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REVIEW 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Colonial lafoe &egt0tratton 
 
 IN 
 
 A REPORT 
 
 OF A 
 
 COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 AFRICAN INSTITUTION, 
 
 MADE ON THE 22d OF FEBRUARY, 1820, 
 
 AND 
 PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THAT BOARD. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY ELLERTON AND HENDERSON, 
 JOHN SON'S COURT; 
 
 AND SOLD BY HATCHARD AND SON, BOOKSELLERS AND 
 PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1820. 
 
 (Price Two Shillings.) 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Pag*. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, containing the Official Copies of the 
 
 Acts reviewed 3 
 
 GENERAL DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT 7 
 
 FIRST GENERA*. DIVISION.- The Provisions which respect the 
 Organization of the different Registries, pp. 8 24. viz. 
 
 1. Salaries and Fees of the Registrars 9 
 
 2. Public Offices for the Purposes of the Registries 20 
 
 3. Preparation of the Register Books ' 23 
 
 SECOND GENERAL DIVISION. The Provisions which prescribe and 
 
 regulate the positive Duties of Individuals and Public 
 Officers, in regard to the Registration; the Returns and 
 their Enrolment, and the Transmission of Copies, or Abstracts 
 to England, pp. 2496. viz. 
 
 1. Distinction between Plantation and Personal Slaves, &c 24 
 
 2. Personal Descriptions and Identification of the Slaves returned 34 
 
 3. Authentication of the Returns, Books, &c 44 
 
 4. Good Effects of a Slave Registry regarded as a Census of the 
 
 Black Population 57 
 
 6. Remarks on the Inaccuracy of former Population Accounts 
 
 from Jamaica 59 
 
 6. Important new Discoveries, as to the Proportion of the Sexes 
 
 in Jamaica and other Colonies 67 
 
 7. Transmission of Copies or Abstracts of the Registeied Re- 
 
 turns to England 80 
 
 8. Limitation of some Acts in point of Duration 91 
 
 THIRD GENERAL DIVISION. The Sanctions by which Obedience to 
 
 the Register Laws is promoted or enforced, pp.96 120. viz. 
 
 1. Avoidance of Conveyances of Unregistered Slaves 99 
 
 2. Non-registration Evidence of Freedom 102 
 
 3. Registration necessary Evidence of Property 112 
 
 4. Ill Effects of the great Number and Diversity of these Laws 122 
 
 Anticipations of the Society in its former Report confirmed 126 
 
 Great Britain pledged to Foreign Powers to make Slave Registra- 
 tion effectual 128 
 
 The Statute 59 George III. cap. 120. abstracted and commended 132 
 
 Defects in that Act 134 
 
 Necessity of further Parliamentary Measures 135 
 
TO THE 
 
 of t$e African Wttttttfon* 
 
 THE following is the Report of your Committee, to 
 whom it was referred " to examine the Acts passed by 
 the Legislatures of the different Colonies in the West 
 Indies, for a Registration of Slaves in those Colonies, 
 and to report their opinion thereon to the Board." 
 
 Your Committee, on proceeding to make the 
 inquiry referred to them, found their progress imme- 
 diately arrested by the information that the papers 
 already presented to Parliament, and printed, would 
 furnish an incomplete and erroneous view of the 
 laws lately passed in the different colonies for the 
 registration of Slaves; because various other Acts 
 of Assembly, explanatory of the former, or intro- 
 ductory of new improvements, had since been passed, 
 and transmitted to this country for the Royav Allow- 
 
ance, although there had not yet been time enough 
 for collecting and presenting to Parliament such of 
 them as his Majesty had allowed. Orders, however, 
 having been given for their being laid before each of 
 the two Houses of Parliament, in consequence of 
 Addresses for that purpose, your Committee, under 
 these circumstances, thought it better to suspend 
 their proceedings, than to prepare and submit to your 
 Board a Report which must have been at least im- 
 perfect, and which might have been thought unjust 
 towards the Colonial Legislatures, in noticing defects 
 that perhaps had been already repaired, and with- 
 holding from them the credit of their latest improve- 
 ments. 
 
 These further laws were not presented to Parliament 
 and printed till the month of June last ; and, before 
 your Committee obtained a copy of them, the par- 
 liamentary recess had commenced, and the Members 
 of the Committee were too much dispersed to be 
 easily convened for the purpose of proceeding upon 
 the extensive inquiry referred to them. It is hoped, 
 therefore, that the delay will be considered as an 
 inconvenience which has not been wilfully or need- 
 lessly incurred. 
 
 These laws, as now before your Committee, are con- 
 tained in five different collections, officially presented 
 to the House of Commons and printed by its order, 
 which it will be convenient, for the purpose of this 
 Report, to distinguish by so many numbers, in the 
 
chronological order of their presentation ; and these 
 collections, taken together, contain all Colonial Acts 
 and Ordinances within the knowledge of your Com- 
 mittee, in any degree relating to the Registration of 
 Slaves. They are as follows : viz. 
 
 No. I. Papers printed by order of the House of 
 Commons, of 5th April 1816, entitled, " COLONIAL 
 LAWS RESPECTING SLAVES; " being a Return made 
 in pursuance of an Address of July 12th, 1815, for 
 copies or extracts of all such laws as had been 
 enacted in any of the colonies relative to the impor- 
 tation of Slaves, or to the protection or good govern- 
 ment of Slaves or People of Colour, since the year 
 1788. 
 
 No. II. Papers printed by order of the same 
 House, of 26th February 1817, entitled, " COLO- 
 NIAL LAWS AND CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING 
 SLAVES." 
 
 No. III. Papers printed by order of the same 
 House, of the 6th June 1817, entitled, " ADDI- 
 TIONAL COLONIAL LAWS RESPECTING SLAVES." 
 
 No. IV. Papers numbered " IV.", and entitled, 
 
 " FURTHER PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE TREAT- 
 MENT OF SLAVES IN THE COLONIES," printed 
 by order of the House of Commons, of lOthJune 
 1818. 
 
 No. V. Papers printed by order of the same 
 House, of 7th June, 1819, entitled, " PAPERS 
 
 RELATING TO THE TREATMENT OF SLAVES IN 
 
THE COLONIES" viz. Colonial Acts of Berbice, 
 Dominica, Grenada, Nevis, and Tobago. 
 
 To state the provisions of all these laws in detail, 
 with the observations which they respectively invite, 
 would be to extend this Report far beyond all con- 
 venient limits. No less than twelve different Legis- 
 lative Assemblies have dealt with the same subject, 
 according to their various views. The diversity has 
 been further increased by Ordinances of Governors 
 and Courts of Policy or other local Authorities, in 
 some of our lately-acquired colonies, in which Re- 
 presentative Assemblies have not been established. 
 
 Your Committee will therefore endeavour to 
 abbreviate their statements as much as possible, by 
 avoiding minute or unimportant discriminations; and 
 by classing together such laws of different colonies as 
 have the same general texture, or are liable in some 
 measure to the same general remarks. 
 
 There is now no legislative assembly, in any colony 
 belonging to Great Britain wherein Slavery exists 
 (with the exception of BERMUDA), which has not 
 in some measure practically recognized the necessity 
 or propriety of that important measure, the Registra- 
 tion of Slaves*. 
 
 * In the BAHAMAS the Act is not called a Register Act, and 
 the Assembly is understood to have expressly refused to pass 
 one ; but as far as a numerical census goes, the expediency of 
 the system is there also practically admitted. 
 
& 
 
 The African Institution may thus far, therefore, 
 congratulate itself on the success of its labours. A 
 Report made to your Board in 1815, and which was 
 published by your order, first called the attention of 
 Parliament, and of the public at large, to the necessity 
 of effectually preventing the clandestine importation 
 of Slaves, and shutting out the mischievous hope of 
 such a resource in the sugar colonies, by means of a 
 public registry ; and it was in pursuance of a reso- 
 lution of your Board, that a Bill was brought into 
 Parliament for that purpose. 
 
 A violent opposition was made to the measure in 
 the colonies, and by their agents and other persons 
 connected with them in this country. Your conduct 
 was loudly condemned ; even your motives were 
 vehemently arraigned : and the measure itself was 
 treated by many of your opponents as not only 
 useless but mischievous, and in a high degree dan- 
 gerous to the very existence of the colonial system, 
 Yet in less than three years almost every West- 
 Indian Legislature has practically admitted that the 
 Register Bill, in its principle, and in most of its pro- 
 visions also, was right 
 
 They objected, it is true, and may still object, to 
 the interposition of Parliament. You, on the con- 
 trary, maintained that the measure neither would, 
 nor could, be effectually carried into execution by 
 any other than parliamentary authority. If the 
 event shall be found to have really disproved this 
 opinion, it will be right to acknowledge it to have 
 
6 
 
 been groundless ; but you will still have reason to 
 rejoice in its consequences, notwithstanding all the 
 reproach es lavished on the Institution on account of 
 that fortunate mistake. The Assemblies condemn 
 your interference as needless and mischievous, even 
 in some of the laws that adopt, or profess to adopt, 
 your suggestions ; yet not one of these legislative 
 bodies, during nine years that had elapsed from the 
 Abolition of the Slave Trade, had at all entered on 
 this important work, or even provided in any way 
 for ascertaining the increase or decline of their 
 Black population, till your Report, and the intro- 
 duction of the Register Bill into Parliament, called 
 their attention to the subject. The example had 
 been given by his Majesty's Government in the 
 Registry of Trinidad ; but it had no where in any 
 degree been followed. Your appeal to the public 
 and to Parliament, therefore, can hardly now be 
 thought to have been superfluous. 
 
 If, indeed, the Assemblies have really accomplished 
 what you supposed they wanted both the will and 
 the power to effect, you will not be anxious to contend 
 for the justice or the reasonableness of the opinions 
 you then expressed. It will be enough for your 
 satisfaction, that your suggestions have certainly 
 given birth to the colonial Registries of Slaves ; in 
 other words, to the only system that can effectually 
 and permanently exclude the Slave Trade from the 
 British Colonies, and thereby lay a sure foundation 
 for humane improvements in the exercise of the 
 
master's power, and in the general condition of the 
 Slave Population. 
 
