his living from the
yearly income which the hire of his slaves produced, but now the
state has bereft him of his property, and hurled him, widows and
orphans into the most abject poverty and misery, while that act,
as yet without compensation, has more or less generally affected
those who possessed that class of property, and in numberless
instances produced pecuniary embarrassment; while the slave
owners who are proprietors of plantations have not alone lost the
capital invested in their slaves, but the subversion of the
ancient normal order in the colonies, but in addition thereto,
they are exposed to the imminent risk of seeing their estates,
buildings, and fabrics eventually reduced to no value whatever.
Most assuredly the circumstances which precede the emancipation,
cannot be brought forward in support of the necessity thereof.
Such a delusion cannot hold good. It is notorious that the so
called insurrection which was begun in the jurisdiction of
Fredericksted, at St. Croix on the 3d of July, 1848, would have
been put down, if the forces, although reduced as they had been,
had been called out and made use of by the government of that
island. This is borne out by the sentence of 5th of February, in
this year, rendered against the governor-general by the
commission, which sentence expressly states that the declaration
of emancipation partly originated in a desire to procure the
treasury an exemption from compensation, or what is the same
thing, it was intended to serve as a means to deprive the
proprietors of their lawful rights. Furthermore, it is quite
evident, that even the most trifling commotion would not have
occurred, if the Captain-General of Puerto Rico's offer of
assistance on perceiving the impending dangers had been accepted.
Neither is it less certain that the normal order could have been
re-established subsequently. His Majesty's government by
presenting to royal assent the emancipation of the negro slaves,
which the governor-general had taken upon himself to grant, has
adopted the act as its own. It has also from the very beginning
been considered that the insurrection could not be viewed as
sufficient foundation for the act. This is clearly to be seen
from the wording of the royal mandate on which the emancipation
is