having corresponded with Mr. Buxton. Said the latter,
in an address to the House,--"I never wrote to him a single letter,
nor did I know that such a man existed, till I happened to take up a
newspaper, and there read, with some astonishment, that _he was going to
be hanged for corresponding with me!_"

If Englishmen and Christian ministers were condemned to death on such
allegations, adduced at mock trials, it is not strange that negroes
sometimes lost their lives on similar grounds. After a rising among
these people, several having been executed, the evidence of the guilt of
a certain portion was reviewed in the House of Commons. The witness was
asked whether he had found guns among the insurgents. He replied, "No;
but he was shown a place where guns had been"! Had he found bayonets?
"No; but he was shown a basket where bayonets had been"! Unfortunately,
the victims of this species of evidence were already hung when the
review of the trial took place.

This last incident brings us to another feature of those times, the
actual insurrections which took place among the slaves. Passing by the
lesser excitements of Barbadoes and Demerara, we come to the great
rising in Jamaica in 1832. A servile war is generally represented as
displaying at every point its banners of flame, plashing its feet
meanwhile in the blood of women and children. But the great insurrection
of 1832, which, as it spread, included fifty thousand negroes in its
train, was in the beginning simply a refusal to work.

Fiercely discussed by the masters, emancipation began to be spoken of
among the slaves. Necessarily they must know something about it; but, in
their distorted and erroneous impressions, they believed that "the
Great King of England" had set them free, and the masters were wilfully
withholding the boon.

There was one, a negro slave, whose dark glittering eye fascinated
his fellows, and whose wondrous powers of speech drew them, despite
themselves, into the conspiracy. But he planned no murders, designed no
house-burnings; to those who, under solemn pledge of secrecy, joined
him, he propounded a single idea. It was this. If we, the negroes, who
are as five to one, compared to the white men, refuse to work any more
until freedom is given, we shall have it. There will be some resistance,
and a few of us will be killed; but that we must expect. This, in
substance, was the ground taken by Sharpe, who, as a slave, had
always been a favorite both