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النشر الإلكتروني

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CAPACITIES OF

NEGROES.1

(Edinburgh Review, March, 1827.)

Ir was not till a short time back that we entertained the slightest intention of criticising the speculations of Major Moody. We had supposed that they would of course pass in their infancy to that Limbo which is ordained for Laureate Odes, old Court Kalendars, and Sermons printed at the request of Congregations. That à Commissioner should write a dull Report, and that the Government should give him a place for it, are events by no means so rare as to call for notice. Of late, however, we have with great surprise discovered, that the books of the Major have been added to the political canon of Downing-Street, and that it has become quite a fashion among statesmen who are still in their novitiate, to talk about physical causes and the philosophy of labour. As the doctrines which, from some inexplicable cause, have acquired so much popularity, appear to us both false and pernicious, we shall attempt, with as much brevity as possible, to expose their absurdity.

There are stars, it is said, of which the light has not yet travelled through the space that separates them from the eye of man; and it is possible that the blaze of glory which dazzles all the young politicians between Charing-Cross and Westminster Hall may not yet have reached our more

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ART. VI. 1. Papers relating to Captured Negroes. No. I. Tortola Bchedules. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 16th March 1825.

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Captured Negrces. No. II. Separato
No. III. Separate Report of Major
House of Commons to be printed, 16th

3. Second Part of MAJOR MOODY's Report. Commons to be printed, 24th February 1826.

VOL. VI.

16

Ordered by the House of

remote readers. In order, therefore, that our remarks on the Report of Major Moody may be clearly understood, we shall give a short account of the circumstances under which it appeared.

By the Act which abolished the trade in slaves, the King was empowered to make regulations for the employment and support of Negroes, who, under the provisions of that Act, or in the course of hostilities with foreign States, might be rescued from their kidnappers. Some of these liberated Africans were, in consequence, admitted into the army and the navy. Others were bound apprentices in the colonies: and of these last many were settled at Tortola.

In the year 1821, the House of Commons presented an address to the King, requesting that commissioners might be sent to ascertain the condition of these people, and to report it to the Government. Major Moody was selected for this purpose by the Colonial Office. Mr. Dougan, a gentleman to whose talents and integrity the Major bears the highest testimony, was joined with him in the commission. But Mr. Dougan, whatever his good qualities may have been, was under the influence of some unhappy prejudices, from which his colleague appears to have been wholly free. He had been led to adopt the extravagant notion that the Africans were his fellow-creatures; and this delusion betrayed him into errors which Major Moody, to his eternal honour, endeavours to palliate, but which a less candid and amiable censor would have stigmatized with the severest reprehension. Our readers will be shocked to hear that an English gentleman actually desired a black apprentice, during a long examination, to take a seat and they will be touched by the delicacy and generosity of the Major, who mentions this disgraceful occurrence "only," as he says, " to show the bias on the mind of his colleague when one of the African race was concerned with a white person." "1

At length some female Africans in the service of a person named Maclean, were brought before the Commissioners. By their statement, and by the confession of the master himself, it appeared that they had been cruelly treated. Maclean, too, it appeared, had no legal right to them: for they had been originally apprenticed to another person, and the

First Part of Major Moody's Report, page 108.

Mr. Dougan

indentures had never been transferred. thought it desirable to take advantage of this circumstance, and at once to place them in a more comfortable situation; and he prevailed on his colleague to concur with him in recommending the case to the particular consideration of the collector. In the mean time, however, Maclean wrote to the Commissioners, requesting them to revise their proceed ings, and most impudently telling them, at the same time that he had whipped the apprentices with tamarind switches for daring to bear evidence against him! Mr. Dougan seems to have imagined that such conduct was grossly insult ing to the Commissioners, and to the government which em ployed them. He probably thought, too, that to re-examine persons who had been flogged for what they had stated on a former examination, would be to violate every principle of equity and reason. On this point, it appears that Major Moody was of a different opinion; and conceived that truth was likely enough to be obtained from a witness who had just learned that if his evidence be disagreeable to the accused party, he will undergo severe chastisement. A rupture took place. The apprentices, we should perhaps, say the slaves, remained with Maclean; and Mr. Dougan returned to England.

But we really cannot continue to speak ironically on a subject so serious. We do earnestly and gravely assure Major Moody, that we think his conduct, on this occasion, most unjust and unreasonable. Lord Bathurst seems to have entertained the same opinion: For in consequence of orders sent out from England, the wretched women were taken from Maclean and apprenticed to another master.

