THE COLONIES.

{WILLIAM IV. 1832-1833}

At the commencement of this session, the minds of reflecting persons
were fixed with intense anxiety on the subject of West India slavery.
The excitement attending the reform act, indeed, had not been neglected
by the friends of emancipation. Meetings were held and petitions got up:
and government found themselves under the necessity of framing a measure
for the gradual abolition of the trade in the bones and the sinews of
man. The subject was brought before the commons by Mr. Stanley on the
14th of May, when he explained the ministerial scheme in a committee of
the whole house. Government, he said, impelled by the force of public
opinion, resolved to propose a plan which would insure the extinction
of slavery, and manumit not only future generations, but likewise the
existing generation, providing at the same time against the dangers of
a sudden transition. It was proposed, he said, to place the slave for a
limited time in an intermediate state of apprenticeship. He was to enter
into a contract, by which his master would be bound to give him food
and clothing, or in lieu thereof a pecuniary allowance; for which
consideration he, on his part, was to give his master three-fourths of
his time in labour, leaving it to be settled between them whether that
should be for three-fourths of the week or of each day. The remaining
fourth of his time, Mr. Stanley said, the slave would be at liberty to
transfer his labour elsewhere; but if he were inclined to give it to
his master, then his master would be obliged to find him employment
according to a fixed rate of wages. It was a difficult point, he said,
to settle the scale of wages; and he could devise no better mode than
that of compelling the planter to fix a price on the labourer at the
time of his apprenticeship, and by enacting that the wages to be paid by
the master should bear such a proportion to the price fixed by him, that
for the whole of his spare time he should receive one-twelfth of his
price annually. In this manner, he said, the slave and his master would
both act in reference to each other: if the master fixed a high price
on his negro, he would have to pay him proportionate wages; and if a low
price, then upon the payment of that price by any other person on
his behalf, the negro would be free. This measure, he continued, must
necessarily occasion loss to many of the West Indian proprietors; and,
as it was not fitting tha