British Slavery and its Abolition, 1823-1838

William L Mathieson

• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789123258
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Written by distinguished Scottish historian William L. Mathieson, this book is a study of British slavery and a narrative of the movement for its abolition, which began in 1823, succeeded partially in 1833, when slavery was said to have been abolished, and completely in 1838.
British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823-1838 focuses on slavery in the West Indian colonies—particularly British Guiana and British Honduras—which at the point of the book's first publication in 1926 had not yet been covered comprehensively, as greater interest had been taken in American than in British slavery, "for it was far more extensive, lasted some thirty years longer, and culminated in a great civil war."
The author traces the movement, "which always aimed at abolition, but the immediate object of which was at first amelioration," through despatches and reports which were printed from year to year as Parliamentary Papers; describes the introduction of foreign systems, especially the Spanish system; discusses the controversy between the Jamaica Assembly and Parliament to a conclusion; and, in the final chapter, also delves into the effects of emancipation.
An invaluable addition to any history collection.

CHAPTER I—SLAVERY

AS slavery consists in placing one person at the disposal of another who may or may not abuse his power, its essential feature is not the misery of its victims but their degradation; and our first object must be to consider as the measure of this debasement the laws and customs under which the slave lived. Wilberforce complained that people wished only to be assured that the slaves were well treated, a question equally appropriate to cattle, and were too often blind or indifferent to their social condition;{65} and a recent American writer has said, “If you deny the rights of man to the negro slaves, you cut the heart out of the anti-slavery argument.”{66} Slavery in itself admits of no justification; and, if we wish to estimate fairly any one of its types, we must consider it, not in isolation, still less on a background of freedom, but in conjunction with others. In the West Indies, if we leave out of account the small Swedish island of St. Bartholomew, there were four systems of slavery besides our own—Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish. Examples of all these systems, except the last, had come permanently under British rule; but the Spanish system was universally admitted to be much the least onerous; and it will be well to examine this system, and then, with this model before us, to consider the condition of the slaves in our own and other colonies.

Spanish slavery in the West Indies was a century older and lasted considerably longer than that of any other European Power. It began and it ended as probably the worst in the world; but there was an intermediate period, happily of great length, during which its reputation for mildness was fully deserved. We often forget that there was a trade in negroes between Africa and Europe before the discovery of the New World. It had been established by the Portuguese, whose king about 1480 assumed the title of “Lord of Guiney”; and there was a slave market not only at Lisbon, where as late as 1539 about 10,000 negroes are said to have been sold annually, but also at Seville.{67} The Spaniards began their career as slave-owners at the expense of the aborigines of Santo Domingo, then called Hispaniola, where Columbus had planted his first colony in 1492. Their action, being neither welcome nor expected at Madrid, was first annulled and then permitted under rigorous limitations; but, as a modern historian has said, it is impossible to license crime by halves;{68} and a population of about 800,000 was worked to death, chiefly as gold-diggers, in less than twenty years. The Dominican missionaries, who have been called the abolitionists of their day, protested vehemently against the immolation of this feeble race; but they had less compassion for the more robust negroes who as labourers were considered four times as effective and a few of whom had been brought to Hispaniola even during the lifetime of Columbus. Cardinal Ximenes is said to have reprobated the iniquity of enslaving one race for the sake of liberating another; but Charles V, with the approval of Las Casas, the famous Churchman, who had been appointed Protector General of the Indians, inaugurated the regular slave trade in 1516 by authorising a contract with some Genoese merchants for the annual importation of 4000 blacks.

It is probable that the negroes were at first treated little better than the Indians, for Las Casas lived to repent bitterly of his error; but Crown and Church, assisted no doubt by the slackening of colonial enterprise, succeeded before long in greatly ameliorating their lot. Spaniards could buy negroes when offered for sale in foreign markets; but, unlike the subjects of all other European Powers, they were forbidden to go to Africa for the purpose of enslaving them. Masters were required to prepare their slaves for baptism, which was to be administered within a year after their importation, and to send them to mass on Sundays and festivals; and they were compelled by law to afford them every facility for marriage. The slave’s choice of a wife was not confined to his own plantation. If he wished to marry a woman on some distant estate, his master must buy the wife for him at a fair valuation, or the wife’s master must buy him. No married couple could be separated by sale, even where they lived on adjoining estates and belonged to different masters; and the breaking up of families by sale for debt, whether voluntary or judicial, was of course unknown. In no European colony was the slave legally entitled to hold property; but under Spanish rule the growth of many humane customs had reduced the disability to a mere form. Houses, land, and even slaves, could be held by slaves.

