Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/358

340 From this time, petitions against slavery, and the duties which were considered to protect and uphold it, continued to load the tables of both houses of parliament. It was impossible for the legislature to mistake the sense of the country, and the presentation of these petitions afforded opportunities to many enlightened and eloquent members of parliament to express their concurrent sentiments also, and to bring forward facts in support of them; for almost every communication from the colonies furnished new proofs of determined opposition to the measures of government for ameliorating the condition of the negroes, or of practical disregard to them, by continued and aggravated instances of oppression and cruelty. These were peculiarly displayed in opposition to the religious instruction of the slaves, and persecution of their teachers, and in throwing every difficulty in the way of slaves obtaining their manumission. By the new laws, in some of the colonies, masters were compelled to liberate their slaves on payment of a fairly appraised value. The bare possibility of obtaining freedom for themselves, or those most dear to them, stimulated the poor creatures to industry and self-denial; and many instances occurred of parents claiming the benefit of the law to purchase, not their own freedom, but that of a child, perhaps of several in succession; and, can it be believed, that persons appointed to fix the valuation in such cases, should so lean to the side of oppression, as unjustly to favour the master, and to extort, from the hard earnings of the slave, a price double that which would have been fixed on in an ordinary sale? Such was continually the case. To give only one