Report of a Lecture on Colonial Slavery and Gradual Emancipation; Delivered in the Assembly Rooms on Friday, March 1 1833

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 edition. Excerpt: ... All! could you tell thc Slaves in the West India Colonies what is going on at home--could you draw to them a picture of the interior of a manufactory at Manchester, or at I.eeds, or at Bristol, or at any of the other manufacturing towns at home, they w ould l)e found subscribing willingly and proudly to the relief of the White Slaves; for of suffering such as is in these manufactories they have no idea. ( Hear.) But my object in making this reference, is not to draw a parallel between the condition of the peasant In this country and the labourer in the West India Colonies--for 1 should rather call him a labourer than a Slave. Deline in your unprejudiced solitude what Slavery means, think of the evils which that hated word specially and definitively involves, and nieasure'well how many of these evils comparatively belong to the condition of our own labourers, and of the laljourers in the Colonies, and 1 will then put it to any honest mind to say which of the two better deserves the name of Slave! My object is, however, not to draw the parallel, but to bring one of the most important points of the question now in debate before your mind, and that is--Would it be well, if, in attempting to cure one patient, a medical ****-dant should kill another? Would it not be better to take such gentle means as would restore both to life, though it might be by a slower progress? Well, the point of view in which I desire to put the question now is this--Consider, even if Emancipation were all that it has been contended to be as far as the Slave is concerned, what will it be for our own Peasantry 'i Must we erect the freedom of the Slave upon the ruin of our own Peasantry? Must we purchase for the Slave what we believe to be good, by involving our own...