But the outstanding and distinctive feature of Spanish slavery was the facilities allowed for the purchase of freedom. The slaves were in two classes—those who could be sold by the owner for any sum he might be able to obtain, and those known as coartados because their price had been limited or cut. There was no restriction on the voluntary manumission of slaves, which indeed was inculcated as a pious duty, except that, if old or infirm, they must be provided for by their masters; but the slave could obtain his liberty or make himself coartado by purchase; and in both cases the transaction could, if necessary, be managed for him by the local magistrate who acted as Protector of the Slaves. If the slave could not prevail upon his master to accept the sum offered for freedom, he could appeal to the Protector, at whose instance his value would then be determined under legal sanction by two appraisers—one for each party, and an umpire. The maximum price was 300 dollars, and no slave, however valuable, could be required to pay more. Similarly, if a master did not fix the price of his slave on receiving an instalment of his value, the latter could offer himself for appraisement, and the master was then bound to give him a certificate—which was not affected by a change of ownership—that he was coartado in the difference between the sum already paid and that fixed by the court. Henceforth he was entitled to go on buying up his freedom in instalments of not less than fifty dollars; and meanwhile he ceased in some measure to work as a slave, being usually allowed to hire himself out for his own profit so long as he paid his master one real or sixpence a day for every hundred dollars of his price which were still wanting. This permission was not obligatory, though seldom refused, where the slave had descended to his master coartado or had become so in his service, but it was always exacted as a condition of sale.

Thus the slave advanced in industry and self-respect, whilst “as it were, knocking off his chain, link by link.” The master got a fair proportion of his earnings; and frequently, where there were more than enough of unpriced slaves, some of these also were allowed to hire themselves out. Town slaves, and the many household slaves who had been taught a trade, were of course the greatest gainers from this system, and many of them worked their passage to freedom in seven years; but considerable, though less ample, facilities were accorded to the field workers. They were entitled by law to allotments on which they grew provisions and reared pigs and poultry for sale; rations, more or less sufficient, were supplied by the owner; and they had 134 days in the year at their own disposal—one day a week for cultivating their grounds, and Sundays and thirty Church festivals on which they were not allowed to work except during harvest.

If a slave was ill-treated by his owner, he could apply to the Protector for a licence to be sold; and, what is more remarkable, the owner was obliged to sell him if the slave found a purchaser who was willing to liberate him within a reasonable time or even to make him coartado at a price much below his value. Nor was it necessary that a negro should be born a slave. An infant could be emancipated before birth for twenty-five dollars and between birth and baptism for fifty dollars. That the facilities for gaining freedom were not neglected is evident from the census. In Cuba in 1817 there were no more than 199,000 slaves in a total coloured population of 383,000. In Porto Rico in 1820 the free negroes were almost as numerous as those in bondage; and Trinidad in 1821, after it had become a British possession, comprised 21,000 slaves and 14,000 free people of colour.

The system may not have been unexceptionable from the economic or even the moral standpoint. Under the law of compulsory manumission, which made freedom the prize of industry and skill, a slave-owner was liable to lose the best members of his gang. A planter, who had to dispense with the services of his slaves on two days a week, and to allow them the equivalent of a month’s holiday in the year, might find it difficult to cope with foreign competition; and the master who permitted his slaves, male and female, to work for hire was seldom curious as to how the gains were made on which he levied toll. Too often, it is said, he connived at theft and prostitution.{69} But the Spaniards were prepared to take such risks for the sake of mitigating and minimising what they regarded as a necessary evil. In the Cuban market freedom was the only commodity which could be bought untaxed; every negro against whom no one had proved a claim of servitude was deemed free; and freed negroes had, with some trifling exceptions, all the privileges of whites. Unquestionably there were abuses in practice, for administrative corruption was rampant in all the Spanish colonies; but we have it on the high authority of a British international judge at Havana that to ameliorate the lot of the slave and to smooth his path to freedom was “held paramount to all other considerations,” and that this was the branch of the law which was “best and most impartially administered.”{70}

