Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/345

Rh them in the possession of property. To remove all obstructions to manumission, and to grant to the slave the power of redeeming himself, his wife, and family, at a fair price. To prevent the separation of families, by sale or otherwise; also the removal of slaves from the estate or plantation to which they belong. To restrain the power and prevent the abuse of arbitrary punishment; to abolish the corporeal punishment of females, and the use of the driving whip; and to establish Savings' Banks for the use of the slaves. From these provisions of reform it is easy to conceive some idea of the wretched degraded state of the negroes which was thus virtually acknowledged by the government, and even by the West Indian proprietors themselves. But these moderate concessions were rejected and trampled upon by the local authorities. Some remonstrated against them as fraught with ruin to the master, injurious and demoralizing to the slave, peculiarly hazardous to the lives of the free coloured inhabitants, and totally subversive of the gracious intentions of the king. The abolition of flogging of females, and the driving-whip as it respects both sexes, they maintained to have deprived them of the only means intelligible to slaves, and by which they could be kept in order. Some of the colonies contumeliously refused to comply with the requirements of government, and others evaded the provisions, or dealt out compliances in so scanty a measure, that next to nothing was done. Even in the crown colonies, (see p 105,) the good effected fell very far short of the pledges and intentions of government; and in fact a spirit of disappointment and discontent