 Your Committee, in examining the Register Acts 
 of the different colonies, have been naturally im- 
 pressed with these views; and have, therefore, per- 
 haps, been more in danger of being biassed by their 
 wishes to ascribe to them too much, than too little, 
 efficacy in respect of the great objects in question. 
 They hope, however, to avoid partiality on either 
 side; and fairly, though compendiously, to state, both 
 what the Colonial Legislatures have done, and what 
 they have omitted to do. 
 
 The most convenient classification of the various 
 provisions of the different Register Acts that has 
 occurred to your Committee, is to consider, First, 
 Those which respect the organization of the registries 
 themselves. Secondly, Those which prescribe and 
 regulate the positive duties of individuals and public 
 officers, in regard to the registration. Thirdly, The 
 sanctions by which obedience to those laws is to be 
 promoted or enforced. 
 
 In reviewing these different classes of enactments, 
 it will be useful to premise, in a general way, what, 
 under each class, are the provisions of the Order in 
 Council for establishing the Registry of Trinidad, 
 which was the model of the Bill brought by your 
 request into Parliament, that it may be seen how far 
 the Colonial Legislatures have conformed to that pre- 
 
8 
 
 cedent, or departed from it. Departures from it, it is 
 admitted, are not necessarily defects. They may, per- 
 haps, be improvements. But a precedent, settled, 
 after long deliberation, by his Majesty in Council, 
 with the assistance of all the Law-officers of the 
 Crown, is well worthy of attention ; more especially 
 as the new system introduced by it has now stood 
 the test of experiment during several years, and is 
 said to have fully accomplished at Trinidad the im- 
 portant purposes for which it was designed. 
 
 The organization of the Registry of that island, 
 was specifically and minutely provided for by the 
 Order in Council. A Registrar was to be appoint- 
 ed, whose personal and upright discharge of the 
 duties of his office was secured by all the precau- 
 tions that legislative foresight could devise ; by oaths, 
 by bonds and sureties, by a liberal official income, 
 and by heavy penalties, including forfeiture of office, in 
 cases of malversation or neglect. It was thought right 
 also to guard him from the temptation of practising 
 the abuses which it was his duty to prevent, and if 
 possible also from the influence of those local preju- 
 dices and habits that were opposed to the principles 
 of the new law, by disqualifying him from holding, 
 while in possession of his office, any property or 
 interest in Slaves. A convenient house or building 
 in the principal town was set apart for the sole pur- 
 pose of the Registry ; and the books of record to be 
 kept there were described, and the manner of pre- 
 paring and keeping thehi regulated, with great par- 
 
ticularity and precision. The slaves belonging to 
 the plantations, and those employed in the domestic 
 or personal service of their masters, were to be dis- 
 tinguished from each other by the respective names 
 of "plantation slaves," and "personal slaves," and 
 registered in different books. 
 
 The salary of the Registrar was left to the dis- 
 cretion of the Crown ; but his fees were appointed 
 by the Order in Council *. 
 
 * Viz. For office copies of the Registered Returns, at the 
 rate of one penny sterling for each Slave ; for every certificate 
 of extracts or entries in the register books, ten shillings ; and 
 two shillings for every hundred words beyond the first hundred 
 in any such extract ; and five shillings for every search made in 
 the Registry. 
 
 It is not immaterial to state what the produce of these fees 
 has been in Trinidad, where the number of registered Slaves is 
 known, because it will furnish a ratio for estimating the suffi- 
 ciency of the fees allowed by the several Acts now under review ; 
 and your Committee are enabled to state from an authentic 
 document, being a return made by the Registrar on oath, that 
 the whole gross produce of his fees during the six years 
 that had elapsed since the formation of the Registry, viz. from 
 18ia to 1818, both inclusive, was 7648/. 13s. 3d., giving an 
 average of 1274/. 15s. 0|d. sterling. But out of this, the Re- 
 gistrar had to defray the salaries of his clerks, and the cost of 
 stationary, and all other articles, except the original and du- 
 plicate blank books of registry, which were purchased and 
 prepared at the charge of Government in this country ; and 
 except also the rent of his office, which has been paid from 
 the Colonial Treasury. They are not enabled to state what, 
 after these deductions, has been the net annual emolument ; 
 but they suppose that it cannot have exceeded 1000/. sterling ; 
 and has probably been considerably less. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that when to these fees, is added the salary 
 of 1000/. Trinidad currency, or 500/. sterling per annum, the 
 
 C 
 
10 
 
 In all the points that have been mentioned, but 
 most observably in what respects the Registrar's in- 
 
 emoluments, cannot be deemed excessive, the whole not exceed- 
 ing 1500/. ; and this, as has been stated on good information to 
 your Committee, was the sum which his Majesty's Government 
 originally estimated as the proper amount of remuneration to a 
 Colonial Registrar of Slaves, an officer who has to discharge 
 functions of great importance and responsibility, yet of a very 
 delicate and invidious nature, and in which his integrity might 
 be exposed to dangerous temptations, unless he were guarded 
 by external respectability, and placed in perfect independency 
 of the community in which he lives. When the formidable risks 
 of the climate are also taken into the account, it seems clear 
 that an income of much less than 1500/. per annum, cannot 
 well be expected to induce properly qualified persons, perfectly 
 worthy of confidence, to submit to permanent residence in the 
 West Indies, and to devote their time there wholly to the duties 
 of such an office, renouncing every other gainful employment. 
 
 Your Committee has felt the propriety of submitting to you 
 these facts and observations, because the emoluments of the 
 Registrar of Trinidad have been exaggerated by the opponents 
 of the Register Bill to a most extravagant degree. They have 
 even ventured to state them to the public as amounting to 
 5000/. or 6000/. sterling per annum. They were estimated at 
 the latter amount in a petition or memorial of the Cabildo, or 
 Insular Council, to the Prince Regent in 1812. Such at least, 
 was alleged to be the charge imposed on the island by the 
 Registry of Slaves. 
 
 Some of the colonial writers have founded on such exagge- 
 rations, not only their most specious objections to the system 
 in general, but even injurious imputations on its authors or pro- 
 moters ; as if their object had been to burden the Colonies with 
 a wasteful expense, for the benefit of individuals, for whom 
 they wished to provide by means of ministerial interest. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, for the authors of this imputation, 
 no Registrar of Slaves yet appointed in the Colonies has been 
 recommended by, or known to, the promoters of the Register 
 
11 
 
 dependency, and the respectability of his office, the 
 Colonial Acts have widely departed from the Order 
 in Council. 
 
 They have, in the first place, universally omitted 
 the salutary disqualification of slave-holders. The 
 Registrar, in every colony may be, and therefore 
 most probably will be, a person whose own private 
 interests are liable to be thwarted, and in supposable 
 cases ruined, by a strict discharge of his official du- 
 ties, and whose former habits and prejudices are 
 strongly opposed to the principles of the Register 
 Bill. 
 
 In the next place, the ease and independency of 
 this officer are sacrificed by a parsimony utterly 
 incompatible with both. 
 
 In some colonies, as Jamaica and the Bahamas *, 
 no new officer is appointed ; but the laborious and 
 important functions of the Registrar, or such of them 
 as the Acts create, are imposed upon the Secretary 
 of the Colony. 
 
 When it is stated, that this officer had before a 
 
 Bill ; and the nomination to the office alleged to have been so 
 valuable, was left by his Majesty's ministers (in consequence of 
 the actual want of any recommendation here) to the gentleman 
 on whom the Government of Trinidad had by accident devolved, 
 and who filled it with a private friend of his own, a planter of 
 the island. This gentleman was so far from being indebted to 
 the promoters of the measure, that the restrictions of the Order 
 in Council would have excluded him, if he had not immediately 
 sold his estate to qualify himself for the office, when unexpect- 
 edly offered to his choice. 
 
 * Papers, No. iv., p. II 14. 
 
12 
 
 multiplicity of clerical duties, furnishing together 
 full employment for his time ; and a variety of other 
 miscellaneous employments, such as in this country 
 belong to a great number of different public function- 
 aries, no more perhaps need be said to shew the 
 absolute impossibility of his properly discharging the 
 duties of such an onerous additional office as that of 
 Registrar of Slaves. Yet, in Jamaica, he is required 
 to register all the returns, original and periodical, of 
 all the twenty-one parishes of the island, which, 
 collectively, contain by the last official returns, no 
 less than 345,252 Slaves ; and in the Bahamas, he 
 is to record such returns of the Slave Population as 
 are prescribed, for all the numerous islands which 
 that Government comprehends. 
 
 If the duties are really to be performed, the hard- 
 ship imposed on this old patent officer in Jamaica, 
 would be intolerable ; for no salary is given to com- 
 pensate him for these new labours, and for the serious 
 responsibility attached to them, nor any allowance 
 made for the rent of the additional rooms, or the 
 salaries of the additional clerks, which he must of 
 necessity engage. 
 
 The enormity of these defects in the Act of Ja- 
 maica, will appear in a more striking point of view, 
 if you recur to the calculations made by the Assem- 
 bly of that island in its Report on the Register Bill, 
 of December 1815, when the avowed object was 
 not to adopt the measure, but to condemn it alto- 
 gether as impracticable. The Assembly then 
 
13 
 
 stated, that it would require thirty -four of the largest 
 books used in the Secretary's office to contain the 
 original registration alone, and would employ a 
 clerk more than six years to enter them. 
 
 It is said, but on what authority we know not, 
 that an excuse has been made for appointing the 
 Secretary to be Registrar of Slaves in Jamaica, on 
 the ground of his patent rights. How his old patent 
 can extend to a new office, instituted for a special 
 purpose, and on principles unknown before, it is 
 not easy to conceive ; nor do your Committee un- 
 derstand how such a right, if existing in Jamaica, has 
 been overlooked in other colonies, in which the 
 Secretary is also an old Patent Officer. But, if 
 there was any necessity for making the Secretary the 
 Registrar, there could be none for not giving him 
 adequate official appointments or assistants, and for 
 not obliging him, if he claimed the new office, to 
 provide a proper separate establishment for its busi- 
 ness. 
 
 The Bahama Act does not even allow any fees for 
 the extracts or certificates which the Secretary may 
 have to furnish, or for any other official service. In 
 Jamaica certain fees are allowed ; but they are such 
 as cannot be at all an adequate compensation for 
 the new duties which ought to be performed. 
 
 The other colonies, though consisting for the 
 most part each but of one small island, have admit- 
 ted the necessity of establishing a new and special 
 officer, to perform the duty of Registrar. The Act 
 
14 
 
 of DOMINICA indeed, has imposed the duties on 
 the Colonial Treasurer; but in GRENADA, NEVIS, 
 SAINT CHRISTOPHER, &c., it has been felt, that in 
 professing to adopt the system of Slave Registration, 
 the appointment of a new special officer as Registrar, 
 could not be consistently withheld. 
 
 These colonies, however, have differed widely 
 from each other ; and still more from his Majesty's 
 Government, in estimating the proper remuneration 
 of the Registrar of Slaves. 
 
 In Nevis, this important officer is allowed for the 
 first year the sum of 150/. current money, being, at the 
 rate of exchange lately current, 751. sterling. And, lest 
 it should be doubted, whether that compensation was 
 meant to cover his highly laborious services in receiv- 
 ing and filing the original returns, and transcribing 
 them into his books of original registration, and 
 completing in all respects those bulky fundamental 
 records, it is expressly declared that the 1501. cur- 
 rency is given for those services ; and his remunera- 
 tion in all subsequent years is accordingly reduced to 
 100/. currency, or about 50/. sterling! ! His allow- 
 ances in fees are also materially less than those 
 which are established in Trinidad ; though, as their 
 average number in a given period must be less by 
 nearly two-thirds, the rates should rather have been 
 enlarged *. 
 
 * The fees are, for every search in his registry, three shillings 
 currency ; and for official copies of schedules, &c., at the rate 
 of two shillings currency for every ninety words ; and for every 
 
15 
 
 It would swell this Report to an immoderate 
 length, if your Committee should fully state the 
 
 certificate by him given and subscribed (except the original 
 office copy therein before-named), nine shillings like money. 
 The exception is particularly hard. It refers to copies of all the 
 original registered returns, which he is required to give if de- 
 manded ; and for which additional duty also, the allowance of 
 75/. sterling for the first year is, expressly, to be his only com- 
 pensation. As proprietors must, for obvious reasons, be desirous 
 to possess an official document, attesting the original Registra- 
 tion of their Slaves, the profits arising from office-copies would 
 naturally be far greater in the first than in any subsequent year. 
 Accordingly, it appears from the Trinidad Return, before refer- 
 red to, that the gross amount of the Registrar's fees, in the first 
 year, was no less than 24541. 7s. sterling, though they averaged, 
 in six years, only about half that sum. But in Nevis, this 
 primary profit is taken away from the Registrar, and the amount 
 of fees in subsequent years at the same time greatly diminished ; 
 for as all proprietors may have a certified copy of the register, 
 as far as it interests them, gratuitously, in the first year, few, 
 perhaps, will afterwards have occasion for searches or extracts, 
 unless, indeed, after three years, to shew by a brief note the 
 effect of the periodical returns. The Assembly, however, 
 thought it not too much to ordain that an extra allowance of 
 25/. sterling, for the first year, should be the sole compensation 
 for certified copies of the entire records, as well as for the 
 whole labour of their formation. 
 
 In order to compare this remuneration fully with the precedent 
 at Trinidad, it should be observed, that the Slaves returned for 
 original registration there, were 25,7 17 ; and that at Nevis, the 
 last authoritative account known to your Committee, represents 
 the Slaves in that island as amounting to 9326. (See Governor 
 Elliott's Correspondence with Lord Liverpool, in the Papers re- 
 lating to the West Indies printed by order of the House of Com- 
 mons of July 1812, p. 134).- Supposing the latter account to be 
 as much below the truth as old returns from Trinidad and else- 
 where have proved to be (it being taken from similar data), the 
 number of Slaves registered in Nevis will be in the proportion 
 
16 
 
 provisions of the Acts of all the different Colonies 
 on these important points. It may suffice to say, 
 
 to the former as about one to two ; while the Registrar's salary 
 is as one to ten. 
 
 The official fees may appear to be less unequal, being re- 
 spectively, when reduced to sterling, as Is. (id. is to 5s., 4s. 6d. 
 to 10s., and Is. to about Is, 9d.; but when it is considered 
 that these are not net emoluments, and that the charge of 
 clerical labour to be deducted is the same in both cases, it will 
 appear probable that the net income received by fees cannot 
 be less disproportionate than the salaries. It should be added 
 that the proprietors in Trinidad are peculiarly numerous, in 
 Nevis peculiarly small, in proportion to the number of slaves ; 
 a distinction that must make the demand for official searches 
 and certificates proportionably unequal, and lessen in that way 
 the emoluments of the Nevis Registrar, if such a rate of fees 
 can be expected to afford any net emolument at all. 
 
 It may, on the whole, with great probability be calculated, 
 that the gross amount of fees in an island like Nevis, will not, 
 communibus annis, suffice to pay the salary of a single clerk, 
 and the other expenses of the office. If not, the Registrar must 
 be out of pocket; for, in order to keep his office open six hours 
 every day, and to be enabled always to give copies within ten 
 days after they shall be demanded (both which the Act binds 
 him under penalties to do) he must necessarily keep a clerk in 
 constant pay, even if it were consistent with any decent regard 
 to the credit of such an officer in the eyes of the public, that 
 he should himself submit to the drudgery of copying the ex- 
 tracts. Even the office rent, for which, in Trinidad, 324^. 
 sterling is allowed by the Government, must at Nevis be paid 
 by the Registrar. No provision at least appears to be made 
 for it out of the public purse of the colony; and as it was 
 thought necessary to enact that payment should be made from 
 the Insular Treasury for the books and blank forms which the 
 Registrar was directed to provide, it must be inferred that the 
 silence of the Act as to the office rent was meant to leave that 
 serious charge to fall on the Registrar himself. But without 
 taking this expense into 'the account, enough has been said to 
 
17 
 
 that their salaries and rates of fees in general are not 
 more liberal than those of Nevis; rather the reverse** 
 
 shew that the Nevis Registrar, far from deriving respectability 
 or independency from his official income as a gentleman, cannot 
 even have an adequate remuneration for his manual labour and 
 his time as a stipendiary writing clerk. 
 
 * They are when reduced into sterling money, at the recent 
 rates of exchange, as follows ; viz. 
 
 ANTIGUA. ..200/. per annum 
 
 TOB AGO. ..250i. for the first, and 200/. for") j, . 
 every subsequent year . j 
 
 MoNTSERRAT.,.30/. sterling per annum \ Papers, ^* 4 * 
 
 J pp. 74 to 80. 
 ST. CHRISTOPHER. ..100/. for the primary, ^ 
 
 50/. for each triennial registration, and v Id. pp.89 to 00. 
 
 no salary during the other years 3 
 
 VIRGIN ISLANDS. ..50/. for the first, 33/.for ) r , 
 
 >Id. pp.99 to 107 
 every subsequent year J 
 
 DOMINICA. ..150/. to the Treasurer, as ReO 
 
 gistrar> for the original and triennial re-> Id.pp-30 to 39. 
 
 gistration ; nothing in other years ^ 
 
 BARBADOES...300/. for the original registra-^ p apers ^ Ot 3^ 
 
 tion, &c and 100/. per annum after- > p> 7. 
 
 wards 3 
 
 BERBICE...2400 guilders colonial money, or-\ 
 
 200/. per annum, and the further sum of ( Papers, No. 4, 
 
 - 4800 guilders, or 400/. for the original f P 23 ' 
 
 - registry * 
 
 DEMERARY...200/. and 600/. for the original "> 
 
 registry j [(L P' 28 - 
 
 GRENADA...400/. for the first, and 100/. for7 T , of . . rn 
 . \IQ. pp.tjy to o\/ 
 
 each subsequent year y 
 
 This provision in Grenada was by an Act passed in March, 
 1817 ; but by a subsequent Act of November, 18.18, it is recited 
 that the salary of 100/. (200/. currency) fixed by the former Act 
 for the second and following years, had been found altogether 
 inadequate to the trouble and responsibility of the office, and 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 The provisions made for the remuneration of the 
 Registrars are every where, but in Grenada, grossly 
 inadequate, and in most colonies degradingly low. 
 The high public trust reposed in these officers, con- 
 sequently, will not be guarded by their personal re- 
 spectability, or their independency in point of income. 
 Few men will be found willing to accept the office 
 of Registrar, but such as from their previous habits, 
 and their situations in life, are peculiarly unfit to be 
 trusted with it ; that is to say, men who, from birth 
 or long residence in the West Indies, think that to 
 remain there is no sacrifice; and who, from their 
 
 it was thereby enacted, that the salary should be raised to 400/, 
 sterling, or 800/. currency per annum. ( See No. 5, Papery 
 printed by order of the House of Commons, 1th June, 
 18 19, page 20. ) This acknowledgment, and this amend- 
 ment, are creditable to the Legislature of Grenada; and 
 your Committee invite particular attention to them, as a de- 
 cided confirmation of their strictures on the gross inadequacy 
 of the salaries in other colonies, but without admitting that even 
 the last granted Grenada salary, though exceeding by four- 
 fold that of the more populous colony of Barbadoes, is suffi- 
 cient to give independency and respectability to the office. 
 
 What the law of St. Vincent is on this subject, does not 
 appear to your Committee by any satisfactory evidence ; for 
 though in the collection of papers, No. 3, page 23, a document 
 is inserted, purporting to be the Register Act of that Colony, 
 it seems to be only a copy of a bill, with blanks, as brought 
 into the Assembly; and whether it passed in the same form 
 into a law, does not appear from any of the printed parlia- 
 mentary papers referred to. If it did, St. Vincent, like Ja- 
 maica and the Bahamas, has imposed the duties of Slave Re- 
 gistrar on the Secretary of the Island, and allowed for them na 
 salary at all. 
 
indigence, are glad to obtain any employment, upon 
 any terms, for the chance of a bare subsistence. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought to extenuate this great 
 and dangerous defect in the smaller colonies, at least 
 in a comparative view, that their slave population 
 is not large, nor their colonial treasuries wealthy; 
 jbut the fewer Slaves there are to register, the less 
 must be the produce of fees when regulated by. the 
 same parsimonious rates, and the greater conse- 
 quently the necessity of a liberal stipend. And it 
 should well be considered that, in this case, the 
 importance of securing an upright discharge of the 
 public duties is by no means merely proportionate 
 to the magnitude of the colony or its population ; 
 because if the abuses, which it was the object of the 
 Register Bill to prevent, are allowed to prevail in a 
 single island, however small, it may frustrate the 
 good effects of the system in all the rest. 
 
 This will be obvious, if it be considered that so 
 long as the importation of Slaves from one British 
 colony into another shall be permitted by law, it will 
 be necessary to allow a certified registration in one 
 island as a sufficient title to registration in any other, 
 to which the Slave may be sent with a regular custom- 
 house clearance. Such were the provisions of the 
 Parliamentary Register Bill ; and the Colonial Acts 
 of course are not less indulgent to proprietors of 
 Slaves. It follows, therefore, that if the Registry of a 
 single island is so corruptly or negligently managed, 
 as to admit with facility the introduction of smuggled 
 Negroes from Africa, or from the foreign colonies, 
 
20 
 
 they may be transferred thence with security, by re- 
 gular certificates and clearances, to all other places to 
 which Slaves can be lawfully carried in the British 
 West Indies : nor can the Registrar at the place of 
 importation, however upright and vigilant, refuse to 
 give them a place in his books. There must of ne- 
 cessity be a mutuality of credence among these offi- 
 cers to each other's records and certificates, as the 
 only means of reconciling the general system of re- 
 gistration with the right of mutual commercial inter- 
 course between the colonies, and the removal of 
 Slaves from one island to another, independent as 
 they are of each other in point of legislative and 
 judicial authority. The practical evasion of the sys- 
 tem, therefore, in one of those colonies may occasion 
 its remediless failure in all. In this instance, as 
 in most other cases that your Committee have to 
 notice, the inconvenience and the extreme difficulty, 
 not to say the absolute impracticability, of giving 
 full effect to the system by any other than parliament 
 tary authority, will soon be manifest to every urv 
 prejudiced mind, 
 
 PUBLIC OFFICES FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE 
 REGISTRY. 
 
 The next branch in importance of those provisions 
 which belong to the organization of the Slave Regis- 
 tries, is the providing of public buildings, in which 
 the returns are to be filed, the books deposited, and 
 the whole of the official duties performed. 
 
 The Order in Council for Trinidad directed that 
 
21 
 
 a public building should be provided and set apart 
 for these essential purposes; and a register office has 
 accordingly been established in the capital town, at 
 an expense which seems to indicate that it is com- 
 modious enough for all the business of the Registrar, 
 and constructed so as may best insure the safe cus- 
 tody of his important records. 
 
 It would be wasting time to point out the indis- 
 pensable necessity of such a record office in every 
 colony, if the institution of a Slave Registry is to 
 have that permanency which its object requires, or is 
 to be reconciled with the security and convenience of 
 those whose property it deeply affects. Yet your 
 Committee are under the painful necessity of ob- 
 serving that not one of the Colonial Acts under its 
 review appears to have provided, or set apart, any 
 public building or office whatsoever for the use of 
 the Registry. 
 
 In Jamaica and the Bahamas, as already observed, 
 and in St. Vincent also (if the Bill as printed in the 
 parliamentary papers ever passed into a law), the 
 Secretary of the Colony is constituted the only Re- 
 gistrar of Slaves ; and it was, perhaps, therefore in- 
 tended, that the Secretary's office should be the de- 
 pository of the returns and books, arid the place of 
 the Registrar's business. No rooms, however, are 
 directed to be set apart for these purposes ; and yet 
 your Committee find reason to believe that the build- 
 ings occupied by the Colonial Secretaries in the two 
 latter colonies, if not in all the three, are barely 
 sufficient for their other official functions, and could 
 
22 
 
 not afford the appropriation of a single room to the 
 uses of the Registry. 
 
 In Dominica, the same observations apply to the 
 Treasurer, on whom the Registrar's duties are cast, 
 with the aggravation, it is believed, that he has no 
 public building or room whatever, even for his bu- 
 siness as Treasurer, but transacts it. at his private 
 residence. 
 
 In Tobago, the house or office of the Treasurer for 
 the time being is to be the Registry, if the Treasurer 
 shall be the Registrar. If not, no office is provided 
 or appointed. 
 
 The Acts of the other Colonies, in appointing 
 Registrars, and settling their allowances, are all si- 
 lent as to the purchase or rent of any offices, or the 
 appropriation of any public buildings to their use ; 
 and contain no allowance or grant of public money 
 for these purposes : therefore it seems that the Re- 
 gistrar must provide himself, in whatever way he 
 pleases, with a place for his business ; and as there 
 is nothing to prevent his transacting it at his own 
 private residence, he will probably take that, as the 
 cheapest and most convenient course. Indeed, in 
 most colonies, he cannot afford any other. One or 
 two of the Acts require him to keep his office in the 
 chief town ; but there appears to be no other re- 
 striction on his choice, and nothing that can possi- 
 bly be construed to oblige him to provide an office, 
 at his own charge, where the Registry may perma- 
 nently be kept by himself and his successors. 
 
 It is an obvious consequence of this strange de- 
 
23 
 
 feet, that records on which the evidence of a lawful 
 title to property in Slaves and their posterity, if not 
 also the title itself, is hereafter to depend, are not 
 only to have no public depository, but no fixed 
 place. They are to be ambulatory, following the 
 person of the Registrar on every removal during 
 his life, or while he holds the office ; and, upon his 
 death, or his quitting the colony, will have no better 
 protection from mutilation, fraudulent alteration, 
 or destruction, than any of his private papers. It 
 has not even been thought worth while to prescribe 
 any course by which, on a change of Registrars, 
 the former officer, his attorneys, or executors, shall 
 transmit the custody of these momentous records to 
 his successor, so as to attest their identity, and their 
 passage, free of interpolations, from one official 
 keeper to another ! 
 
 Your Committee must leave others to account for 
 such indifference as to the safe and faithful custody 
 of these important records ; an object vital to the 
 principles of the Register Bill, and the failure of 
 which must be highly mischievous, even under the 
 colonial enactments, if they are to have any perma- 
 nent operation and effect. 
 
 PREPARATION OF THE REGISTER BOOKS, &C. 
 
 The Order in Council for Trinidad, not only di- 
 rected the Registrar to provide large blank paper 
 books, strongly and durably bound, for the purposes 
 of the Registry, but regulated, carefully and minutely, 
 the manner in which these books should be pre- 
 
24 
 
 pared for the reception of the returns ; it being otn 
 viously essential to the plan that such records should 
 be of durable materials, and constructed in a method 
 the clearest and best calculated to facilitate research, 
 and to prevent any fraudulent alteration. 
 
 The Colonial Legislatures, on the contrary, have 
 adopted only the most general description of the 
 books ; while, as to the manner of preparing them 
 to receive the returns, they are #//, with the excep- 
 tion of Tobago, entirely silent, and direct only, in 
 vague general terms, that " the returns shall be co- 
 pied into the books." But this latter deviation from 
 the precedent, (which will be found pregnant with 
 very serious practical inconvenience), will be best con- 
 sidered under the next of the three general heads into 
 which your Committee have divided their inquiries. 
 
 SECOND CLASS OF PROVISIONS. 
 
 The Provisions of the Colonial Register Acts which 
 regulate the Returns, and their Enrolment ; and 
 the Transmission of Copies or Abstracts to Eng* 
 land. 
 
 The Order in Council adopted a division, which 
 not one of the Colonial Acts, with the exception 
 only of the Act of Tobago, has followed that of 
 returning the plantation Slaves and the personal 
 Slaves separately, in distinct lists ; and recording them 
 in distinct books. By the provisions of the other Co- 
 lonial Acts, they are to be blended indiscriminately. 
 
25 
 
 This is one of the few instances, in which the 
 Colonial Legislatures, in their departures from the 
 precedent, are found, with the exception that has 
 been noticed, to be all of one mind. It is, therefore, 
 the more worthy of observation ; especially as no rea- 
 son for such a deviation appears in any of their remon- 
 strances against the Register Bill. Your Committee, 
 at least, cannot recollect, that, among the various 
 > elaborate strictures that were published on the details 
 of that proposed measure, or previously on the Tri- 
 nidad Order in Council, it was ever represented as 
 a hardship, or an inconvenience, to be obliged to 
 distinguish the Slaves attached to plantations, from 
 the rest of the servile population ; the latter of which 
 are defined by the Order as personal Slaves, 
 
 In a mere statistical view, the distinction is ob- 
 viously of great interest and importance. The sup- 
 posed necessity by which the Slave Trade was long 
 defended and maintained was deduced from the al- 
 leged incapacity of Europeans to sustain agricultural 
 labour in the West Indies, and the want of an ade- 
 quate stock of Black labourers for the use of the 
 plantations. To domestic service, and the various 
 in-door employments of personal Slaves, the same 
 argument was not, and could not with any colour of 
 reason, be applied. It is the diminution or increase, 
 therefore, of the numbers of plantation Slaves, 
 much more than that of the Black population at 
 large, that a British statesman must now be anxious 
 to ascertain. 
 
26 
 
 Nor is the distinction of less importance in the 
 eye of enlightened benevolence ; because the grand 
 general abuses to which the decline of native popu- 
 lation in the sugar colonie* has been ascribed by all 
 the friends of humane reform, and by many of their 
 opponents also namely, " excess of labour, and in- 
 sufficiency of food" never were supposed to affect, 
 in a destructive degree, any but plantation Slaves. 
 A periodical census, therefore, shewing the native 
 increase of these, or a diminished ratio of their 
 annual decrease by mortality, since the Abolition, 
 would furnish the most satisfactory test of meliorated 
 treatment. 
 
 The Colonial Legislatures themselves have all- 
 been manifestly impressed with these views, when 
 framing their meliorating Acts, and defending their 
 own conduct. All their regulations as to food and 
 labour, and all their other enactments professedly 
 adapted to the increase of their native slave popula- 
 tion, apply to the plantations alone. All their com- 
 plaints also, or predictions of evil on account of the 
 Abolition, have had respect only to plantation Slaves. 
 Yet when a census is to be established, and when a 
 precedent for it is before them, requiring a discrimi- 
 nation exactly adapted in this respect to their own 
 views, they are nearly unanimous in rejecting it ! 
 They decline the best or only possible means of 
 ascertaining their own alleged improvements, or 
 verifying their own complaints! 
 
 The distinction between plantation and personal 
 
27 
 
 Slaves made in the Order of Council for Trinidad, 
 and followed in the Bill brought into Parliament by 
 Mr. Wilberforce, was calculated not merely to pro- 
 duce the important statistical information which 
 the Assemblies thus exclude, but to expedite the 
 registration; to render frauds more difficult; and 
 to facilitate future researches and investigations, as 
 to the numbers legally belonging to every planter's 
 estate. It tended much to expedite the formation 
 of the original records, and their continuation by 
 the periodical returns ; because, by means of this 
 distinction, two original books, and two series of 
 books, instead of one, might receive entries at the 
 same time; an end which could not be attained 
 by allowing a plurality of books for the same 
 descriptions of Slaves, without materially lessening 
 the security anxiously provided against fraudu- 
 lent interpolations in, or surreptitious additions to, 
 these records. The importance of this consideration 
 will be felt, when it is stated that the personal 
 Slaves every where form no inconsiderable part of 
 the Black population. In Trinidad, if your Com- 
 mittee are not misinformed, they will be found to 
 amount to one-third part, or more, of an entire 
 registration of nearly twenty-six thousand Slaves; 
 while the returns in respect of such Slaves, greatly 
 outnumber those of the Planters, as must be the case 
 more or less in every colony. 
 
 But it was a still more important object of dis- 
 tinguishing the plantation Slaves, that thereby the 
 
28 
 
 entire gang, or human stock, on every plantation 
 in the colony, might be registered collectively, under 
 the proper name of the plantation itself, in the same 
 page or consecutive pages of the book, without in- 
 termixture with other Slaves belonging to the same 
 proprietor, or included in the same return ; and that 
 this clear collocation might be continued in the 
 same way in the entries of subsequent periodical 
 returns of the additions or decrease in the gang ; so 
 that the registry might at all times exhibit in one 
 view, by turning to the name of a particular planta- 
 tion, the legitimate number, and description of its 
 Slaves then in being. Accordingly, in the directions 
 for preparing the books before alluded to, it was r&- 
 quired that there should be left at the top of each 
 folio, a space for the name of the particular planta- 
 tion whose Slaves were registered therein, which 
 name should be always there written in large and 
 distinct letters. With the same view it was required 
 that the returns of plantation Slaves should specify 
 the name by which the plantation is usually called 
 or known, and the parish or division of the island in 
 which it is situated, and the name of the present 
 owner or party in possession; and that when the 
 property or possession should have been changed 
 within seven years, the name also of the last owner 
 or possessor should be given ; precautions obviously 
 calculated to identify more clearly and permanently 
 the particular estate to which the Slaves are attached. 
 In the Colonial Register Acts no such distinctions 
 
29 
 
 or regulations, nor any substitutes for them founded 
 on the same principle, are to be found. The only 
 exception is the Act of Tobago- which, in this and 
 most other respects, conforms to the Order in Council 
 for Trinidad. In the rest, these important regulations 
 are even expressly excluded : for the Registrars are 
 directed to make their entries in the same form with 
 the returns; and for these a form is prescribed, by 
 way of schedule, containing none of those particu- 
 lars, nor any title or heading beyond the mere name 
 of " the owner or possessor," except that in two or 
 three of the colonies the name of the estate is added*. 
 In order to appreciate the magnitude of this ge- 
 
 * In the schedule to the Demerary Act, the title of the return 
 is thus set forth : " A list of the Slaves belonging to (or in the 
 lawful possession of) A. B." In that of St. Christopher and 
 the other Leeward Islands, there is no title or heading ; but in 
 the margin is to be inserted the name and description of the 
 party making the return, as " A. B. proprietor, or G. H. exe- 
 cutor, of J. K., &c. v In the Grenada Act, it is directed 
 that the return shall specify " the names of the estates, 
 if any, on which the Slaves included in it are actually 
 worked;" but this Act, like the rest, requires no distinct 
 lists, or separate register books, of plantation and personal 
 Slaves, and directs each list to comprise all the Slaves belonging 
 to, or in the lawful possession of, the party by whom it is re- 
 turned. The Grenada Act therefore is only less exceptionable 
 in this point, than those of most other colonies, in so far, that it 
 may supply possible means of discovering, by a very trouble- 
 some and difficult investigation, what proportion of the Slaves 
 in the registry belonged to any plantation,having a proper name, 
 besides that of its owner, whereby it may have been designated 
 in his return ; whereas the registries under the other Acts will 
 neither make this discrimination, nor supply any data from 
 which it can possibly hereafter he made. 
 
so 
 
 heral defect, it is necessary to take a practical view 
 of its consequences first, to those proprietors of plan- 
 tations who obey the law, and next to Negroes unlaw- 
 fully held in slavery by those who violate or evade it. 
 From the fair proprietor it will take away the 
 means of proving satisfactorily to a purchaser of his 
 estate and Slaves, or to a person willing to lend him 
 money upon mortgage, that the Negroes proposed to 
 be conveyed, are his lawful property, and such as he 
 can make a good title to, consistently with the Re- 
 gister Acts. A search in the registry, or an extract 
 certified by the Registrar, may shew perhaps in 
 1830, that in 1818 a certain number of Negroes, 
 300 for instance, was returned and registered as be- 
 longing to, or in the lawful possession of, A. B.; and 
 it may perhaps be made out by deeds, or by other 
 evidence, that A. B. in 1818 was owner of, or trus- 
 tee, or mortgagee in possession of the plantation 
 called Orange Grove, in St. Christopher, proposed 
 to be mortgaged or sold, and that there were then 
 100 Slaves belonging to that plantation. But how 
 is it to be shewn that the Slaves belonging to it in 
 1830 e. g. 1 10 in number are the remainder and 
 subsequent lawful increase of that gang? How is 
 their identity, or their genealogy, or their progressive 
 correspondence, even in point of numbers, with that 
 gang, to be traced in the registry, through the subse- 
 quent periodical returns ? The index will refer only 
 to the Slaves owned or possessed twelve years before 
 by A. B. But before the next periodical return in 
 
31 
 
 1821, A. B. may have died, or relinquished his trusts, 
 or assigned his mortgages, or some of them, or quit- 
 ted the colony ; or he may have bought or acquired the 
 legal possession of other plantations therein, or other 
 personal Slaves. No further returns therefore may 
 be found registered in his name ; or his next returns 
 may be found to have been of 50 Slaves, or, on the 
 contrary, of 500, or more ; and after that, his name 
 may no longer be found in the index. Orange Grove 
 may, in the mean time, have passed by sale, mort- 
 gage, inheritance, or assignment, successively to 
 C. D., E. F., and G. H. or to a plurality of trustees, 
 holding respectively other estates and Slaves, subse- 
 quently blended with those of Orange Grove in their 
 respective returns, in the same indiscriminate way. 
 To make out therefore that the increase or decrease 
 of Slaves on Orange Grove corresponds, or is con- 
 sistent, with the registered returns, of its successive 
 owners or possessors, it would be necessary to trace 
 back all the progressive changes of property and of 
 possession, not only of that plantation, but of every 
 other, and also of all personal Slaves that had, since 
 the original registration, been owned or possessed by 
 A. B., or by C. D. or E. F., or any other of A. B.'s 
 successors in the possession of that estate. But the 
 Registrar's books will contain no reference from any 
 one of these returns to any of the rest. The changes 
 of property or possession therefore, and the identity 
 of the Slaves in question, will in no wise appear, or 
 be possibly deducible, from those official records, but 
 
32 
 
 must depend for their evidence on parole testimony, 
 or upon private deeds or documents, a small part of 
 which only will follow the possession of, or title to, 
 the Orange Grove estate. 
 
 The difficulties would not even end here. But 
 without any further enumeration of them, it will be 
 manifest that either the main pillar of the system 
 must be plucked away, and its whole executory 
 principle renounced, by absolving planters from the 
 necessity of shewing to future purchasers and mort- 
 gagees a registered title to their Slaves ; or else this 
 single defect must be to them an intolerable evil, as 
 producing a virtual incapacity to alienate their pro- 
 perty, or raise money on their estates. 
 
 To Negroes wrongfully held in slavery, the same 
 defect must be fatal. 
 
 Such is their helpless situation, and such their 
 extreme difficulties in asserting their rights against 
 a master de facto, that to give them any tolerable 
 chance of relief from the provisions of the Register 
 Act, their title to it ought to be deducible in the 
 easiest and clearest way. This facility, the regula- 
 tions of the Trinidad Registry have given to them, 
 or their protectors, as completely as the case al- 
 lowed. On the complaint of a Negro named Thomas 
 Anderson, or John Thompson, held in wrongful 
 slavery on the Fountain Plantation there, nothing 
 more would be necessary than to search in the registry 
 for the Fountain Plantation returns. If the name 
 Thomas Anderson, or John Thompson, with personal 
 
33 
 
 and other descriptions corresponding with those of 
 the complainant, was not found in the books, his title 
 to freedom by non-registration would be established. 
 If the name was found, a further search in the same 
 registry (which its prescribed indexes, and the refer- 
 ences directed to be entered in the books, must make 
 extremely easy) would furnish, in dates and numbers, 
 and other particulars, the means of detecting any 
 fraud by which the name and description might have 
 been surreptitiously inserted. 
 
 But what hope could there be of ascertaining such 
 oppressions by searches in books, in which the Slaves 
 of the same plantation are not distinguished from 
 the other Slaves of the same owner or possessor, 
 much less referred to in the index by the proper 
 and permanent name of the plantation itself; but in 
 which they must be identified, if at all, only by such 
 a complex and laborious investigation as has been 
 already described? Before it could appear to any 
 court or magistrate, or to the satisfaction of any 
 patron of the injured party, that there was a defect of 
 registration, so as to make a prosecution advisable 
 or safe, it would be necessary to discover the names 
 of all the proprietors or lawful possessors of Slaves 
 by whom the plantation had ever been held, at 
 or since the time of the original returns; and 
 afterwards to examine every list of Negroes register- 
 ed under any of those names, so as to ascertain that 
 no Slave answering the description of the complain 
 ant, had ever been returned. Such difficulties would 
 
 r 
 
84 
 
 hardly be supportable in any case, even if the regis- 
 tered personal descriptions of the Slaves were as par- 
 ticular as they are required to be in Trinidad : and 
 they would become progressively more and more 
 formidable by lapse of time ; whereas, the regula- 
 tions of the Order in Council for that island are cal- 
 culated to make the test of due registration the more 
 certain, and the more easily applicable, the longer 
 the system is in use. 
 
 But the Colonial Acts have also departed very 
 widely from the precedent, as to the personal 
 descriptions of the Slaves required to be returned 
 and registered, and this in a way still more effec- 
 tually to frustrate the main objects of the plan. 
 
 The Order in Council directed that the Slaves 
 should be individually described in eight different 
 particulars; viz., NAME, SURNAME, COLOUR, EM- 
 PLOYMENT, AGE, STATURE, COUNTRY, and COUN- 
 TRY MARKS ; and, in the case of families of Slaves 
 belonging to the same proprietor, a ninth particular 
 was to be added, under the title of " RELATIONS," 
 specifying the relation in which the Slave stood to 
 the principal member of the family, called " the 
 superior Relation," under whose name, all sqch fa- 
 mily Slaves were to be ranged in the returns. 
 
 The last particular is plainly of great import- 
 ance to the identification of Creole Slaves, (which 
 all future lawful additions to the existing stock in 
 the British islands collectively must be); and by 
 shewing the genealogies of Slaves born on the plan- 
 
35 
 
 tations, it would tend powerfully at once to fortify a 
 real, and overthrow a fraudulent title. Yet every 
 Colonial Register Act has omitted this descriptive 
 particular altogether! Even the Act of Tobago 
 here forms no exception. 
 
 Another omission, nearly allied to it, and equally 
 universal, is that of SURNAMES. 
 
 Negroes in the colonies are usually known 
 only by a single name ; and this is often common to 
 a number of individuals of the same colony, and to 
 several even oft the same estate, or owned by the 
 same proprietor ; but in the latter cases, a surname, 
 or other distinctive appellation, is commonly added 
 for the sake of the master's convenience. 
 
 To give every Slave a surname, would manifestly 
 be a considerable and necessary advance towards 
 accurate discrimination in the Registry, and would 
 afford the means of convenient research. 
 
 The Order in Council, therefore, directed, that 
 when the Slave had been called or known by any 
 surname, it should be inserted in the returns and 
 Registry ; and when not, that a surname should be 
 given for that purpose j which in the case of fami- 
 lies of Slaves, should be taken from the name of the 
 superior relation; and, in other cases, the choice was 
 left in the first instance to the master's discretion; 
 but the registered surname was ever after to be that 
 by which the Slave and his issue and descendants 
 should be called. 
 
 No good reason for rejecting this regulation can 
 be imagined. Independently of its obvious utility 
 
36 
 
 to the purposes of the Registry, it may, without too 
 much refinement, be remarked, that such an assimi- 
 lation to the manner of designating the labouring 
 poor in Europe, would have some little tendency to 
 lessen the extreme contempt in which the Slaves 
 are held. 
 
 It is undeniable at least, that the want of family 
 names must tend greatly to increase the difficulties 
 of proving genealogies, on which titles to Slaves in 
 the colonies must henceforth depend : and that the 
 obscurities, uncertainties, and perplexities in the 
 Register Books, produced by other deviations from 
 the Trinidad precedent, must be aggravated mate- 
 rially by this. 
 
 The defect is further enhanced by its manifest 
 incompatibility with the formation of any useful 
 general index of the names of the Slaves contained 
 in the Registry, another branch of the regulations 
 of the Order in Council for Trinidad. It would be 
 obviously inconsistent with that facility of research, 
 in order to ascertain the registration or non-registra- 
 tion of individual Negroes, which is the object of 
 such an index, if the entries in it were only of a 
 single name, which must often be common to a great 
 number, perhaps some hundreds, of different Slaves 
 in the same island. Other defects in the Colonial 
 Register Acts, have rendered this last consideration, 
 it may be thought, of little present importance ; for 
 not one of the Acts has, to our apprehension, directed 
 any such general index to be made. If the system is to 
 go on, such omissions must be retrieved ; and yet it 
 
37 
 
 is a melancholy consequence of insufficiencies in the 
 matter of the returns, that there seems to be no pos- 
 sible remedy for them, but a new general Registration. 
 
 The Act of the Bahama islands exceeds the rest 
 in defectiveness, as to this particular, more in ap- 
 pearance than reality, by dispensing with names 
 altogether, and requiring only numerical returns. 
 It is to be observed, however, that the Legislature 
 of that Colony did not profess to adopt the system 
 of a Slave Registry by its Census Act, but, on the 
 contrary, expressly refused to do so. 
 
 Another of the particulars required by the Order 
 of Council to be specified in the personal descrip- 
 tion of Slaves, is, with the same observable unifor- 
 mity of conduct, omitted by all the Assemblies, 
 namely, the STATURE. 
 
 An obvious expedient for evading these laws in 
 future periodical returns, is that of registering Slaves 
 illicitly added to the gang of a plantation, by the 
 names of Slaves who may have died, or been removed, 
 since the last return. It has been credibly asserted, 
 that by frauds of this kind, captured and apprenticed 
 Negroes have been deprived of their freedom, the 
 masters having given out that they had died, and 
 added them to their gangs under the names of Slaves 
 actually dead. If it be doubted whether such con- 
 trivances have been ever practised, their practica- 
 bility, at least, cannot be a subject of dispute ; and 
 therefore, all convenient precautions against them 
 ought to be provided. The describing of Slaves in 
 
38 
 
 the returns by their stature, is a most unobjection- 
 able precaution for this purpose. The trouble of 
 their actual mensuration previous to the original 
 returns, cannot be great ; and, in the case of full 
 grown Negroes, need never be repeated. It would 
 hardly require the expense of two hours time, on the 
 largest plantation, to obtain accurate descriptions of 
 this kind : and, in the future periodical returns, the 
 trouble would be much less ; as the Negroes lawfully 
 added to the gang since the last return, and those 
 which had not then attained their full growth, would 
 be the only subjects of the process. 
 
 No reason has been any where given, to your 
 Committee's knowledge, for this general omission. 
 The Assemblies will probably deny the necessity of 
 this precaution, as they formerly denied that of any 
 Registry whatever. But if the plan is to be adopted, 
 all convenient security against frauds is quite essen- 
 tial to it ; and it must be admitted that fraudulent 
 substitutions would be far more difficult, if a newly 
 imported Negro must agree, in this leading and obvi- 
 ous point of personal description, with the deceased 
 Slave by whose name he is to be returned. 
 
 His Majesty's Government justly thought, that 
 not only this, but further security should be provided 
 against so pernicious and easy an evasion of the law, 
 and therefore the Order in Council, under the title 
 of " MARKS," directed that in the eighth division of 
 the returns should be inserted, " Whether the Slave 
 " has any, and what seams, or marks, on the face or 
 
'* other parts of the body, such as African Slaves 
 " commonly have, and which are usually called 
 " Country Marks" or any such brands or marks 
 " as are used in some of the colonies, for distin- 
 " guishing the owners property, or has any apparent 
 " bodily singularity, defect, or deformity; all which 
 " shall be specified with convenient certainty, so as 
 " at least to mention the part of the, face or body 
 " wherein the marks, brands, defects, or other sin- 
 " gularity appears." 
 
 Your Committee have thought it right here to cite 
 the very terms of the Order in Council, as adopted 
 in the Bill brought into Parliament by Mr. Wilber- 
 force ; because this part of its provisions has not only 
 been rejected by the Assemblies in general, but has 
 been made a topic of misrepresentation and abuse 
 by some of their advocates in England. They have 
 affected to consider the requisition as demanding 
 the exposure of those parts of the bodies of female, 
 as well as male, Slaves of which decency will not 
 permit the inspection. 
 
 If such had been the real effect of the provision, 
 the objection would have come with an ill grace from 
 a colonial pen ; as all who are well informed of the 
 ordinary violations of decency in the treatment of 
 Slaves, both in respect of their clothing, and modes 
 of punishment, will feel. But the most uncandid 
 hostility alone could represent the passage that has 
 been cited to have had any such objectionable mean 
 ing. The marks being described to be such as Afri- 
 can Slaves commonly have, or brands to distinguish 
 
40 
 
 the master's property, no fair doubt could arise 
 whether any bodily peculiarities that decency ought 
 to conceal were included. Both these descriptions 
 of marks are always upon parts of the body conspi- 
 cuous to public view; the former being meant as de- 
 corations, the latter as visible badges of ownership, 
 by which fugitives may be known. 
 
 Accordingly this regulation produced no difficulty, 
 and was encountered by no objections at Trinidad, 
 where it was carried into practice. The marks of 
 above twenty-five thousand Slaves were there duly 
 registered, and no offence against decency or delicacy 
 has been found to attend the specification. 
 
 The Colonial Legislatures, however, have all, with 
 two exceptions, rejected this branch of the personal 
 descriptions altogether. The Grenada Act alone has 
 required the marks generally to be set forth in the re- 
 turns. But a single conformity like this to a precedent, 
 which was in other respects widely departed from by 
 the same Legislature, is enough to shew the unfairness 
 of those opponents of the Register Bill, who added to 
 their other clamours against the measure the idle ob- 
 jection of indecency in this part of its provisions*. 
 
 Whether the other Assemblies have adopted the 
 pretext here noticed as a reason for not requiring the 
 specification of marks, or on what other ground they 
 have rejected such convenient and obvious means of 
 identification, your Committee is unable to state. 
 
