national brig of sixteen guns, two schooners, privateers, and several other vessels, were in Aguada Bay in that island, under the protection of a Spanish fort. There not being sufficient water for the ships, Lieutenants Wooldridge, of the Ceres, and Thompson, of the Acasta, volunteered to take them with the boats, which was done at two in the afternoon, bringing out with them the French national brig Mutine of sixteen six pounders and one twelve pounder and ninety men, two privateer schooners of four guns each and forty-five men, together with four schooners, their prizes, without the loss of a man, although the enemy lost in killed and drowned upwards of forty men. On the 13th of January, Lord Camelford, then acting commander of his Majesty's sloop Beaver at Antigua, shot Lieutenant Peterson of his Majesty's ship Perdrix, for disobeying his orders. What added to the calamity was, that there had been some previous illblood between the parties. Lieutenant Peterson was decidedly wrong, and a court-martial honourably acquitted Lord Camelford. Captain Ricketts, in his Majesty's ship Magicienne, with the Regulus and Drake brig, sailed from Cape Nichola Mole, with 250 troops, to dislodge a body of brigands from Platform Bay, from whence they committed depredations in row boats. The Platform is about seven leagues from the Mole, and is an eminence so called from its shape; the summit is quite level, and about a third of a mile in circumference-very steep and difficult of access. This the pirates were fortifying, and had mounted a mortar, when the arrival of the squadron put an end to their operations. At daylight on the 13th February, the ships were in the bay, and the troops landed with so much rapidity, under cover of the Magicienne's and Drake's fire, that the enemy were routed before they could gain the Platform', which was taken possession of by the troops. The seamen brought off four row boats, and all the guns (six guns and one mortar); and in the evening the troops reimbarked without the loss of a man. In October this year, a white man stabbed a Negro slave in Tobago in the presence of a number of other slaves. The Negro died upon the spot; and the murderer was tried, and acquitted for want of evidence, "according to the usages and customs established and received in the courts of law in the West Indies, of never receiving the evidence of any slaves against a white man." Upon the 23d of April the Duke of Portland sent a circular letter to the West India governors, which enquires, among other things, "whether, in consequence of the act passed last session (Mr. Edwards' bill), whereby the law was repealed which made -Negroes chattels for the payment of debts, the legislature would be Naval Chronicle, vol. ix. p. 114.; vol. xx. p. 8.; vol. xxii. pp. 305. 492. disposed to secure the Negroes on a plantation from being liable to be seized for any future debt of their masters, contracted after passing a law for that purpose, &c. and whether the legislature would by its authority unalienably attach the Negroes to the soil, &c." Lord Balcarres, the governor of Jamaica, in his answer to the duke, says, "I am sorry to report, that the house of assembly positively declined giving any answer." It has been a frequent practice in the West Indies to load the slaves, who have absented themselves from work, with chains, weights, and some with an iron collar rivetted round the neck, with three long rods projecting at equal distances, and hooked at the outer ends. The miserable wearer cannot lie down, without the projecting rods meeting the ground and forming a triangle, in the middle of which his neck is suspended by the galling iron collar. The author saw a boy, a marker at a billiard table in Barbadoes, with one of these collars on, but his had only two projecting rods, which were bent up so as to stand above his head. The boy did not appear to be above twelve years old, and said he wore it "for playing marbles." At Antigua the author saw a female slave, with an iron rivetted round her ancle; it was made with two bars, sharp at each point, crossing each other, and projecting about a foot in four directions. The planter said he could not keep her at home without it. This was in 1805, notwithstanding the act passed this year says, that such practices ought to be declared unlawful, except (and the exception neutralises the prohibition) "other than such as are absolutely necessary for securing the person of such slave." The legislatures of the Leeward Islands were called on to meliorate the condition of their slaves. They all, being five in number, represented to their common governor the expediency or necessity of having in such a case a uniformity or identity of laws; and requested, that for this end a general council and assembly of all the respective islands might be convened at St. Christopher's, though there had been no precedent of such a measure since their separation into different legislative bodies, about a century before. extraordinary general legislature was accordingly convened, and passed an act for the protection and preservation of slaves. An In April, an act