The treatment of the Negroes must be
made to depend _upon law_; and unless this be done, we shall look in
vain for any real amelioration of their condition. In the first place,
all those old laws, which are repugnant to humanity and justice, must be
done away. There must also be new laws, positive, certain, easy of
execution, binding upon all, by means of which the Negroes in our
islands shall have speedy and substantial redress in real cases of
ill-usage, whether by starvation, over-work, or acts of personal
violence, or otherwise. There must be new laws again more akin to the
principle of _reward_ than of _punishment_, of _privilege_ than of
_privation_, and which shall, have a tendency to raise or elevate their
condition, so as to fit them by degrees to sustain the rank of free men.
But if a new Code of Laws be indispensably necessary in our colonies in
order to secure a better treatment to the slaves, to whom must we look
for it? I answer, that we must not look for it to the West Indian
Legislatures. For, in the first place, judging of what they are likely
to do from what they have already done, or rather from what they have
_not_ done, we can have no reasonable expectation from that quarter. One
hundred and fifty years have passed, during which long interval their
laws have been nearly stationary, or without any material improvement.
In the second place, the individuals composing these Legislatures,
having been used to the exercise of unlimited power, would be unwilling
to part with that portion of it, which would be necessary to secure the
object in view.
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