformists have
opposed this bill. The opposition of the Established Church has been
comparatively mild and moderate; and yet from the Established Church we
had less right to expect mildness and moderation. It is certainly
not right, but it is very natural, that a church, ancient and richly
endowed, closely connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerful
in parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forget
what is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies. But when I hear
a cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by men who have
been, over and over again within my own memory, forced to invoke in
their own defence the principles of toleration, I cannot but feel
astonishment mingled with indignation. And what above all excites both
my astonishment and my indignation is this, that the most noisy among
the noisy opponents of the bill which we are considering are some
sectaries who are at this very moment calling on us to pass another
bill of just the same kind for their own benefit. I speak of those Irish
Presbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm their
marriages. See how exact the parallel is between the case of those
marriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians have
gone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course of
years. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishing
certain property during a long course of years. In neither case did any
doubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous
mind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of the
Presbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which the
Unitarians held their chapels were disputed. The two questions came
before the tribunals. The tribunals, with great reluctance, with great
pain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the marriages nor in the
case of the chapels, can prescription be set up against the letter
of the law. In both cases there is a just claim to relief such as the
legislature alone can afford. In both the legislature is willing to
grant that relief. But this will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian.
He demands with equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved,
and that nobody else shall be relieved. In the same breath he tells us
that it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law for his
benefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a retrospective
law for the benefit of his fellow sufferers. I never was more amused
than by reading, the other day, a speech made by a person of great note
among the Irish Presbyterians on the subject of these marriages. "Is it
to be endured," he says, "that the mummies of old and forgotten laws are
to be dug up and unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters? " And yet a
few hours later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in digging
up and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of another
set of dissenters. I should like to know how he and such as he would
look if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone towards them which
they think it becoming to assume towards the Unitarian body; if we were
to say, "You and those whom you would oppress are alike out of our pale.
If they are heretics in your opinion, you are schismatics in ours. Since
you insist on the letter of the law against them, we will insist on the
letter of the law against you. You object to ex post facto statutes; and
you shall have none. You think it reasonable that men should, in spite
of a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out of a chapel
built with their own money, and a cemetery where their own kindred lie,
because the original title was not strictly legal. We think it equally
reasonable that those contracts which you have imagined to be marriages,
but which are now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should be
treated as nullities. " I wish from my soul that some of these orthodox
dissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend with so
much zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and substance of
Christianity, and that there is a text about doing unto others as you
would that they should do unto you.

To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice, the
Trinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now asking us
for relief will appear to have exactly the same right to it. There
is, however, I must own, one distinction between the two cases. The
Trinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and especially strong among
the electors of towns. They are of great weight in the State. Some of
us may probably, by voting to-night against their wishes, endanger
our seats in this House. The Unitarians, on the other hand, are few in
number. Their creed is unpopular. Their friendship is likely to injure
a public man more than their enmity. If therefore there be among us
any person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person who
delights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from persecuting
powerful sects, now is his time. He never can have a better opportunity
of gratifying his malevolence without risk of retribution. But, for my
part, I long ago espoused the cause of religious liberty, not because
that cause was popular, but because it was just; and I am not disposed
to abandon the principles to which I have been true through my whole
life in deference to a passing clamour. The day may come, and may come
soon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may again
be, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice. When that day
comes I will try to prevent others from oppressing them, as I now try
to prevent them from oppressing others. In the meantime I shall
contend against their intolerance with the same spirit with which I may
hereafter have to contend for their rights.

*****




THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845.

On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the order of
the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means should be read, Lord
John Russell moved the following amendment:--"That it is the opinion
of this House that the plan proposed by Her Majesty's Government,
in reference to the Sugar Duties, professes to keep up a distinction
between foreign free labour sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which
is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the
consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the
removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years
extremely uncertain and improbable. " The amendment was rejected by 236
votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made.

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your
notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on
your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and
commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged
my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of
a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her
Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question.
I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our
decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations,
we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed
the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade (Mr Gladstone. ), has distinctly admitted this. He says that
the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary
advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of
maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in
the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as
respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade,
the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course
recommended by the Government.

