Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 140.pdf/469

460 favored and supported by our own courts, which have liberally imparted to it their protection and encouragement" (an astonishing imputation on English judges); he further said, "he trusts that he shall not depart from the modesty which belongs to his situation, and (he hopes) to his character, when he observes, that ancient custom is generally recognized as a just foundation of all law." When a judge of exemplary fairness in all international disputes shut his eyes to the main question, whether the violent detention of a woman in slavery, which was pronounced lawless in England, was not equally against English law in our colonies; when he further made custom and connivance a just basis for hideous iniquity, this sent a thrill of indignation into Abolitionists. In fact, Lord Stowell proceeded to call slavery a crime! "Emancipation," he said, "can only be effected at the joint expense of both countries (the colonies and England), for it is in a peculiar mannner the of this country." Marvellous judgment! Our population were in no complicity with it, but only certain planters of the West Indies, the ministry, and (if we believe Lord Stowell), the judges, who, he says, "liberally protected and encouraged it." Therefore he followed them in promoting "crime." However, the slave-owners were jubilant, and felt themselves in a legal sense much stronger than before. It became abundantly clear, that neither the Tory ministers nor Tory judges were willing to treat a purely moral question from its moral grounds. The same thing was soon to appear in a Whig ministry.

In one important matter Tory ministers had acted the Abolitionist with a high hand. In our American war of 1813-14, our ministry invaded the American continent and called the slaves to liberty. They could not more emphatically disown the doctrine that slaves were private property; this was remembered by the English Abolitionists. The bold claims of the West Indian planters further opened the weakness of applying to their case schemes of gradual abolition such as had suited in some of the Spanish colonies. Men are not willing to have one-sixth part of their "property" taken away; of what use is it (asked the Abolitionists) to require the planters to give to the slaves one day in the week free, if they regard the slaves as their property? Again, as to the slaves buying themselves and their wives or children, may not the planter say he prefers to keep his property, and will not sell it at any price? It became more and more manifest that the nucleus of the whole controversy lay in the questions, "Can innocent men be justly made the chattels of other men? If a felon be ever so justly enslaved for life, would it be just on that account to make his children and children's children slaves? Can that be just concerning the children of men who are cruelly torn away from their native land, which would not be just concerning the children of felons? Can any long duration of such oppression confer a right of continued oppression? If there is to be compensation, is it not due from the oppressors to the oppressed?" No doubt, all these considerations were as clear as daylight to the earliest Abolitionists; but inasmuch as freedom could only be gained through the Parliament and the ministry, they did not wish to run too far ahead of those who had to be convinced. When the Quakers and Nonconformists took up among the people the argument for freedom which Wilberforce and others pleaded in Parliament, the zeal of lecturers and speakers from the platform was ever on the increase. Scarcely any of these earnest men were paid for their services. Only at the last, in a few exceptional cases and for special reasons, was any one paid; yet for many years no advance adequate to the necessity was made — apathy prevailed with the public. The reason at last appeared: no sufficiently broad principle was laid down. To force the planters to limit their stripes to twenty-five instead of thirty-nine, or to bring the slave to a magistrate to be flogged instead of by the overseer, public instinct felt, could bring no permanent result. At last the broad truth was promulgated (a Quaker lady is said to have originated it) — "Man by his moral nature never can become a chattel, therefore to uphold slavery is a crime against God" "Until then" (testified Sir George Stephen) "we found the people apathetic and incredulous of our success, when the press, the Parliament, and the bishops were against us; but at last we had sounded the right note and touched a chord that never ceased to vibrate." This may be called fanaticism; but it is only by those who do not know what justice means, and are most superficially acquainted with human nature.

Mr. Canning died, much lamented, after being for a few months prime minister, in 1827. In his short term of premiership he achieved the Treaty of London, out of which sprang the deliverance of Greece (a little Greece truly) from Turkish oppression. All England had sympathized deeply with the oppressed, and the voices of praise