.
Mother-Country Stephen.' The last epithet, attributed to Charles Buller,
meant that when the colonies were exhorted to pay allegiance to the
mother country they were really called upon to obey the irrepressible
Under-Secretary. I dimly divine, though I am not much of a politician,
that there is an advantage in criticising the permanent official in a
department. He cannot answer an attack upon him, and it is also an
attack upon the superior who has yielded to his influence. At any rate,
though my father received the warmest commendation from his official
superiors, he acquired a considerable share of unpopularity. For this
there were other reasons, of which I shall presently speak.

Little as I can say of the details of this policy in which he was
concerned, there are one or two points of which I must speak. My father
had accepted the appointment, according to Taylor, partly with the view
of gaining an influence upon the slavery question. In this, says Taylor,
he was eminently successful, and his success raised the first outcry
against him.[35] His family and friends were all, as I have shown,
deeply engaged in the anti-slavery agitation. As an official he could of
course take no part in such action, and his father had to give solemn
assurances that the son had given him no information. But the power of
influencing the Government in the right direction was of equal
importance to the cause. The elaborate Act, still in force, by which
previous legislation against the slave trade was finally consolidated
and extended was passed in 1824 (5 George IV. cap. 113). It was drawn
by my father and dictated by him in one day and at one sitting.[36] It
fills twenty-three closely printed octavo pages. At this time the
Government was attempting to adopt a middle course between the
abolitionists and the planters by passing what were called 'meliorating
Acts,' Acts, that is, for improving the treatment of the slaves. The
Colonial Assemblies declined to accept the proposals. The Colonial
Office remonstrated, obtained reports and wrote despatches, pointing out
any abuses discovered: the despatches were laid before Parliament and
republished by Zachary Macaulay in the 'Anti-slavery Reporter.'
Agitation increased. An insurrection of slaves in Jamaica in 1831,
cruelly suppressed by the whites, gave indirectly a death blow to
slavery. Abolition, especially after the Reform Bill, became inevitable,
but the question remained whether the grant