Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/55

47 effects a sudden and (in my humble opinion) an uncalled-for change might produce."

And now, Sir, I beseech the House to consider the utter impossibility of any adequate legislative preparation for the abolition of the apprenticeship in August 1838. Let me suppose, what, except for argument's sake, I regard as a purely chimerical supposition—that you could carry your resolution, and pass your bill in June. It might arrive in the West Indies by the 1st of August. We require poor laws, police laws, jury laws, electoral laws, vagrant laws, laws for prison discipline. We require at least a currency in which it may be physically possible to pay wages to the mass of the apprentice population. Do you expect that, upon the naked announcement of your will, there will in a moment spring into existence a whole harvest of legislative measures, which are permanently to fix and determine, in every colony, the social condition of a whole people? But perhaps you will say, this legislation ought not to have been postponed, and the islands must suffer for their fault. Not so. Sir: the government are responsible for it. Lord Glenelg, I apprehend, wrote thus to Sir J. C. Smyth, on December 29th, 1837.

"It is perfectly true that to the utmost extent it is and has been the endeavour of her Majesty's government to avoid every measure which v,^ill predetermine the nature of the relations which are to subsist between employers and servants in the West