Mr. Dougan now returned to the West Indies; and the isputes between him and his colleague recommenced. At length both were recalled. Mr. Dougan drew up a report of the proceedings under the commission. The Major refused to concur in it, and presented a separate statement in Answer to it. Mr. Dougan, while labouring under a fatal malady, prepared a reply. This document has, since his death, been transmitted to the Colonial Office, and will, of course, be published with all expedition.

Mr. Dougan thought it sufficient to perform the duty wia which he was charged. His report is therefore, what it professes to be, an account of the condition of the liberated Af

ricans.

But the genius of the Major was not to be confined within limits so narrow. He had command, without stint, of the public paper and the public type. He conceived that the opportunity was not to be lost that now or never was the time to be a philosopher like his neighbours, and to have a system of his own, which might be called after his name. The history of the liberated Africans forms, therefore, a mere episode in his plan. His report is, in substance, a defence of West Indian slavery, on certain new principles, which constitute what he is pleased to call the Philosophy of Labour.

His theory has met with a very flattering reception from those who are favourably inclined to the Colonial system, because they dread innovation, because they hate the saints, or because they have mortgages on West Indian plantations. Unable themselves to defend their opinion, but obstinately determined not to renounce it, they are pleased with a writer who abounds in phrases which sound as if they meant some thing, and which, in the chat of a drawing-room, or in the leading article of a newspaper, supply the place of a reason very creditably.

We come to the consideration of the Report with no such bias upon our minds, and we have, therefore, formed a very different estimate of it. We think that it is, in matter and manner, the worst state-paper that we ever saw. The style is the jargon of a tenth-rate novelist, engrafted on that of a tenth-rate pamphleteer. It abounds with that vague diction which the political writers of France have invented, and by which they often contrive to keep up appearances in spite of the most abject mental poverty. At certain distances, and in certain lights, this paste and pinchbeck logic serves its purpose respectably; and to this, unquestionably, the Major owes the greater part of his reputation. The highest compliment which we can, with any sincerity, pay to him, is to ay, that he has some faults in common with Montesquieu — a writer whom he evidently regards with great admiration. He calls one of the silliest remarks of the lively president profound an epithet which would have amazed us if we had not recollected that the terms in which we describe mag. nitudes, whether material or intellectual, are only relative, — that the Grildrig of Brobdignag may be the Quinbus Flestrin of Lilliput. The theories of Montesquieu are gone where

the theories of the Major will soon go. But though Mon. tesquieu could not keep his doctrines alive, he under stood how to embalm them. Their mummies are beyond all price. The mouldering remains are valued, for the sake of the intricate folds in which they are swathed up, the sweet and pungent spices with which they are seasoned, and the gilded hieroglyphics with which they are emblazoned. The Major has no such skill. Abundance of italics, and oc casional flowers of speech from the Emmelines and Adelines of the Minerva Press, are the only ornaments which set off his speculations. If our object were to render him ridículcus, we could easily fill our pages with solecisms, with affected phrases, with sentences of which the obscurity would leave the most sagacious interpreter at a fault. But this is not our intention. We shall direct our attacks against the great principles of his theory. To find these out, indeed, is no easy task. For the work has neither beginning nor end. The author, instead of taking the trouble to state his propositions, and class his arguments for himself, has left the whole of that task to his opponents, and has made it as difficult as possible by the most elaborate artifice of disorder. We shall do our best, however, to perform it faithfully, and to separato the most important passages from much curious matter concerning the feudal system - the chisel of Phidias-the marriage in Cana of Galilee the difference between Theory and Practice the choice of Hercules the peace and happiness of rural lifethe the rape of the Sabines Supreme Being-and Major Moody himself.

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The first great principle, then, which the Major professes to have discovered is this, that there exists between the White and Black races an instinctive and unconquerable aversion, which must forever frustrate all hopes of seeing them unite in one society on equal terms. We shall con

ider in succession the facts from which he draws this bold conclusion.

By the constitution of Hayti, it seems, no white man of any nation can be a master or proprietor in that island. From this circumstance the Major deduces the fol'owing infer

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"It seems as if each party, when in power, acts as if it was mutually thought the two races could not exist together, in the same community with equal political powers, from the operation of some powerfu

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