impression with which the proceedings and motives of their Legislative Assemblies were regarded, prevailed amongst the public in Great Britain.
The colonial proprietors resident in Great Britain felt little sympathy, either with the colonial legislatures, or with those resident in the colonies. This want of sympathy may be attributed to a peculiarity which distinguished the planters of British from those of other European colonies. The latter considered the colony in which they resided as their home. The former regarded their residence in it as temporary. They looked to the parent state as their only home, and all their acquisitions were made with a view to enjoyment in that home. This feeling accompanied them to England. It was imbibed by their families and their descendants. The colony, which had been the source of their wealth and rank, was not, as she ought to have been, the object of their grateful affection. They regarded with indifference her institutions, her legislature, her resident community. From this want of sympathy, or from the want of requisite information, they made no effort to remove the unfavourable impressions with which the executive Government and the Assemblies regarded each other, or to promote the establishment of their relations in mutual conciliation and confidence.
Another cause operated very powerfully in exciting a strong prejudice against the inhabitants of our West Indian colonies. The feeling which was naturally entertained against the slave trade and slave colonies was transferred to the resident colonists, and almost exclusively to them. By a numerous and powerful party, slavery had been contemplated in itself, and in the relations and interests which it had created, and its abolition had been endeavoured to be effected as if it were the crime of the colonies exclusively. It was forgotten "that it was," to use the language of Lord Stowel, "in a peculiar manner the crime of England, where it had been instituted, fostered, and encouraged, even to an excess which some of the colonies in vain endeavoured to restrain." Besides the acts passed by the legislatures of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, when those were British colonies, we find that when the Assembly of Jamaica, in 1765, was passing an act to restrain the importation of slaves into the colony, the governor of Jamaica informed the Assembly of that island, that, consistently with his instructions, he could not give his assent to a bill for that purpose, which had then been read twice. In 1774, the Jamaica Assembly attempted to prevent the further importation, by an increase of duties thereon, and for this purpose passed two acts. The merchants of Bristol and Liverpool petitioned against their allowance. The Board of Trade made a report against them. The agent of Jamaica was heard against that report; but, upon the recommendation of the Privy Council, the acts were disallowed, and the disallowance was accompanied by an instruction to the governor, dated 28th February 1775, by which he was prohibited, "upon pain of being removed from his government," from giving his assent to any act by which the duties on the importation of slaves should be augmented – "on the ground," as the instruction states, "that such duties were to the injury and oppression of the merchants of this kingdom and the obstruction of its commerce."
The opposition to the abolition of the slave trade was that of the merchants and planters resident in England, and to their influence on the members of the colonial legislature must be attributed whatever opposition was offered by the latter. In the interval between the abolition of the slave trade and that of slavery, the feelings of prejudice against them grew still stronger. Every specific measure by which this party proposed to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, was accompanied by some degrading and disqualifying remarks on the conduct of the resident inhabitants. An act of individual guilt was treated as a proof of the general depravity of the whole community. In consequence of the enthusiastic ardour with which the abolition of slavery was pursued, all the proposed schemes of amelioration proceeded on the erroneous assumption, that the progress of civilisation and of moral and religious advancement ought to have been as rapid amongst the slave population of the colonies, as it had been in England and other parts of Europe. It was forgotten, that until the slave trade was abolished, the inherent iniquity of which was aggravated by the obstacle it afforded to the progress of civilisation, every attempt to diffuse moral and religious instruction was impeded and counteracted by the superstitions and vices which were constantly imported from Africa. Thus, instead of the conciliation which would have rendered the colonists as active and zealous, as they must always be the only efficient, promoters of amelioration, irritation was excited, and they were almost proscribed, and placed without the pale of all the generous and candid, and just and liberal feelings which characterise Englishmen.
This state of public feeling operated most injuriously in retarding and preventing many measures of amelioration which would have been made in the slave codes of the several colonies.
Jamaica experienced, in a greater degree than any other colony, the effects of those unfavourable impressions with which the motives and proceedings of her legislature were regarded, and of those feelings of distrust and suspicion which influenced the relations of the executive government and the Assembly. Her Assembly was more sensitive, more zealous, more tenacious than any other colony in vindicating the privileges of her legislature, whenever an attempt was made to violate them. The people of Jamaica, when that colony first formed part of the British empire, did not become subjects of England by conquest – they were by birth Englishmen, who, by the invitation and encouragement of their sovereign, retained possession of a country which its former inhabitants had abandoned. They carried with them to Jamaica all the rights and privileges of British-born subjects. The proclamation of Charles II. is not a grant, but a declaration, confirmation, and guarantee of those rights and privileges. The constitution of Jamaica is based on those rights and privileges. It is, to use the emphatic language of Mr Burke, in speaking of our North American colonies, "a constitution which, with the exception of the commercial restraints, has every characteristic of a free government. She has the express image of the British constitution. She has the substance. She has the right of taxing herself through her representatives in her Assembly. She has, in effect, the sole internal government of the colony."
The history of the colony records many attempts of the governor and of the government to deprive her of that constitution, by violating the privileges of her Assembly; but it records also the success with which those attempts were resisted, and the full recognition of those privileges by the ample reparation which was made for their violation. That very success rendered the people of Jamaica still more jealous of those privileges, and more determined in the uncompromising firmness with which they maintained them. But it did not render the governors or the home government less jealous or less distrustful of the motives and proceedings of the Assembly. As the whole expense of her civil, military, and ecclesiastical establishment was defrayed by the colony, with the exception of the salaries of the bishop, archdeacon, and certain stipendiary curates; and as that expense, amounting to nearly £400,000, was annually raised by the Assembly, it might have been supposed that the power of stopping the supplies would have had its effect in creating more confidence and conciliation, but it may be doubted whether it did not produce a contrary effect.
The feelings entertained by the government towards the colonies, were invoked by the intemperate advocates for the immediate abolition of slavery, as the justification of their unfounded representations of the tyranny and oppression with which the planters treated their slaves. Happily, that great act of atonement to humanity, the abolition of slavery, has been accomplished; but the faithful historian of our colonies, great as his detestation of slavery may and ought to be, will yet give a very different representation of the relation which subsisted between master and slave. He will represent the negroes on an estate to have considered themselves, and to have been considered by the proprietor, as part of his family; that this self-constituted relationship was accompanied by all the kindly feelings which dependence on the one hand, and protection on the other, could create; and that such was the confidence with which both classes regarded each other, that, with fearless security, the white man and his family retired to their beds, leaving the doors and windows of their houses unclosed. These kindly feelings, and that confidence, were at length impaired by the increasing attempts to render the employers the objects of hatred. At the latter end of 1831, a rebellion of the most appalling nature broke out amongst the slave population. A district of country, not less than forty miles in extent, was laid waste. Buildings and other property, to the amount of more than a million in value, exclusive of the crops, were destroyed.
In 1833, the act for the abolition of slavery was passed; and it cannot be denied, that the feelings of distrust and jealousy with which government