he first among leading Englishmen who threw his heart and
soul into the agitation against colonial slavery. Long before that
agitation approached to anything like success he had brought forward a
motion in the House of Commons, directing attention to the evils and
the horrors of the system, and calling for its abolition. For a time,
successive Governments did not see their way to go any further than to
endeavor to bring about or to enforce better regulations for the use of
slave labor on the colonial plantations. Even these modest measures of
reform had many difficulties to encounter. Some of the colonies were
under the direct dominion of the Crown, were governed, in fact, as
Crown colonies, but others had legislative chambers of their own, and
refused to submit to the dictation of the authorities at home. These
legislative chambers in most cases resented the interference of the
home Government when it attempted to introduce new rules for the
treatment of negro slaves, and the whole plantation interest rallied in
support of the great principle that every owner of slaves had an
absolute right to deal with them according to his own will and pleasure.

[Sidenote: 1832--Anti-slavery agitation]

It was loudly asserted by the planters and by the friends of the
planters--and of course the planters had friends everywhere in
England--that the sugar-growing business could not be carried on with
any profit except by means of slave labor, and that the slaves could
not be got to work except by the occasional use of flogging or other
such needful stimulant. The negroes, it was loudly declared, would
rise in rebellion if once it became known to them that the English
Parliament was encouraging them to consider themselves as slaves no
longer, and their mode of rising in rebellion would simply be a
simultaneous massacre of all the planters and their wives and children.
"See what you are doing!" many a voice cried out to the anti-slavery
agitators; "you are preaching a crusade which will not merely end in
the utter bankruptcy of the West Indian Islands, but in the massacre of
all the planters, their wives, and their children." The agitators,
however, were neither {193} dismayed nor disheartened. It would have
taken a good deal of sophistry to confuse the conscience of Zachary
Macaulay or Wilberforce. It would have taken a good deal of bellowing
to frighten Brougham. The agitation went on with increasing force, and
Brougham cont