The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral
objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a
distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave
labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being
indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in
my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation
pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral
obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal
and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows
that we ought to adopt his amendment.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act with perfect
consistency as to this distinction between free labour and slave labour.
It was, indeed, necessary that he should say this; for the policy of the
Government is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit,
we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent
consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable
gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit
sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop
Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever
be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test
of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is
consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel,
that it is impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one
occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a
certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is no essential
difference of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple
at all. I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrisy, or to impute that
odious vice to any gentleman on either side of the House. But whoever
declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule,
and the next moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance
of that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least his
power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely questioned.

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by the
Government. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our
fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in
the institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such
a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequences
from which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which would
throw the whole commercial and political system of the world into
confusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial
legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say more
especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourable
Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral
obligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against
moral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked but
a shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great and
prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin what
they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: I
will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble them
away to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standards
of right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest
at the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish
the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two
weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and
loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as
much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their
own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute
Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they
profess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existing
laws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not
say of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Take
the article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the United
States which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco of
Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently
imported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourer
of the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in your
Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and
authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except a
few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanical
gardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland.
The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivation
spread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish
freeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and
Havannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation.
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of the
gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to exclude
the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco the
monopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer of
the United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on any
terms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident that
the three right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the
Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of
the Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No. " And why not?
"Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is," they will
say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and by
slaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic in
defiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. True
it is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then
on the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty
of six hundred per cent. , sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent. :
and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise
duty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of
revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and
make it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly. " You may be
right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moral
obligation of which you talk so much be one which may with propriety
yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it be
paramount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British
snuff and cigars.

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors of
the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain
and Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws in
existence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrine
that many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, when
they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But what
will the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new
budget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already
existing in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowd
of new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with a
proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation of
raw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict
accordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that
it will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend
to vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown by
slaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common
sense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a
paragraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists, which was
to the following effect:--"Thus has this eminent statesman given to the
English labourer a large supply of a most important raw material, and
has manfully withstood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate our
country with sugar dyed in negro blood. " With what I should like to
know, is the right honourable Baronet's cotton dyed?

Formerly, indeed, an attempt was made to distinguish between the
cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of sugar. The cultivation of
sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the health and life of
the slave. But that plea, whatever it may have been worth, must now be
abandoned; for the right honourable Baronet now proposes to reduce, to
a very great extent, the duty on slave grown sugar imported from the
United States.

Then a new distinction is set up. The United States, it is said, have
slavery; but they have no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say that
the sugar and cotton of the United States are the fruits, not only of
slavery, but of the slave trade. And I say further that, if there be on
the surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is more
accountable than any other for the misery and degradation of the
African race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which the right
honourable Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce of
which he proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever. I have
no pleasure in going into an argument of this nature. I do not conceive
that it is the duty of a member of the English Parliament to discuss
abuses which exist in other societies.
Such discussion seldom tends to
produce any reform of such abuses, and has a direct tendency to wound
national pride, and to inflame national animosities. I would willingly
avoid this subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me no
choice. He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose
of criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States. He
tells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding the
justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for punishing
the barbarity of others. He binds up the dearest interests of my
constituents with questions with which otherwise I should, as a Member
of Parliament, have nothing to do. I would gladly keep silence on such
questions. But it cannot be. The tradesmen and the professional men
whom I represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for some
years, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it to
be grievous, unequal, inquisitorial? Why are we to be loaded in time of
peace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war? " The
paper manufacturer, the soap manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Tax
is to be continued, are our important and suffering branches of industry
to have no relief? " And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behave
so well as the United States towards the negro race. " Can I then avoid
instituting a comparison? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truth
of an assertion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those who
have sent me hither? I must speak out; and, if what I say gives offence
and produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that inconvenience
the Government is responsible.

