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without his correct judgment , determined on the hopeless project of uniting the iron and the elay > mental liberation and corporal bondage , the gentle accents of Christian instruction and the horrid echoes from a driver ' s whin .
I have taken no small interest in Mr . Cooper ' s communications to your pages , as the result of his mortifying experience , well knowing the judgment , integrity , and entire absence of all angry feeling , by which they were dictated . I was , therefore ,
not a little surprised to find that the truth of his relations , as , also , his conduct and his motives , had been publicly impeached . The proceedings in the House of Commons , on the presentation of the petition from South-Avark , on the 27 th of March last , I happened not to have read , but
received the fir 6 t information on the subject from Mr . Cooper ' s letter ( pp . 231—234 ) . Still further to explain that letter , you will , I dare say , allow me to quote the following extracts from the Morning Chro , n . No . 16829 , which Mr . C . says he had " not at hand" at the time of writing .
" Sir Hobert Wilson said it was impossible , without the greatest pain , to read the recital which the petition contained , on authoritv of the most respectable nature , of the inhumanity with which Slaves were treated in the West Indies . It was impossible to
reflect , without the greatest nairu that reflect , without the greatest pain , that near a million of our fellow-creatures were every morning awakened from their slumbers by the echo of the horsewhip , and were then driven like cattle , or worse than cattle , to be
employed in the severest labour at the discretion , or rather at the caprice , of a tyrannical overseer . It was stated in the petition , that a very respectable individual , who had been a MissitMiary to one of the islands , declared that he had never seen a Bla <; k who did not
bear on his flesh the marks of the severe infliction of the whip { hear , heard we believe from Mr . Bright ] . The Honourable Gentleman cried hear , hear ! but he ( Sir R . Wilaon ) would
read the paragraph in the petition £ This the Honourable Member did * and it was to the effect of the statement which he had just rnade . J Was it to be endured , that in these enlightened times , near a million of our fel-
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low-creatures , without any consideration of feeling or humanity ^ should continue to be treated as if they were senseless and material objects ? That the wife should be separated from the husband , the mother from
the child , and sold for the payment of the debts of the profligate and unthinking master ? Such was the degraded condition in which the Slaves * vere placed in our colonies , that any cringe or atrocity an the part of a white man would go unpunished , if
committed in the presence of Blucks only , whose evidence was not receivable in a court of justice . There were many other circumstances of similar oppression , but it was not his wish , or that of the petitioners , to exaggerate-the facts of the case . All that
they wished was , to call the attention of rarliament to the indispensable necessity of interference . * ' On the motion for bringing * up the petition , " Mr . Bright was impelled by a
strong sense of duty to notice the gross exaggerations which the petition contained ; such , for instance , as that there was not a Negro on whom the marks of the lash were not visible .
He was perfectl y confident , that if the allegations of the petition were strictly examined , they would be found to contain much more falsehood than truth . As to tlie character of the individual , to whose authority the petitioners referred , he knew nothing of
it . But it appeared that he had been sent out as a Missionary to his estate , by a benevolent Planter , who had proved the humanity of his disposition by reducing t \ ie labour which usetj to be performed by his Slaves a fourth . After haying been so sent out , what did
that person do ? He was there three years , and he complained that he had been able to preach to the Negroes only eleven times a-year ; but preaching- was not the way to do them good . His duty was to have visited them , to have seen to their wants , to have relieved their necessities . The
individual in question , however , had too much spiritual pride to do any thing but preach ; and yet it was on the authority o £ such a man that the petitioners called on the House to believe the allegation of their petition . " JVJr- W . Smith said he was very much inclined to follow the advice oi
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Q S 2 Mr . Rutt on Negro-Slavery .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1823, page 282, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1784/page/26/
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