ot 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. In the third place, their prejudices against their
slaves are too great to allow them to become either impartial or willing
actors in the case. The term _slave_ being synonymous according to their
estimation and usage with the term _brute_, they have fixed a stigma
upon their Negroes, such as we, who live in Europe, could not have
conceived, unless we had had irrefragable evidence upon the point. What
evils has not this cruel association of terms produced? The West Indian
master looks down upon his slave with disdain. He has besides a certain
antipathy against him. He hates the sight of his features, and of his
colour; nay, he marks with distinctive opprobrium the very blood in his
veins, attaching different names and more or less infamy to those who
have it in them, according to the quantity which they have of it in
consequence of their pedigree, or of their greater or less degree of
consanguinity with the whites. Hence the West Indian feels an
unwillingness to elevate the condition of the Negro, or to do any thing
for him as a human being. I have no doubt, that this prejudice has been
one of the great causes why the improvement of our slave population _by
law_ has been so long retarded, and that the same prejudice will
continue to have a similar operation, so long as it shall continue to
exist. Not that there are wanting men of humanity among our West Indian
legislators. Their humanity is discernible enough when it is to be
applied to the _whites_; but such is the system of slavery, and the
degradation attached to this system, that their humanity seems to be
lost or gone, when it is to be applied to the _blacks_. Not again that
there are wanting men of sense among the same body. They are shrewd and
clever enough in the affairs of life, where they maintain an intercourse
with the _whites_; but in their intercourse wi