I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave trade,
not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe,
more odious and more demoralising than that which is carried on between
Africa and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana and
Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of the Union are
divided into two classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts of
burden increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugar
and cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be worked
to death. To what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we may
learn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. North
Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States. During
the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of North Carolina
was almost stationary. The slave population of Virginia positively
decreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and Virginia propagation was,
during those ten years, going on fast. The number of births among the
slaves in those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number of
the deaths. What then became of the surplus? Look to the returns from
the Southern States, from the States whose produce the right honourable
Baronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all; and
you will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding States
was barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming States. In
Louisiana, for example, where we know that the negro population is
worn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to itself, keep up its
numbers, there were, in 1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in
1840, one hundred and seventy thousand. In Alabama, the slave population
during those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundred
and seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand. In
Mississippi it actually tripled. It rose from sixty-five thousand to one
hundred and ninety-five thousand. So much for the extent of this slave
trade. And as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelled
in the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plantation
looking out for proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances,
and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is picked up here; a black
girl there. The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn asunder
as rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave captain on the
coast of Guinea. A gang of three or four hundred negroes is made up;
and then these wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men,
are driven southward, as you would drive,--or rather as you would not
drive,--a herd of oxen to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadly
labour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A very
few years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutest
African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast
sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as
fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in
Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave
trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it
that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world
where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should
carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! But that a
civilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free
state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves for
exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even
beget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his own
children, gambolling around him from infancy, should watch their growth,
should become familiar with their faces, and should then sell them for
four or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remote
country a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the best
thing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own,
excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade
which is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of
any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of
a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or
as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames.

There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish to
apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, that
slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me a
much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States.
In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget one
most important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as
it was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting
to slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the
antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it is
difficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers can
ever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts of
the Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy is
notoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils.
In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are not
excluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants,
physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted to
holy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Church
of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive the
important consequences which follow from this last circumstance. It
is by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the
spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving
absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro
dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the
House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would
excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I
do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if
I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the African
race on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should at
once answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbable
that in eighty or a hundred years the black population of Brazil may
be free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the
United States.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which we
have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway of
nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been the
conduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazil
has come into the system; the United States have thrown every impediment
in the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain
respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen
which has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that I
state correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earl
regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the only
efficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expresses
most serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think that
this check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit
to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive British
administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining the
concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consented
to admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusing
deprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content with
refusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right of
visit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be
in strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In every
part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of
Washington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example of
the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. You
cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated to
him its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, if
the United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have
been no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame the
French. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point
of honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think
that they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is
but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the
tricolor is to be less respected then the stars and stripes. The right
honourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend's
amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of Search.
Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right. It is already gone.
We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with France. Everybody knows
how that negotiation will end. The French flag will be exempted from
search: Spain will instantly demand, if she has not already demanded,
similar exemption; and you may as well let her have it with a good
grace, and without wrangling. For a Right of Search, from which the
flags of France and America are exempted, is not worth a dispute.
The only system, therefore, which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's
Ministers, has yet been found efficacious for the prevention of the
maritime slave trade, is in fact abandoned. And who is answerable for
this? The United States of America. The chief guilt even of the slave
trade between Africa and Brazil lies, not with the Government of Brazil,
but with that of the United States. And yet the right honourable Baronet
proposes to punish Brazil for the slave trade, and in the same breath
proposes to show favour to the United States, because the United States
are pure from the crime of slave trading. I thank the right honourable
gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, for reminding me of
Mr Calhoun's letter. I could not have wished for a better illustration
of my argument. Let anybody who has read that letter say what is the
country which, if we take on ourselves to avenge the wrongs of Africa,
ought to be the first object of our indignation. The Government of the
United States has placed itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil never
aspired, and which Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could attain.
The Government of the United States has formally declared itself the
patron, the champion of negro slavery all over the world, the evil
genius, the Arimanes of the African race, and seems to take pride in
this shameful and odious distinction. I well understand that an American
statesman may say, "Slavery is a horrible evil; but we were born to it,
we see no way at present to rid ourselves of it: and we must endure it
as we best may. " Good and enlightened men may hold such language;
but such is not the language of the American Cabinet. That Cabinet is
actuated by a propagandist spirit, and labours to spread servitude and
barbarism with an ardour such as no other Government ever showed in
the cause of freedom and civilisation. Nay more; the doctrine held at
Washington is that this holy cause sanctifies the most unholy means.
These zealots of slavery think themselves justified in snatching away
provinces on the right hand and on the left, in defiance of public
faith and international law, from neighbouring countries which have
free institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of diffusing over
a wider space the greatest curse that afflicts humanity. They put
themselves at the head of the slavedriving interest throughout the
world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of the Protestant
interest; and wherever their favourite institution is in danger, are
ready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the Dutch. This, then, I hold
to be demonstrated, that of all societies now existing, the Republic of
the United States is by far the most culpable as respects slavery and
the slave trade.

