On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
the Right Honourable Ge&tfemanr , " ( Mr . Canning , who wished not yet to discuss the que « tioo , ) ** though the personal attack of an Honourable Gmu
tleman , ( Mr . Bright , ) in a sort of parable , was very little calculated to put an end to discussion . Though he did not personally know the individual alluded to , he could , from what he had
heard of him , give a direct contradiction to the imputation of the Honourable Gentleman . " Mr . Bright explained that he was not personally acquainted with the individual referred to , "
From the Times and the Morning Post it appears that Mr . Cooper was named by Sir R . Wilson , Mr . W . Smith , according to the latter newspaper , availed himself of his long experience , the result of a most
exemplary attention to this subject . " He wished the Honourable Member , before ke made the speech he had made , had looked into tlte parliamentary annals of thirty-five years past , where he would have found the Members for
Bristol using exactly the same arguments , not only against the abolition of the Slave Trade , but against any modification of it . " From what I have heard of €€ the Honourable Member for Bristol / ' to whom I am an entire stranger , I
should have expected that these re ~ corded examples of too many of nia predecessors , during "thirty-eve yean past , " would have become warnings against lending himself to advocate what is too justly called ( p . 242 ) the " inhumanity of Bristol /* rather than
encouragements , to pursue such an occupation . A gentleman so intimately connected with the good sense < md liberal policy , the justice , humanity and Christian spirit , which are not sparingly found in that city , would
have heen , I had supposed , ambitious to represent these , rather than to be the representative of her rum puncheons and sugar hogsheads , or even of villas and equipages , dearly purchased l > y the whip-extorted labours of our brutalized brethren , who bear " God ' s
linage though cut in ebony . " \ Vell »» ight the poet of the Tusk exclaim of the white-man , as ho discovers himself in those isles of the blessed , the West Indies ; or among those shameless ftepufrlicans , the slaveholders in the United States , who as Mr . Day justly
Untitled Article
reproached th ^ ni jaa * 8 y y « iar 3 ago , are signing declarations of fndepetodetaee with one hand , and with tbe other brandishing the man-driver's whipcc He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour ed like his own ; aud having pow ' r T * enforce the wrong , for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as a lawful
prey : Chains him , and tasks him , and exacts his sweat With stripes , that Mercy with a bleeding heart Weeps , when she sees- inflicted on a beast . " If the advocacy of a system , thus characterized by a poet , accurately , as in the plainest prose , be the price of a seat in Parliament , then let virtuous
ambition " weigh well the wages with the work assigned /* If to deserve and retain that seat , the most authentic and respectable testimony must be impeached , and the purest motives misrepresented , because the back of some Negro or of some Negress may possibly be found unfurrowed by the driver's
scourge , then let the meanest mechanic of Bristol , or the kind whose daily bread is dependent on his daily toil , be grateful to Providence for the favourable distinction , while be feels on the comparison that " the post of honour is a private station /'
I aoi old enough to recollect when , in the yeatf 17 ^ 2 , Negro-Slavery was advocated by another Member of Parliament , from whom , also , better things might have been expected
That gentleman , who lias long emigrated to the United States , then justly boasted that * ' he had been educated by Dr . Priestley and the fathfer of Mrs . Barbauld , " whose " sen ^ tinaentd he liad imbibed / ' for "in the early part of his life , he was strongly in favour of the abolition . " He was ,
however , the son of a West-India Proprietor , and " left Erigland for Jamaica , " where , he says , h& found the situation of the Slaves inueh better than he had imagined ! Setting aside liberty , they were as well off as the poor in Europe , " and then , after
having admitted this trifling exception of liberty , he proceeds to describe the blessings of IN egro-Slavery ; as your readers will find the tantalizing detail m Mr . Clarkson ' s History ( EL 37 ^) .
Untitled Article
Mr . Rutt on Negro-Sthvefti . 293
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1823, page 283, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1784/page/27/
-