Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar. James Ewing Ritchie

Britain washed her hands of the stain she had contracted by her sanction of the accursed traffic in flesh and blood, and proclaimed freedom and manhood to the slave.

      So far so good. Whatever imperfections may have attended it, it was a noble act – one of which we may well be proud; on the part of the many, it was done in sincerity and truth. The enlightened people of England considered it almost as a boon to themselves. There was joy and rejoicing at home as well as in the green islands of the west. When the morning dawned on which the slave, the black, stepped forth unchained and free, praise and thanksgivings burst from the lips of others than the long-oppressed descendants of Ham. It was the triumph of humanity; and man, wherever he lived, and whatever his lot, could well be glad.

      Years have passed, and the people of England have not as yet reaped the benefit to which they were fairly entitled by the sacrifices they made. There is a monopoly in favour of West India produce, which deprives the working man of this country of an essential article of food. Slavery still remains, and, till that monopoly is abolished, will remain. Our abolition of it was regarded as an experiment by slave-holding states – an experiment which they now consider to have entirely failed. It is quite natural they should arrive at such a conclusion. What we have done has been but little. We have merely withdrawn from the slave-market our demand for slaves. It remains for us to show, that economically as well as morally we have made a change for the better; that the labour of free men is more productive than that of slaves. By keeping up our monopoly we practically declare the reverse. We supply the slave-holder with his strongest arguments against abolition; and, by giving him an advantage over us in the markets of the world, we afford a stimulus to slavery itself; and thus commit what we profess to abhor. Slave-owners are not remarkable for a high moral sense; could we show them that it was for their interest to emancipate their slaves, they would not be long ere they became our converts. As it is, we appeal to them in vain. To the voice of the charmer they are deaf. Even Lord Brougham’s silvery tones and gentle pleadings fail to move and win; nor does Joseph Sturge meet with a better fate.

      Slavery is a tremendous ill – an unmitigated curse; earth cannot produce its equal. Where it rears its hideous head, all that raises man above the beast, and makes life a thing to be desired, languishes and dies. Its state is dark as night – dreary as death – terrible as hell. For putting it down two plans have been proposed. It can be destroyed, it is said, by government interference, by treaties, by armed power. This has been tried; we shall now see with what effect. As soon as, in 1807, Parliament had passed a bill abolishing the British slave trade, by doing which we but did what was done in Denmark in 1792, the British ministers at all foreign courts were ordered to negotiate treaties for the abolition of the slave-trade. Mr. Laird tells us —3

      “They commenced with Portugal, after nine years’ labour, concluding a treaty in 1810. In 1815 Great Britain paid £300,000 for seizing Portugal vessels engaged in the trade up to the 1st June, 1814; and the same year gave up to her £600,000, for another treaty putting an end to the Portuguese slave-trade,” except for the purpose of supplying the transatlantic possessions belonging to the crown of Portugal. “In 1817, a third treaty was made, under which the Mixed Commission Courts and Preventive Squadron were established. In 1823, another treaty was brought forth.” In the mean while the trade carried on by miscreants of all nations, under the fraudulent cover of the Portuguese flag, became a disgrace to Christendom.4 “In 1889, the British Parliament took the law into their own hands, and passed an act authorising British cruisers to seize Portuguese vessels engaged in the slave-trade, and constituting British Vice-Admiralty Courts to condemn them. In 1842, this law was repealed, and a fifth treaty has been made with Portugal. We are therefore about to recommence the same round again with this power; though the increase of the trade under our former treaties was from 25,000 slaves in 1807 to 56,000 in 1822; and in 1839, forty-eight vessels, under the Portuguese flag (out of a total of sixty-one slave-vessels) were condemned at Sierra Leone.”

      We next come to Spain. In 1814, we offered her a bribe of £800,000 if she would abolish the slave-trade at the end of five years. This she refused, but promised to prohibit the trade, except for Spanish possessions. In 1815 we got her to sign, with other powers, at the Congress of Vienna, a declaration “that the slave trade is repugnant to the principles of humanity and of universal morality.” In 1817, another treaty was got, on our paying £400,000 for it; and in 1822, a third; and “the sea swarmed with slave-ships, carrying on the slave-trade under the flag of Spain.”5 And so it continued until 1836, when the fourth, or Clarendon treaty was made; which Sir Fowell Buxton designates “an impudent fraud,” but which Mr. Bandinell thinks perfection, or as near perfection as a treaty can get. In it was embodied an equipment clause, by which a vessel with certain articles and fittings on board is liable to condemnation. This has had the effect of diminishing the trade carried on under the Spanish flag, but the number of slaves landed in Cuba does not appear to have been at all affected by it; forty-three vessels entering the port of Havanna, after landing their slaves on the coast of Cuba, in 1836; the annual average number in the next four years being forty-five.

      “It appears, therefore, that for our £400,000 paid in 1817 we have got four treaties, under which the supply of the Spanish colonies with slaves has gone on as regularly as that of any other article of commerce, increasing and diminishing with the demand for them; that in the mean time we have, as slave-catchers for them, handed over to their tender mercies several thousand emancipados at the Havanna, who are a degree worse off than the slaves themselves; and our consul having contrived an ingenious plan to get back some of these poor people, has had his ‘exequatur’ withdrawn, and turned out of the colony.

      “On the separation of Brazil from Portugal, negotiations were entered into to induce the Brazilian government to abandon the slave trade; and, in 1826, a treaty was entered into declaring it piracy, after 1830, when a mixed British and Brazilian court were to adjudicate on seizures. The greatest exertions were used to import slaves from the date of this treaty, and the vessels were consequently much more crowded than usual; yet, out of 150,587 slaves legally imported into Rio Janeiro between the 1st July, 1827, and 31st December, 1830, when it became a smuggling trade, the mortality on the middle passage was only eight per cent. In 1831, the trade still going on, Don Pedro issued a decree, declaring all slaves brought into Brazil FREE. In 1835, a new treaty was entered into with Great Britain, similar to the Spanish one of the same date, which the Brazilian legislature refused to ratify then, and repeated the refusal in 1840.”