Now then I come to the right honourable Baronet's Budget. He tells us,
that he will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the Brazilian Government
tolerates slavery and connives at the slave trade; and he tells us at
the same time, that he will admit the slave grown cotton and the slave
grown sugar of the United States. I am utterly at a loss to understand
how he can vindicate his consistency. He tells us that if we adopt my
noble friend's proposition, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade
between Africa and Brazil. Be it so. But is it not equally clear that,
if we adopt the right honourable Baronet's own propositions, we shall
give a stimulus to the slave trade between Virginia and Louisiana? I
have not the least doubt that, as soon as the contents of his Budget
are known on the other side of the Atlantic, the slave trade will become
more active than it is at this moment; that the jobbers in human flesh
and blood will be more busy than ever; that the droves of manacled
negroes, moving southward to their doom, will be more numerous on
every road. These will be the fruits of the right honourable Baronet's
measure. Yet he tells us that this part of his Budget is framed on sound
principles and will greatly benefit the country; and he tells us truth.
I mean to vote with him; and I can perfectly, on my own principles,
reconcile to my conscience the vote which I shall give. How the right
honourable Baronet can reconcile the course which he takes to his
conscience, I am at a loss to conceive, and am not a little curious to
know. No man is more capable than he of doing justice to any cause which
he undertakes; and it would be most presumptuous in me to anticipate the
defence which he means to set up. But I hope that the House will suffer
me, as one who feels deeply on this subject, now to explain the
reasons which convince me that I ought to vote for the right honourable
Baronet's propositions respecting the produce of the United States. In
explaining those reasons, I at the same time explain the reasons which
induce me to vote with my noble friend to-night.

I say then, Sir, that I fully admit the paramount authority of moral
obligations. But it is important that we should accurately understand
the nature and extent of those obligations. We are clearly bound
to wrong no man. Nay, more, we are bound to regard all men with
benevolence. But to every individual, and to every society, Providence
has assigned a sphere within which benevolence ought to be peculiarly
active; and if an individual or a society neglects what lies within that
sphere in order to attend to what lies without, the result is likely to
be harm and not good.

It is thus in private life. We should not be justified in injuring a
stranger in order to benefit ourselves or those who are dearest to us.
Every stranger is entitled, by the laws of humanity, to claim from us
certain reasonable good offices. But it is not true that we are bound
to exert ourselves to serve a mere stranger as we are bound to exert
ourselves to serve our own relations. A man would not be justified in
subjecting his wife and children to disagreeable privations, in order to
save even from utter ruin some foreigner whom he never saw. And if a
man were so absurd and perverse as to starve his own family in order
to relieve people with whom he had no acquaintance, there can be
little doubt that his crazy charity would produce much more misery than
happiness.

It is the same with nations. No statesmen ought to injure other
countries in order to benefit his own country. No statesman ought to
lose any fair opportunity of rendering to foreign nations such good
offices as he can render without a breach of the duty which he owes to
the society of which he is a member. But, after all, our country is our
country, and has the first claim on our attention. There is nothing, I
conceive, of narrow-mindedness in this patriotism. I do not say that we
ought to prefer the happiness of one particular society to the happiness
of mankind; but I say that, by exerting ourselves to promote the
happiness of the society with which we are most nearly connected, and
with which we are best acquainted, we shall do more to promote the
happiness of mankind than by busying ourselves about matters which we do
not fully understand, and cannot efficiently control.

There are great evils connected with the factory system in this country.
Some of those evils might, I am inclined to think, be removed or
mitigated by legislation. On that point many of my friends differ
from me; but we all agree in thinking that it is the duty of a British
Legislator to consider the subject attentively, and with a serious sense
of responsibility. There are also great social evils in Russia. The
peasants of that empire are in a state of servitude. The sovereign of
Russia is bound by the most solemn obligations to consider whether he
can do anything to improve the condition of that large portion of his
subjects. If we watch over our factory children, and he watches over
his peasants, much good may be done. But would any good be done if
the Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to interchange
functions; if he were to take under his patronage the weavers of
Lancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the peasants of the
Volga; if he were to say, "You shall send no cotton to Russia till you
pass a ten Hours' Bill;" if we were to say, "You shall send no hemp or
tallow to England till you emancipate your serfs? "

