University of Virginia Library

To sneer at the saints! Sectarians will say, I have run a muck, and tilted at all I met. I wish to heaven, it were in my power to tilt some of these plotting, sneaking, pharasaic Barebones from the country. No man, in his senses, will advocate slavery;— no man will deny the degrading circumstances to which it is subject; but, those who have calmly considered the West India Question, not led away by the high-flown falsehoods of convening madmen, will soon perceive, that emancipation must be the work of time; and, that if the nation take away the slaves from their legal owners, it is bound, in every principle of religion and equity, to tender them a full and adequate compensation. Mr. Buxton's creed may dictate differently from this;—justice requires no cant to recommend or annul its laws. So basely litigious, and maliciously designing have the saints been, that when we attempt to examine the Question, we are insensibly led to forget the servitude of the slave, in the disgust excited by the gross and shameless fabrications of the saintish defenders; such as, Clarkson, Cropper, and Brougham—skulking behind the pages of a Scotch Review.

The anti-colonists have been sorry tergiversators:—sometime since, their well-meaning champion, Wilberforce, declared, that it was “the slave trade, not slavery, against which they were directing their efforts:” the pious Stephen himself, in 1817, said, that he who could allude to the “emancipation” of the slaves, might be “justly branded as an incendiary, and prosecuted to condign punishment, as a mover of sedition!!” Now, they have shuffled round, and declared, that “they contemplated the early and total emancipation of those slaves, already in our colonies.” (See M'Queen, &c. p. 336.) What are we to think of such canting renegadoes?

Mr. Pitt said, “to think of emancipating the slaves would be little short of insanity;” yet a raw recruit like Fowel Buxton in the plenitude of his most audacious godliness, presumed to propose a resolution for that purpose, and bolstered his speech with unshrinking falsities, and libelling exclamatory froth against the colonies! but—

“The anti-colonists, and those who lead and guide them, eagerly snatched the moment when they imagined East India aid would enable them to beat down the West India colonies, in order that they might raise colonies in Africa; and through these, and for these, at an early day, sap the foundations, and ultimately overthrow the gigantic edifice of our Indian empire.” (M'Queen.)

If the anti-colonists should happen to fail in their disgraceful persecutions, it will not be through any deficiency of slang, lies, malignancy, and blasphemy, both in prose and verse. The following is a specimen of the latter, extracted from a psalm set to music, and exposed for sale, for the benefit of the Anti-Slavery Association.

The next verse has such tempting eloquence in it, that I really must present it to the reader. It will serve for a cabinet curiosity.