was passed more effectually to provide for the support, and extend certain regulations for the protection of slaves; to promote and encourage their increase, and generally to ameliorate their condition. In this act it is ordained, "that every owner or director of any slave or slaves within the Leeward Islands shall weekly and every week, under the penalty of ten shillings per head, for each and every slave under his or her direc Stephen on West India Slavery, p. 293. Reasons for Registry of Slaves, 1815, London, p. 112. tion, for every omission, purchase or provide for every said slave or slaves, among divers other kinds of provisions, one pound and one quarter of herrings, shads, or mackarel, or other substitutes for herrings, shads, or mackarel." In sect. 14. is the following description of the ordinary modes of robbing the Negroes, for which the offender might be subject to a discretionary fine, which was in no case to exceed £10 currency. "If any white or free coloured person shall take away, or cause to be taken, from any slave, any article or thing whatsoever for which such slave shall produce a ticket or note from his or her owner or director, authorizing him or her to sell or possess such article or thing, or shall take away, or cause to be taken away, from any slave, any stock, vegetables, provisions, grass tops, vowra, or any article or thing which such slave shall be authorized by any present or future existing laws, usages, or customs of the island wherein he resides, to sell or possess; or shall, after purchasing from any such slave any of the articles or things aforesaid, refuse or omit to pay him or her the price agreed upon for the same; or shall knock off from the head of, or pull away from any slave into the dirt or street, or trample on the ground, or scatter about upon it any such articles or things as aforesaid, &c." The act goes on to provide a miserable palliative for the ordinary defect of evidence in such cases, by obliging the offender, on a complaint made by the owner of the slave, to purge himself on oath. But it is not on account of this new mode of proceeding that the punishment of felony is made so slight, for if the offender is otherwise convicted, the penalty is the same. It is plain the assembly desired to check these detestable practices. But when will a West India community treat the robbery of a Negro slave by a white man as a felony? The following extract is from sect. 22. of the Melioration Act of the Leeward Islands. "And whereas the marriage of slaves cannot give any particular rights either to the contracting parties or their children, and it being unnecessary and even improper to enforce the celebration of any religious rites among the slaves, in order to sanctify contracts, the faithful performance of which can be looked for only by regular improvement in religion, morality, and civilization," &c. Thus the union of the slaves is denied the protection of the law, for a reason which fails even in point of fact, for many Negroes were well instructed by the Moravian and Methodist missionaries. That the marriage union, as a civil contract alone, ought to be guarded from violation, seems not to have occurred to this council and assembly, and a better was never constituted in the British West Indies. The general assembly of the Leeward Islands passed an act, Stephen on West Indian Slavery, pp. 158. 162. making debts contracted bonâ fide for the subsistence of plantation slaves by the party in possession, a lien in law on the property of such slaves, and of the estate, to whomsoever they belong, or by whatever title they are held. The remedy was inadequate, because the authors of the law, in giving the embarrassed planter the means of subsisting his slaves, did not compel him to use them, nor could they deliver him from the consequences of doing so. The necessity of the cruelty was taken away, but not the strong temptation to it, which is its more ordinary cause. "The necessary subsistence of the slaves ought to be first provided for, in all cases, out of the proceeds of their labour, and every subsisting charge should be postponed rather than that they should perish for want of food, or have their health impaired by an insufficient allowance." The dictates of humanity, private interest, and the voice of the legislature, enforced also by the public interests in preventing insurrections, of which every where famine is the most probable cause, it might be supposed would have rendered this act of the Leeward Islands general in all the islands; but no similar law is yet to be found (1823) in any one of the seven other islands which have separate assemblies. The act settled the minimum of the allowances of food, and deprived the planter of all excuse for not supplying them. Penalties of £100 were imposed if the full ratio of provisions required by the act were not supplied; yet the utter fruitlessness of this law was attested by the council and assembly of Antigua in their report laid before the House of Commons, and printed by its order, in July 1815. No prosecutions for non-compliance with any of the sections of the act