The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave
the Colonies;[25]--the cases of Eleanor Mead,[26]--of Henry
Williams,[27]--and of the Rev. Mr. Bridges and Kitty Hylton,[28] in
Jamaica. These cases alone might suffice to demonstrate the inevitable
tendency of slavery as it exists in our colonies, to brutalize the master
to a truly frightful degree--a degree which would often cast into the
shade even the atrocities related in the narrative of Mary Prince; and
which are sufficient to prove, independently of all other evidence, that
there is nothing in the revolting character of the facts to affect their
credibility; but that on the contrary, similar deeds are at this very time
of frequent occurrence in almost every one of our slave colonies. The
system of coercive labour may vary in different places; it may be more
destructive to human life in the cane culture of Mauritius and Jamaica,
than in the predial and domestic bondage of Bermuda or the Bahamas,--but
the spirit and character of slavery are every where the same, and cannot
fail to produce similar effects. Wherever slavery prevails, there will
inevitably be found cruelty and oppression. Individuals who have preserved
humane, and amiable, and tolerant dispositions towards their black
dependents, may doubtless be found among slave-holders; but even where a
happy instance of this sort occurs, such as Mary's first mistress, the
kind-hearted Mrs. Williams, the favoured condition of the slave is still
as precarious as it is rare: it is every moment at the mercy of events;
and must always be held by a tenure so proverbially uncertain as that of
human prosperity, or human life. Such examples, like a feeble and
flickering streak of light in a gloomy picture, only serve by contrast to
exhibit the depth of the prevailing shades. Like other exceptions, they
only prove the general rule: the unquestionable tendency of the system is
to vitiate the best tempers, and to harden the most feeling hearts. "Never
be kind, nor speak kindly to a slave," said an accomplished English lady
in South Africa to my wife: "I have now," she added, "been for some time a
slave-owner, and have found, from vexatious experience in my own
household, that nothing but harshness and hauteur will do with slaves."
[Footnote 23: See Anti-Slavery Reporter, Nos. 5 and 16.]
[Footnote 24: Ibid, No. 44.]
[Footnote 25: Ibid, No. 47.]
[Footnote 26: Ibid, No. 64, p. 345; No. 71, p. 481.]
[Footnote 27: Ibid, No. 65, p. 356; No. 69, p. 431.]
[Footnote 28: Anti-Slavery Reporter, Nos. 66, 69, and 76.]
I might perhaps not inappropriately illustrate this point more fully by
stating many cases which fell under my own personal observation, or became
known to me through authentic sources, at the Cape of Good Hope--a colony
where slavery assumes, as it is averred, a milder aspect than in any other
dependency of the empire where it exists; and I could shew, from the
judicial records of that colony, received by me within these few weeks,
cases scarcely inferior in barbarity to the worst of those to which I have
just specially referred; but to do so would lead me too far from the
immediate purpose of this pamphlet, and extend it to an inconvenient
length. I shall therefore content myself with quoting a single short
passage from the excellent work of my friend Dr. Walsh, entitled "Notices
of Brazil,"--a work which, besides its other merits, has vividly
illustrated the true spirit of Negro Slavery, as it displays itself not
merely in that country, but wherever it has been permitted to open its
Pandora's box of misery and crime.
Let the reader ponder on the following just remarks, and compare the facts
stated by the Author in illustration of them, with the circumstances
related at pages 6 and 7 of Mary's narrative:--
"If then we put out of the question the injury inflicted on
others, and merely consider the deterioration of feeling and
principle with which it operates on ourselves, ought it not
to be a sufficient, and, indeed, unanswerable argument,
against the permission of Slavery?
"The exemplary manner in which the paternal duties are
performed at home, may mark people as the most fond and
affectionate parents; but let them once go abroad, and come
within the contagion of slavery, and it seems to alter the
very nature of a man; and the father has sold, and still
sells, the mother and his children, with as little
compunction as he would a sow and her litter of pigs; and he
often disposes of them together.
"This deterioration of feeling is conspicuous in many ways
among the Brazilians. They are naturally a people of a
humane and good-natured disposition, and much indisposed to
cruelty or severity of any kind. Indeed, the manner in which
many of them treat their slaves is a proof of this, as it is
really gentle and considerate; but the natural tendency to
cruelty and oppression in the human heart, is continually
evolved by the impunity and uncontrolled licence in which
they are exercised. I never walked through the streets of
Rio, that some house did not present to me the semblance of
a bridewell, where the moans and the cries of the sufferers,
and the sounds of whips and scourges within, announced to me
that corporal punishment was being inflicted. Whenever I
remarked this to a friend, I was always answered that the
refractory nature of the slave rendered it necessary, and no
house could properly be conducted unless it was practised.