On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be the principles of plain
common sense, I can, without resorting to any casuistical subtilties,
vindicate to my own conscience, and, I hope, to my country, the whole
course which I have pursued with respect to slavery. When I first came
into Parliament, slavery still existed in the British dominions. I had,
as it was natural that I should have, a strong feeling on the subject.
I exerted myself, according to my station and to the measure of my
abilities, on the side of the oppressed. I shrank from no personal
sacrifice in that cause. I do not mention this as matter of boast. It
was no more than my duty. The right honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of State for the Home Department, knows that, in 1833, I disapproved
of one part of the measure which Lord Grey's Government proposed on the
subject of slavery. I was in office; and office was then as important
to me as it could be to any man. I put my resignation into the hands of
Lord Spencer, and both spoke and voted against the Administration. To my
surprise, Lord Grey and Lord Spencer refused to accept my resignation,
and I remained in office; but during some days I considered myself as
out of the service of the Crown. I at the same time heartily joined in
laying a heavy burden on the country for the purpose of compensating the
planters. I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I thought
myself bound, at any cost to myself and to my constituents, to remove a
foul stain from the British laws, and to redress the wrongs endured by
persons who, as British subjects, were placed under my guardianship. But
my especial obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery
itself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, as
a member of this House, was accountable. As for the blacks in the United
States, I feel for them, God knows. But I am not their keeper. I do not
stand in the same relation to the slaves of Louisiana and Alabama in
which I formerly stood to the slaves of Demerara and Jamaica. I am
bound, on the other hand, by the most solemn obligations, to promote the
interests of millions of my own countrymen, who are indeed by no means
in a state so miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the United
States, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order to
obtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to procure the
necessaries of life; and whose lot would be alleviated if I could open
new markets to them, and free them from taxes which now press heavily
on their industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave
labour from our ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects
and constituents. But the good which, by taking such a course, I should
do to the negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical.
That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave grown sugar we do, in
some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. But
I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code for
restraining the cruelty of the American planters, we should not, on
the whole, injure the negroes rather than benefit them. No independent
nation will endure to be told by another nation, "We are more virtuous
than you; we have sate in judgment on your institutions; we find them
to be bad; and, as a punishment for your offences, we condemn you to pay
higher duties at our Custom House than we demand from the rest of the
world. " Such language naturally excites the resentment of foreigners.
I can make allowance for their susceptibility. For I myself sympathise
with them, I know that Ireland has been misgoverned; and I have done,
and purpose to do, my best to redress her grievances. But when I take up
a New York journal, and read there the rants of President Tyler's son, I
feel so much disgusted by such insolent absurdity that I am for a moment
inclined to deny that Ireland has any reason whatever to complain. It
seems to me that if ever slavery is peaceably extinguished in the United
States, that great and happy change must be brought about by the efforts
of those enlightened and respectable American citizens who hate slavery
as much as we hate it. Now I cannot help fearing that, if the British
Parliament were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger of the
American slave, the pride of those excellent persons would take the
alarm. It might become a point of national honour with them to stand by
an institution which they have hitherto regarded as a national disgrace.
We should thus confer no benefit on the negro; and we should at the same
time inflict cruel suffering on our own countrymen.

On these grounds, Sir, I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the
right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the cotton and sugar
of the United States. But on exactly the same grounds I can, with a
clear conscience, vote for the amendment of my noble friend. And I
confess that I shall be much surprised if the right honourable Baronet
shall be able to point out any distinction between the cases.

I have detained you too long, Sir; yet there is one point to which I
must refer; I mean the refining. Was such a distinction ever heard of?
Is there anything like it in all Pascal's Dialogues with the old Jesuit?
Not for the world are we to eat one ounce of Brazilian sugar. But we
import the accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and machinery
to render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export it
to Leghorn and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italy
and Germany: we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on a
Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked
Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown
sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false
witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb;
I did not put my lips to the calf-skin. " I remember something very like
the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I
read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a
trifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A wandering lad, a sort
of Gil Blas, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most
pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily,
and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmost
scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety.
"Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant, "never touch what
is not your own; never take liberties with sacred things. " Sacrilege, as
uniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepest
horror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, an
ill-looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. "Will
you buy these? " says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church
plate and a rich silver crucifix. "Buy them! " cries the pious man. "No,
nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretch
that you are, have you no care for your soul? " "Well then," says the
thief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me? " "Melt
them down! " answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter. "
He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver,
thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the
thief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty.