Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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BARBADOS.

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and the refusal of the West Indians to legislate for their slaves in the terms of the British Parliament, I can perceive one collateral ingredient of difference, and one only Relative Force. The recusants in both cases claim the same British privileges, show the same original foundation, and plead the same express charters; they both insist that they have a right to be governed by those only who, according to the provisions of the Constitution, represent them; that they are not represented actually in the British Parliament, because they depute no member to that assembly; and that they are not represented virtually in the British Parliament, for the best of all reasons, that they are actually represented elsewhere. The North Americans indeed were too much for us; the West Indians may be crushed by a wave of Mr. Canning's hand. If the people of Boston had a right to resist, and the people of Jamaica have not a right to resist, then Might makes Right, and a Right without Might is no Right at all. That there is a distinction in the morality of the cases I admit; but that affects not the question. Every power which the Constitution possesses, statutes, orders in council, proclamations, in every age of its existence from Elizabetk to George III., has authorized, encouraged, and confirmed the right of the colonists to the services of their slaves; and to say now, because the spirit of the times is unfavorable to the tenure, that the existence of slavery in the colonies is unconstitutional, is either paying


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