have ever been instituted, though there are many planters," the report says, "who had it not in their power to withhold any part of the produce of their plantations from their creditors, without risking the dissatisfaction of their mortgagees and the loss of their possession." And the famine under which the slaves groaned had no other excuse. Where but in the West Indies does the subsistence of agricultural slaves depend upon provisions to be bought or imported from abroad, and consequently on the wealth of their master, who is thus placed under a strong temptation or necessity of withholding a sufficiency of food? From a return made to the House of Commons, May the 6th, 1806, it appears that, in 1798, Great Britain imported from the British West Indies 145,042 cwt. of coffee, and 150,700 hhds. of sugar, of which 70,823 cwt. of coffee, and 83,350 hhds. of sugar, came from Jamaica. In February, the Methodist missionaries at Tortola received an answer from the Danish government, to their petition for permission Stephen on West Indian Slavery, pp. 99. 105. to preach to the slaves in the Danish islands. The reply stated, that "as private individuals, or as ministers on a visit to the islands, the Methodist missionaries were at liberty to preach occasionally as they had done before, but that no grant could be given, through which they might establish societies in any of the Danish territories." Dr. Coke says, "though they were permitted to preach in houses which had been previously licensed, provided those to whom they belonged would grant them liberty, yet as they were forbidden to build others, and to raise distinct societies, they could not but conclude that their time might be more advantageously employed than in exercising labours, which must occasionally be subject to the controul and caprice of those who knew not God." He says their aim was to spread the gospel, and not aggrandize a sect; and yet, because they could not establish their sect in those islands, they gave up preaching in them altogether. This cannot be reconciled by saying, that because the Moravians were successful, the Methodists were less needed; this would have been equally true, even though the Methodists had not been forbidden "to raise distinct societies.”1 Coke's West Indies, vol. iii. P. 170. The following biographical sketch was written by Mr. Turner, the Methodist missionary at Tortola. See Dr. Coke's West Indies, vol. iii. p. 121. "Having frequently observed with pleasure the deep piety and good sense of one of our coloured sisters, Cambric Dracott, I felt a strong inclination to take down from her own mouth a few memoirs of her life; and I was the more inclined to do this, from observing her ill state of health: she seemed to be fast verging towards the grave. The account she gave communicates the following information. "Cambric Dracott, who was born a slave in the island of Barbadoes, about the year 1735, was the offspring of a Mulatto man and a Mustee woman, and was at her birth the property of Henry Evens Holdin, Esq. As soon as she became capable of labour she was employed in the house as a domestic servant, and was treated by the family with great kindness, so that she felt tolerably happy in her condition. When very young she was sent to school to learn to read and work; but making little proficiency in reading, and afterwards having no opportunity of improvement, she entirely forgot the little she had acquired. "About the age of seventeen she received the addresses of a white man, a smith by trade, to whom she was united for about four years in the character of a wife, though without the ceremony of marrage, for matrimony in this sense is uni versally denied to slaves. They may unite, but only by private contract. During their union she had two children, and was perfectly satisfied with him whom she considered to be her husband; but this state Idid not last long. Through those vicissitudes which diversify human life, she fell into the hands of another owner, who soon put an end to the happiness she had enjoyed; for, notwithstanding he was a married man, he used every exertion that fraud and force could suggest, to seduce his slave: but on finding himself disappointed, had recourse to revenge, and determined to sell her off the island, and thus burst for ever those tender ties which nature had formed. To effect his purpose, he had her seized, put in irons and closely confined, till he could meet with a convenient opportunity to send her off. While thus confined through the instigation of her master, a number of things were invented to blacken her character, of which no proof was either demanded or brought; this was done to give a sanction to the inhuman treatment she was destined to undergo. After remaining six weeks in this state of confinement, and living only on a small portion of the coarsest fare, the morning arrived on which she was to take her final departure from all that could endear her to the continuance of life. Amidst the pangs of agonizing nature, she solicited the favour of clasping her only child (for at this time only one was living) in a last embrace; but |