ts, others were torn in pieces by the lash of the cart-whip.
Smith was arrested, although he had in fact done his best to stop the
rising. Tried before a court in which every rule of evidence was
tyrannically set aside, he was convicted on hearsay and condemned to
death. Before the atrocious sentence could be commuted by the home
authorities, the fiery heat and noisome vapours of his prison killed
him. The death of the Demerara missionary, it has been truly said, was
an event as fatal to slavery in the West Indies, as the execution of
John Brown was its deathblow in the United States.[15] Brougham in 1824
brought the case before the House of Commons, and in the various
discussions upon it the Gladstone estates made rather a prominent
figure. John Gladstone became involved in a heated and prolonged
controversy as to the management of his plantations; as we shall see, it
did not finally die down till 1841. He was an indomitable man. In a
newspaper discussion through a long series of letters, he did not defend
slavery in the abstract, but protested against the abuse levelled at the
planters by all 'the intemperate, credulous, designing, or interested
individuals who followed the lead of that well-meaning but mistaken man,
Mr. Wilberforce.' He denounced the missionaries as hired emissaries,
whose object seemed to be rather to revolutionise the colonies than to
diffuse religion among the people.

In 1830 he published a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to Sir Robert
Peel,[16] to explain that negroes were happier when forced to work;
that, as their labour was essential to the welfare of the colonies, he
considered the difficulties in the way of emancipation insurmountable;
that it was not for him to seek to destroy a system that an over-ruling
Providence had seen fit to permit in certain climates since the very
formation of society; and finally with a Parthian bolt, he hinted that
the public would do better to look to the condition of the lower classes
at home than to the negroes in the colonies. The pamphlet made its mark,
and was admitted by the abolitionists to be an attempt of unusual
ingenuity to varnish the most heinous of national crimes. Three years
later, when emancipation came, and the twenty million pounds of
compensation were distributed, John Gladstone appears to have received,
individually and apart from his partnerships, a little over seventy-five
thousand pounds for 1609 slaves.[17]

It is as well, though in