 * The last Act of Berbice has substituted the terms " con- 
 spicuous NATURAL marks" adding, " which may serve to 
 distinguish sueh Slave from others." 
 
41 
 
 Their reasons for deviating in this and various im- 
 portant points from the precedent they have in many 
 other respects literally adopted, are not set forth in 
 the parliamentary papers, nor in any other documents 
 to which your Committee can have recourse. In the 
 case of Jamaica, the dislike to the use of marks for 
 the highly important purposes of the Registry, it is 
 peculiarly difficult to explain in any satisfactory way ; 
 because, by the general practice of that island, 
 Slaves are branded in the face, or other conspicuous 
 parts of their bodies, in order to identify their per- 
 sons, as a safeguard of the owner's property. When 
 they desert, they are advertised, as almost every 
 Jamaica newspaper may shew, by these marks ; 
 when apprehended by the police, the keepers of 
 workhouses, or gaol-keepers, are required to publish 
 in the newspapers of the island not only their names, 
 and sex, and country, but also their " HEIGHT" and 
 " MARKS*," as notice to the master; and what is 
 stronger still, the laws of the island anxiously preserve 
 these necessary evidences of ownership, by punish- 
 ing capitally those who alter or deface them f. Yet 
 when the object is effectually to exclude the Slave 
 Trade, and to prevent unlawful slavery, by the iden- 
 tification of those who are the legitimate subjects of 
 that state, the same legislature rejects its own cri- 
 teria of marks and stature, as if they were descriptive 
 particulars evidently redundant and useless ! ! ! 
 
 * See the Jamaica Slave Act, of 74th Dec ember, 1809, 54. 
 t Act of 11th December, 1798, 2. 
 
 G . 
 
42 
 
 The general result of these observations is, that of 
 nine descriptive particulars, required to be specified 
 for the purpose of identification, and the prevention 
 of frauds, by the Order in Council, and the Bill 
 brought in by Mr. Wilberforce, the Acts of Assem- 
 bly have all rejected four at least, and for the most 
 part Jive ; and have retained only those which are 
 the most general, and therefore of the smallest 
 utility. Surnames, stature, parentage or other 
 family relations ; and marks also, with the excep- 
 tions already noticed, are, with a striking uniformity, 
 rejected; while the single appellation, common to 
 thousands; the country, which is still more comprehen- 
 sive; the colour, one shade of which comprizes above 
 nine -tenths of all the Slaves in the colonies ; and the 
 usual employment, which, in regard to Field Ne- 
 groes, the great subjects of imported slavery, is 
 scarcely any distinction at all ; are, with a uniformity 
 equally remarkable, retained. The latter particulars 
 were, indeed, in their connection with the former, of 
 importance, by multiplying the difficulties of fraudu- 
 lent substitutions ; but, when the more particular 
 descriptions are omitted, and the more general ones 
 only set forth, the latter become manifestly of very 
 little, if any, value. 
 
 The Assemblies, nevertheless, have virtually ad- 
 mitted, in this instance, the necessity of means which 
 they do not provide. If a numerical census only 
 had been intended, they have required too much, in 
 the specification of names, and the other particulars 
 of individual description, in which the precedent has 
 
43 
 
 been followed. They must be understood, therefore, 
 as admitting the duty of providing for the further 
 objects of the Register Bill ; viz. the prevention of 
 unlawful slavery, and the better insuring of the effect 
 of the Abolition Acts. But here the practice falls 
 short of the principle, as well as of the precedent : 
 the personal descriptions, though needlessly particu- 
 lar for a census, are far too general for identifying 
 the legitimate Slaves, and preventing a fraudulent 
 increase of their numbers. 
 
 The remedial provisions of these acts belong to 
 the last division of the subject. But it is proper 
 here to remark, that there is one essential difference, 
 between them and those of the Order in Council for 
 Trinidad, which makes the great inadequacy of de- 
 scription, pointed out in the returns, a refuge for 
 offenders against the Abolition Laws ; and frustrates 
 the registration in its leading object, the deliverance 
 of persons unlawfully enslaved. 
 
 The expedient chiefly relied upon, in the Order in 
 Council, for at once securing obedience to its positive 
 requisitions, and releasing freemen from a slavery 
 wrongfully imposed, was to lay the onus probandi, 
 as to due registration, upon the party who best could, 
 and ought to sustain it ; namely, the master. It was 
 enacted, that, in all judicial proceedings, whether for 
 the recovery of Slaves as property between free per- 
 sons, or on the question of slave or free, the master 
 or claimant should, in the first place, be bound to 
 shew, that the Slaves in question had been duly re- 
 gistered as such. 
 
44 
 
 If the Assemblies had adopted this provision, a 
 sufficient particularity of description in the returns 
 would, without doubt, have been also adopted, for 
 the master's sake ; in order that he might the more 
 easily and certainly ascertain, and give in evidence, 
 his registered title. 
 
 But they have all rejected this important part of the 
 precedent, as will be hereafter more fully shewn. 
 They have left the non-registration to be made out 
 against the master, instead of obliging him to shew 
 his own compliance with the law. The effect, there- 
 fore, of a vague generality of description is, that the 
 remedies against him, in cases of unlawful slavery, 
 will be rendered much more precarious and difficult. 
 
 Several also of the regulations and directions of the 
 Order in Council, and of the Bill, which were calcu- 
 lated for the better authentication of the returns, and 
 of the register books ; and for subjecting the Registrar 
 to a stricter responsibility for the fulness and accu^ 
 racy of the records in his keeping, and of the dupli- 
 cates or copies to be transmitted by him, are widely 
 and dangerously departed from in the Colonial Acts. 
 
 To point out all these variations, in detail, would 
 be to extend too far the necessary length of this Re- 
 port : your Committee, therefore, will only specify 
 one or two of them, which are among the most 
 important. 
 
 Under the Order in Council and the Bill, the returns 
 were all to be made upon oath to the Registrar him- 
 self, or to persons by him officially deputed for the 
 purpose of receiving them. Consequently there was 
 
45 
 
 a single and entire official responsibility for their 
 authenticity and careful inrolrnent. But several of 
 the Acts of Assembly have allowed the returns to 
 be made to Justices of Peace, or other persons 
 having no official connection with the Registry. The 
 Act of Jamaica is still more lax and improvident; 
 for it directs the returns, sworn before any judge, or 
 justice of the peace, to be rendered to the clerk of 
 the vestry of the parish where- such Slaves " shall 
 " be considered to be most permanently settled, worked, 
 " or employed" after which they are to be copied 
 by the vestry clerk ; and the copies are to be trans- 
 mitted by him to the office of the Secretary of the 
 island ; who is to record them in a book, or books, 
 " in the manner that other instruments are there 
 <( recorded and kept; 11 and he is afterwards to trans- 
 mit the copies, received by him from the vestry clerks, 
 to the office of the Secretary of the Governor for the 
 time being, to be, by the Governor/transmitted to the 
 Secretary of State for the Colonial Department in 
 England. 
 
 Here, therefore, we have four descriptions of 
 public officers, besides the Governor, through whose 
 hands, successively, these important records must 
 pass, before their transmission to the Registry in 
 England ; and, if errors or omissions are found in 
 them, it will be uncertain by whose default thev have 
 arisen, and who ought to be responsible. The vestry 
 clerks are not directed to keep any books ; yet the 
 original returns are to remain with them, and are 
 
46 
 
 declared to be public records, " and to be under the 
 " same protection from embezzlement, erasure, and 
 " injury, as the records in the Secretary's office are 
 " by law protected ; besides which, if such injury 
 " shall arise from the negligence or misconduct of 
 " the clerk of the vestry," he shall incur a penalty 
 of five hundred pounds, and be incapable of holding 
 his office. 
 
 What the security or protection from injury, in 
 point of fact, can be of these multitudinous loose 
 paper-lists, left in the offices of twenty-one different 
 vestry clerks, in a climate where nothing but the 
 greatest care can preserve even the best bound close 
 books, from being speedily destroyed by insects and 
 other causes, it is not easy to conceive. To fix a 
 vestry clerk with negligence or misconduct in their 
 non-preservation, must be regarded as at least 
 sufficiently hard. 
 
 The carelessness with which such papers have 
 been kept by the vestries is notorious, and has been 
 brought forward, by the Jamaica Assembly itself, to 
 account for the defectiveness and apparent incon- 
 sistency of its own statements, founded on the poll 
 tax parochial returns. 
 
 As to the Secretary's books, no authentication of 
 them whatever is prescribed, much less any of those 
 anxious precautions, contained in the Order in 
 Council, for continuing a succession of pages, and 
 of books, duly authenticated, and connected by re- 
 ferences with each other, so as to prevent interpola- 
 
47 
 
 tions, alterations, or other frauds. He is only di- 
 rected to keep them in a book, or books, in the 
 manner that " other instruments are there recorded 
 and kept." What manner this is, does not appear ; 
 but we may with certainty conclude, from the nature 
 of the case, that it cannot be in any such way as the 
 Registrar's books of Trinidad are directed to be kept; 
 or in any manner at all adequate to the security of 
 property and freedom: much less in a way consistent 
 with convenience of research, in a Registry of three 
 hundred and forty-five thousand slaves. 
 
 A penalty of 500/. is in a vague manner imposed 
 on the Secretary, " if he does not finish the work 
 required of him in due time ;" and this is the sole 
 provision for securing accuracy or fidelity in his de- 
 partment, though the only specious substitute for a Slave 
 Registry in Jamaica is the book, or books, which he 
 is directed to keep. Forfeiture of office, or incapa- 
 city to hold it, is not annexed to any misconduct on 
 his part, however gross. But this defect may be said 
 necessarily to grow out of the greater one already 
 noticed ; namely, that his office as Registrar is not 
 created by the Act, or endowed by it with any 
 salary; and that these new and most momentous 
 functions are cast upon him as a patent officer, 
 already overloaded with important public duties of 
 various kinds. 
 
