Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/31

23 They went to the West Indies. They accepted the civilities, the hospitalities, of managers and planters: they stored up all allegations of abuse until they had reached a distant land, where it would require much time to investigate their truth. They pursued a course the very opposite of that which in common sense would be followed by men anxious only for the truth. What right had Mr. Sturge to distrust the willingness or the power of Sir Lionel Smith to investigate his allegations? After all, it is to him that they have been referred: it is upon his report, in the shocking case of James Williams, that we rely. Why was this not done in the first instance? why was Sir Lionel Smith, in whom perhaps, as much as in any governor of any of our colonies, temper, talent, principle, and judgment are combined, thus suspected by Mr. Sturge? Even his politics, I believe, are akin to those of the administration. Now, had he gone to Sir Lionel Smith with the narrative of Williams, the inquiry would have been instituted, the report sent home early in the last session, and the Government would have come down with an irresistible demand for new enactments: twelve months of many difficulties and some suffering would have been avoided, but an opportunity for agitation and excitement would have been lost. So much for the case of defects in the law, which has been seriously raised in this debate with regard to Jamaica alone, and which I have thus argued affords no ground for abolishing the apprenticeship.