But this is certainly not the case; and the chastisement is
constantly applied in the very wantonness of barbarity, and
would not, and dared not, be inflicted on the humblest
wretch in society, if he was not a slave, and so put out of
the pale of pity.
"Immediately joining our house was one occupied by a
mechanic, from which the most dismal cries and moans
constantly proceeded. I entered the shop one day, and found
it was occupied by a saddler, who had two negro boys working
at his business. He was a tawny, cadaverous-looking man,
with a dark aspect; and he had cut from his leather a
scourge like a Russian knout, which he held in his hand, and
was in the act of exercising on one of the naked children in
an inner room: and this was the cause of the moans and cries
we heard every day, and almost all day long.
"In the rear of our house was another, occupied by some
women of bad character, who kept, as usual, several negro
slaves. I was awoke early one morning by dismal cries, and
looking out of the window, I saw in the back yard of the
house, a black girl of about fourteen years old; before her
stood her mistress, a white woman, with a large stick in her
hand. She was undressed except her petticoat and chemise,
which had fallen down and left her shoulders and bosom bare.
Her hair was streaming behind, and every fierce and
malevolent passion was depicted in her face. She too, like
my hostess at Governo [another striking illustration of the
_dehumanizing_ effects of Slavery,] was the very
representation of a fury. She was striking the poor girl,
whom she had driven up into a corner, where she was on her
knees appealing for mercy. She shewed her none, but
continued to strike her on the head and thrust the stick
into her face, till she was herself exhausted, and her poor
victim covered with blood. This scene was renewed every
morning, and the cries and moans of the poor suffering
blacks, announced that they were enduring the penalty of
slavery, in being the objects on which the irritable and
malevolent passions of the whites are allowed to vent
themselves with impunity; nor could I help deeply deploring
that state of society in which the vilest characters in the
community are allowed an almost uncontrolled power of life
and death, over their innocent, and far more estimable
fellow-creatures."--(Notices of Brazil, vol. ii. p.
354-356.)
* * * * *
In conclusion, I may observe that the history of Mary Prince furnishes a
corollary to Lord Stowell's decision in the case of the slave Grace, and
that it is most valuable on this account. Whatever opinions may be held by
some readers on the grave question of immediately abolishing Colonial
Slavery, nothing assuredly can be more repugnant to the feelings of
Englishmen than that the system should be permitted to extend its baneful
influence to this country. Yet such is the case, when the slave landed in
England still only possesses that qualified degree of freedom, that a
change of domicile will determine it. Though born a British subject, and
resident within the shores of England, he is cut off from his dearest
natural rights by the sad alternative of regaining them at the expence of
liberty, and the certainty of severe treatment. It is true that he has the
option of returning; but it is a cruel mockery to call it a voluntary
choice, when upon his return depend his means of subsistence and his
re-union with all that makes life valuable. Here he has tasted "the sweets
of freedom," to quote the words of the unfortunate Mary Prince; but if he
desires to restore himself to his family, or to escape from suffering and
destitution, and the other evils of a climate uncongenial to his
constitution and habits, he must abandon the enjoyment of his
late-acquired liberty, and again subject himself to the arbitrary power of
a vindictive master.
The case of Mary Prince is by no means a singular one; many of the same
kind are daily occurring: and even if the case were singular, it would
still loudly call for the interference of the legislature. In instances of
this kind no injury can possibly be done to the owner by confirming to the
slave his resumption of his natural rights. It is the master's spontaneous
act to bring him to this country; he knows when he brings him that he
divests himself of his property; and it is, in fact, a minor species of
slave trading, when he has thus enfranchised his slave, to _re-capture_
that slave by the necessities of his condition, or by working upon the
better feelings of his heart. Abstractedly from all legal technicalities,
there is no real difference between thus compelling the return of the
enfranchised negro, and trepanning a free native of England by delusive
hopes into perpetual slavery. The most ingenious casuist could not point
out any essential distinction between the two cases. Our boasted liberty
is the dream of imagination, and no longer the characteristic of our
country, if its bulwarks can thus be thrown down by colonial special
pleading. It would well become the character of the present Government to
introduce a Bill into the Legislature making perpetual that freedom which
the slave has acquired by his passage here, and thus to declare, in the
most ample sense of the words, (what indeed we had long fondly believed to
be the fact, though it now appears that we have been mistaken,) THAT
NO SLAVE CAN EXIST WITHIN THE SHORES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
NARRATIVE OF LOUIS ASA-ASA,
A CAPTURED AFRICAN.
The following interesting narrative is a convenient supplement to the
history of Mary Prince. It is given, like hers, as nearly as possible in
the narrator's words, with only so much correction as was necessary to
connect the story, and render it grammatical. The concluding passage in
inverted commas, is entirely his own.
While Mary's narrative shews the disgusting character of colonial slavery,
this little tale explains with equal force the horrors in which it
originates.
It is necessary to explain that Louis came to this country about five