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March 26 th , 1824 . Sir , IN common with all the friends of humanity , your readers have doubtless been taking a deep and anxious interest in the recent measures of our
government for the mitigation of colonial slavery . The termination of their labours , while it may not have perhaps reached the expectations or have satisfied the hopes of the more zealous advocates of the cause , must
yet be considered as a glorious , and , as far as it does go , a valuable triumph of public opinion . The foundation that has thus been laid , by the wise and salutary code for the future regulation of one colony ( Trinidad ) , can but be viewed as the corner-stone of
an edifice that can only be completed by the final and absolute extinction of a system from which every better feeling of the heart revolts , and every principle of religion and humanity is alike abhorrent .
As the law now constituted for this colony has been divulged for the avowed object of ascertaining , as an experiment , the practicability of its general application as the basis of a system directed to the ultimate extinction of
slavery , it will become a matter of curious and not uninteresting speculation to attend to the impressions it may produce both on the objects of its legislation—the negroes
themselvesand of their employers . And these impressions it will be more particularly deserving our attention to notice , for calculating on the probable success of the measure , in their influence on the
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minds of each of these classes in the tttt-nritigated colonies , if by such a title one may be allowed to designate the islands yet deprived of these ameliora tions . With respect to the impressions oa the negroes of these colonies , what
can we suppose will be their feelings on discovering that so large a portion of the evils which theit suffering race has for so many generations been enduring , are now removed , and that one favoured though but comparatively small portion of their number , are no
longer exposed to the degradations and severities which they are still doomed to suffer ? What will they think of the securities and privileges for the protection of their persons and their property which have been ceded to others , while it is not to be ( at present
at least ) their happy allotment to share them I Will they be content to go on in hopeless drudgery , patiently bearing the more-tiian-ever galling yoke that fetters them , and which it can be no more justice that they should bear , than their happier compatriots at Tri- *
nidad ? If it be justice and policy that an improved system of treatment , founded on principles of lenity and protection , should be granted to one portion of the transported Africans , what is the ground to justify the denial of these advantages to the rest of then ) , or to reconcile themselves to the
continuance of a system by which they are to remain deprived of the boon ? With respect again to the proprietors of the zift-mitigated colonies—on this point we have scarcely to wait the issue of time to learn the impression likely to be produced on their minds . Already has the mortified and angered tone of those who trusted to their
clamour on the lon # -dreaded and loudly-deprecated dangers of innovation to silence the voice of humanity in behalf of the suffering slave ; already has that tone evinced the impression felt in this quarter . On one side we now hear of nothing but the impracticability of
enforcing such idle and speculative theories of legislation—of the danger of demolishing that discretionary principle of coercion , to the existence and exercise of which , for the security of his property and the cultivation of his estates , the planter had only to look . On the other side we hear , that if the
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218 On the Measures for Mitigating Negro Slavery -
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he would have seen that my contest has been not with principles , but with conduct connected with principles . — How can a man be attached to the Church , who believes that the Gospels
of St . Matthew and St . John are spurious ? How can a man receive the sacrament , who believes that our Saviour was the s on of Joseph ? I honour and esteem the Dissenter whose
conduct is consistent with his principles . N . B . The author of " The Unitarian Doctrine , " &c , has in a subsequent pamphlet avowed his belief of the miraculous conception , which places him , I think , at an immense distance from the Evansonian .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1824, page 218, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2523/page/26/
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