British slavery will be fully discussed later; but it may be well at this stage to consider how it stood in reference to the points which have been indicated in the preceding sketch. In our colonies the presumption in all doubtful cases was against freedom. No negro who could not repel the imputation of servitude was allowed to be at large. He was apprehended and advertised and, if nobody claimed him, was sold for the public benefit as a runaway slave. If the immigrant had been manumitted and could produce his papers, he was safe, for the law was justly, though strictly, administered; but great was his danger if he had been born of free parents in another colony. Not only was the existence of slavery assumed, but the liberation of its victims was discouraged. In Demerara no slave could be set free without consent of the Governor and Council. In most of the colonies heavy taxes had been imposed on manumission. In some, including Demerara, they were still levied, whilst in others the owner was required to give security that the object of his benevolence should not become chargeable to the parish. The alleged reason for this restriction—that owners might release their slaves, when old or infirm, in order to avoid the cost of maintaining them—was obviously a pretence; for no discrimination was made of age or health; testamentary manumissions were not excepted; and it was notorious that the great majority of paupers in our islands were whites.{71} The legislature of Barbados must have wished to keep down the growth of a free coloured class when in 1801 it taxed the manumission of females much more heavily than that of males. Next year manumission was taxed for the first time in St. Christopher. The Act declared it to be “a great inconvenience that the number of free negroes and of free persons of colour {72} was augmented by the enfranchisement of slaves,” and it contained the extraordinary provision that any slave who had been released from service by his master, but not formally enfranchised, should be “publicly sold at vendue.”{73} The result of all this was that the British free coloured population was not only extremely small but, as we shall see, subjected to almost every imaginable social, civil and even professional disqualification. In Cuba alone in 1827 there were some 20,000 more free persons of colour than in the whole British West Indies;{74} and not till 1796 in Jamaica were such persons allowed, as a special concession, to give evidence against whites in cases of assault.

In regard to property, the British slave was in the same position as the Spanish, his capacity to hold it being actually, though not legally, recognised. He had no right of redemption; but freedom could of course be bought either for him or by him provided the owner was willing to sell. A white man who wished to ransom his negro mistress or her children had frequently to pay an extravagant sum; and the same extortion was too often practised on the hard-working slave. The market value of a slave in Jamaica in 1824 was £45 sterling, and under the Spanish system of appraisement he could not have been called upon to pay more; but we find male slaves paying for themselves £100 to £200.{75}

One cannot read the Spanish regulations without seeing that their main object was to promote the moral and social welfare of the slave, and that they were designed only incidentally and as a matter of course to secure him from ill-treatment. In our colonies only the second of these purposes was attempted, and we shall find that its accomplishment was rendered hopeless by the entire neglect of the first. British slaves had no legal status which they could assert either personally or through a guardian. “In the contemplation of law,” wrote Wilberforce, “they are not persons but mere chattels;”{76} and it is hardly an exception to this statement that in all the colonies, but quite recently in some, the murder of a slave had been made a capital crime; for in England people could still be put to death for maliciously killing or maiming cattle. Slaves could be sold collectively or individually in payment of their master’s debts; and, though allowed to give evidence for and against each other, their testimony was not admitted against free persons, whether white or coloured. The reason for this restriction was said to be their incapacity to understand the obligation of an oath, and this again was due to the deficiency of religious teaching. The Church of England in the West Indies concerned itself almost exclusively with the whites. “It was no more calculated for the negro,” said Canning, “than for the brute animal that shares his toils;”{77} and indeed its limited ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I-SLAVERY
• CHAPTER II-AMELIORATION, 1823-1826
• CHAPTER III-ABOLITION, 1826-1833
• CHAPTER IV-THE APPRENTICESHIP, 1833-1838
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER