Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PRELIMINARY CHAPTER: Of the Necessity and Importance of describing the State in question, and the general Plan of the Work
- BOOK I OF THE SLAVERY OF OUR COLONIES CONSIDERED AS A LEGAL INSTITUTION
- Appendix, No. 1
- Appendix, No. II
- Appendix, No. III
- Appendix, No. IV
- Appendix, No. V
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PRELIMINARY CHAPTER: Of the Necessity and Importance of describing the State in question, and the general Plan of the Work
- BOOK I OF THE SLAVERY OF OUR COLONIES CONSIDERED AS A LEGAL INSTITUTION
- Appendix, No. 1
- Appendix, No. II
- Appendix, No. III
- Appendix, No. IV
- Appendix, No. V
Summary
Opposite though this truth may be to vulgar notions, the only difficulty in proving it is, that of selecting from a multitude of concurrent authorities such as, from their known character and their brevity, are the fittest for citation.
Mr. Bryan Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, and the best informed of all the literary champions of the sugar colonies, deserves, perhaps, the first notice; and this is his account of the circumstances of the planters in general; not in reference merely to the time of his publication, 1792, but to every period of their history. After noticing that some gentlemen of Jamaica possess ample fortunes, which he states to have been “the fruits of the toils of successive generations,” he adds, “many there are who have competencies that enable them to live with economy in this country; but the great mass, are men of oppressed fortunes, consigned by debt to unremitting drudgery in the colonies, with a hope which eternally mocks their grasp of happier days, and a release from their embarrassments.”
The late Mr. Tobin also, a very able and eminent apologist of slavery, deserves to be cited. “For one planter that lives at his ease in Great Britain, there are fifty toiling under a load of debt in the colonies.”
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- Information
- The Slavery of the British West India Colonies DelineatedAs it Exists Both in Law and Practice, and Compared with the Slavery of Other Countries, Antient and Modern, pp. 474 - 477Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1824