The argument, 'That the colonial slaves are better off than the British peasantry', answered from the Royal Jamaica Gazette of June 21, 1823 / By Thomas Clarkson, M. A.

  • Thomas Clarkson
Date:
[between 1820 and 1829?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The argument, 'That the colonial slaves are better off than the British peasantry', answered from the Royal Jamaica Gazette of June 21, 1823 / By Thomas Clarkson, M. A. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    scars on her back and stomach, from flogging.” With respect to the rest of these scars, and to those other marks, which are comprehended under the denomination of sores and blotches, there can be no doubt, where these are found upon the throat, or neck, or near the ancle-joints (of which we have given several instances in the preceding list), that they were generally the result of excoriations from the friction of iron collars, leg-irons, stocks, &c. Now, if we sum up the whole; if we add this last list of runaways from comfort to those before given, and to what else we may be able to pick up from the Gazette ; we shall find about forty in the hundred of persons advertised in one Gazette, marked, or disfigured, or maltreated in the dif¬ ferent ways described. Can such a proportion of mutilated, abused, persons be found any where, in an equal number of men and women, except among slaves? Can we imagine, that, if one hundred of our labourers or servants in Great Britain were taken into custody, as they came on a market-day into any town, and stripped and examined, we should be able to find such a number of defects, excoriations, excrescences, wounds, and injuries upon their persons ? But if this account from the Royal Jamaica Gazette, of a single week, be so disgusting of itself, how afflicting, how appalling might it be made, if a person were to sit down with his pen in his hand, and add to it similar extracts from the other fifty-one Gazettes (no one of which has been noticed by me)for the other fifty-one weeks in the year! I am sure he would make a volume, which, if it did not stagger the faith of his readers, would fill them with horror. Yes, it would fill them with horror, and with astonishment too, if they should but chance to reflect that these enormities were perpetrated by persons who considered themselves to be Britons, and to whom you could not give a greater offence, than to tell them they were not Christians; and I know not at which they, the readers, would be most astonished, whether at the depravity which continued such a cruel system, or at tl^e audacity whiph could defend it by comparing the condition of our British labourers with that of our colonial slaves. I have now brought forward every fact which I intended to extract from the Royal Gazette of Jamaica, from Saturday, June the 14th, to Saturday, June the 21st, 1823, in order to refute the argument, that “ the Slaves in our colonies were better off than the labourers of Great Britain itselfand I think I have said enough to satisfy all candid men that it is false. But “ hold !” says an objector: <c you have taken but a partial view of the ar¬ gument. The slaves in the colonies may perhaps be said to be better lodged, clothed, and fed, than the peasantry of the mother country, and you have not said a word about this in the comparison.” It would be an easy task to disprove these assumptions; but I do not now say a word about them, because, when 1 undertook to refute the argument, I undertook to refute it from the Gazette, and the Gazette only. Now, as the Gazette says nothing upon these new points, I can of course collect no specific answer concern¬ ing them from that quarter. But the argument has nevertheless been fully answered, and this, from the Gazette itself, though it contains nothing upon the points in question. I trust it has been shewn, that if the Slaves in the British colonies should be supposed (and an extravagant supposition it would be) to be ever so well lodged, clothed, and fed, they are yet infinitely worse off than our British peasants : for though it may be very agreeable to sleep on abed of down, instead of sleeping on a hard board ; to have plenty of choice victuals, instead of coarse and scanty fare; and to wear good clothes, instead of being nearly naked, or clothed with rags; I cannot al¬ low, either that soft lodging, or good eating and drinking, or fine clothing, form the principal enjoyments of a human being. A mind undisturbed by present or apprehended evils is worth all these pleasures put together. In¬ deed, what is it that constitutes the best part of a man’s happiness ? It is
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