 The Secretary of the island is not even required 
 to keep a copy of the documents received from 
 the vestries, from which his books of registration 
 
48 
 
 are to be compiled ; and the documents themselves 
 are to be transmitted to England. Consequently, 
 in the case of any error in, or sophistication of, his 
 records, or any accidental destruction or mutilation 
 of them, a defect so perilous to liberty and property, 
 or so subversive perhaps of the whole system, could 
 only be supplied by requiring all the vestry clerks 
 in the island to go through their undigested masses 
 of paper returns, if still extant, and to make out 
 from them, if they can, a new general return to 
 the Secretary's office. 
 
 These defects indeed may appear of little moment, 
 when it is considered how impossible it is that such 
 a Registry, however carefully conducted, should 
 answer any of the great ends for which the system is 
 designed. It may with certainty be foreseen, that 
 from the want of method and arrangement alone, the 
 Registry of Jamaica would soon become an intolera- 
 ble public nuisance, if researches in it were necessary 
 to the investigation of titles on . every change of 
 property in Slaves. But the Act must soon be 
 repealed ; unless suffered to be a dead letter, as 
 former Acts of that island, requiring annual returns 
 of Slaves to and from the vestries, have confessedly 
 been. 
 
 As the case of this great island deserves particular 
 attention, it may be proper to enlarge a little further 
 on this part or our subject. 
 
 In order to facilitate searches, and ascertain regis- 
 tered titles in a colony containing three hundred and 
 
49 
 
 forty-five thousand Slaves, and perhaps ten thousand 
 proprietors, it would be necessary not only to adopt 
 all the methodical arrangements and indexes of the 
 Trinidad office, but to add to them local divisions ; 
 assigning to each, if not a separate office and Re- 
 gistrar, at least a distinct series of books. 
 
 The most eligible course was to have a plurality of 
 Registries; and, for this purpose, to divide the island 
 into different districts. The Bill brought into Par- 
 liament by Mr. Wilberforce had, accordingly, pro- 
 visions authorizing such a division. 
 
 The best local distribution, perhaps, would have 
 been that of the three different counties; but whether 
 these or more divisions were thought desirable, each 
 should obviously not only have had its .separate 
 returns, but its separate Registry also; and each 
 Registry should have borne the same relation to the 
 rest, as to those of different colonies ; the Slaves 
 being, in like manner, transferred from the one to 
 the other, by certificates, on any change of domicil. 
 
 The plantation Slaves, in that case, would, of 
 course, have been registered in the division in which 
 the plantation they belonged to was situated ; or, if 
 the plantation extended into two divisions, the seat 
 of the works, or homestall, might have determined 
 their place of Registry ; or, it might have been left to 
 the option of the master. As to personal Slaves, the 
 master's ordinary place of residence would naturally 
 have been the criterion ; or, in case of more resi- 
 dences than one in different divisions, he might have 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 been allowed to return them at his option in either. 
 A return in the other Registry that such option had 
 been made, as in similar cases under our assessed 
 tax acts, would have prevented any inconvenience 
 from such a right of election. 
 
 Nor would such regulations as these be at all 
 inconsistent with the convenience of future research. 
 
 To determine whether A. B. is a registered Slave 
 belonging to th.e Orange Grove plantation, it would 
 be necessary to search only in the Registry of the 
 division in which Orange Grove is situated. To 
 determine whether he is a registered personal Slave 
 of C. D. it would be necessary only to search in that 
 Registry in which C. D. made his returns; and, if 
 this fact was ambiguous, on account of C. D. having 
 t,wo domicils, or occasional residences, a search in 
 the index of the Registry of one of the divisions, 
 would be all that could be added to the task. 
 Much more would obviously be gained in point of 
 convenience, by reducing the bulk of these records, 
 and the numbers of names of plantations and owners 
 in the indexes of returns, and, by a like reduction in 
 a s general index of the names of Slaves, than nould 
 be lost by a plurality of Registries. 
 
 Instead of this, the Act of Jamaica imposes and 
 multiplies every inconvenience of a divided Registry, 
 without giving in return any of the facilities arising 
 from a diminution of its bulk; for every one of the 
 tjv^nty-one parochial vestries that the island contains 
 is made, in effect, a, distinct register office, for the 
 
51 
 
 purposes, at least, of receiving and keeping the 
 returns; and the latter are declared to be records ; 
 the transcripts only of which are to be sent to the 
 Secretary's office. But no books are directed to be 
 kept by the vestries ; nor even any index, or calendar 
 of the returns respectively received by them. A 
 general copy only of all the multitudinous lists of 
 Slaves returned in each parish, is directed to be sent 
 to the Secretary's office, without any prescribed order 
 or arrangement, or any list of defaulters, or other 
 notification whatever, except that there is to be sent 
 an alphabet of the names " of the persons for whom 
 " the return is intended, and on the back of such 
 u return the vestry clerk is to state for what parish, 
 " and for what year, it is made." 
 
 The returns of twenty-one different parishes are 
 thus to be cast promiscuously into a single office, 
 loaded with other business, and there copied under 
 so many parochial titles. In what order they are to 
 be taken is not prescribed : it will probably be, therefore, 
 as they happen to come to hand; or in whatever other 
 order the Secretary may think fit. As to indexes to the 
 Secretary's Register-books, none whatever are directed 
 to be made ; not even of the names of the proprietors 
 or the estates, much less of those of the Slaves. It may 
 be designed, perhaps, that the " alphabet of names," 
 or alphabetical list of the persons for whom the 
 " returns are intended," which the vestry clerks are 
 to annex to their returns, shall be transcribed by the 
 Secretary in his books : but, if so, they can serve 
 
52 
 
 scarcely any one of the purposes of an index ; since 
 the vestry clerks cannot anticipate in what book in 
 the Secretary's office, or in what folios of that book, 
 each return will be entered. 
 
 Let it be supposed, however, that the Secretary, 
 out of zeal for his new gratuitous duties, overwhelm- 
 ing as they are, should perform a work of superero- 
 gation, by adding to the " alphabet of names'* 
 references to the books and pages, in which he 
 transcribes the respective returns. In this case, it 
 might hereafter be found whether any returns 
 were made for the original, or any subsequent 
 periodical registration of Slaves, by or on behalf of 
 C. D., the alleged owner at that time of A. B. whose 
 slavery is in question, without turning over the leaves 
 of fifty or sixty large folio volumes. Still, however, 
 in order to see whether A. B. was included in those 
 returns, they must be searched for in every alphabet 
 of names, annexed to every parochial list of the vestry 
 clerks, for each of the twenty-one, different parishes 
 of Jamaica : and every return found under C. D.'s 
 name must be successively examined. 
 
 If we should ascribe even to the Secretary so 
 much more gratuitous industry as would be necessary 
 to compile a general index, from the whole twenty- 
 one " alphabets of names," still it would be necessary 
 to refer from such a document to the books ; and to 
 search through them for all the different parochial 
 returns in which the same owner's, or possessor's, 
 name occurred ; for, it should be observed, that the 
 
53 
 
 Jamaica Legislature has so anxiously placed its 
 parish vestries between the insular Registry and the 
 Slave proprietors, as neither to require nor permit 
 the returns of the latter to be made directly to the 
 Registry in the Secretary's office ; but to ordain that 
 the Slaves, by whomsoever owned, shall be returned 
 to the vestry clerk of the parish where they " shall be 
 " considered to be most permanently settled, worked, 
 " or employed" 
 
 It follows, therefore, that the same owner, as well 
 as different owners of the same name (a case likely 
 often to occur in so large a colony) may have made 
 a plurality of returns in different parishes; all of 
 which must, of course, be examined, before the non- 
 registration of any Negro held in slavery in Jamaica 
 can be legally ascertained. 
 
 It does not appear, either by express words 
 or any clear implication in the Act, that it is to be 
 at the master's peril, so as to invalidate his title, if 
 he should make his return in the wrong parish. If 
 it were, the loose wording, here cited, would be dan- 
 gerous to him ; but this looseness plainly aggravates 
 the difficulty of proving his default. One man may 
 " consider his personal Slaves to be settled" where 
 he himself is domiciled ; another in the place where 
 they have their huts, or live with their families; a 
 third in the place in which he most commonly 
 employs them, or hires them out to work for others. 
 In respect of task-work gangs, which are common in 
 Jamaica, the Slaves may not improbably work, for 
 
54 
 
 years or life, in a different parish from that of their 
 owner's domicil. Taking the words to imply, as 
 they seem to do, that a Slave may be most perma- 
 nently settled in one parish, though most permanently 
 worked or employed in another ; the master seems to 
 have the option of returning him in which he pleases. 
 This latitude may even be considered as extending 
 to plantation Slaves. It would, however, be of little 
 moment, as the Act stands, if Slaves belonging to a 
 plantation were always returned where it lies ; for no 
 means are provided of distinguishing, by the books 
 or returns, Slaves of that description from the rest. 
 
 It is a most observable fact, that Jamaica has not 
 only rejected the separate registration of plantation 
 and personal- Slaves (a division that would have 
 somewhat mitigated the inconveniences of a single 
 Registry for its large slave population) but has not, 
 like Grenada, required the returns to name the 
 plantation whose Slaves they include ; nor even to 
 specify the ordinary employment or occupation of the 
 individuals returned. 
 
 This latter particular of the personal descriptions 
 required by the Order in Council for Trinidad, has 
 been thought necessary or proper by the Assemblies 
 of most of the other colonies ; and, consequently, 
 their Registries, though they do not separate the 
 Plantation Slaves from the rest, may supply some 
 data tending to furnish the means of such a general 
 distinction : for Slaves described as employed in 
 agriculture, in the return of C. D. a planter, will be 
 
65 
 
 reasonably understood as belonging to the estate, or 
 estates, in his possession ; and be searched for in the 
 parish or parishes within which it of they lie. 
 
 But, in Jamaica, all such means of discrimination 
 are withheld. All Slaves belonging to, or possessed 
 by, the same returning party, and settled or env 
 ployed in the same parish, are to be returned pro- 
 miscuously together ; and the individual descriptions 
 are to comprize neither surnames, nor marks, nor 
 stature, nor usual employment. 
 
 Your Committee has already noticed, but cannot 
 refrain from more particularly adverting to some 
 circumstances, which make this want of discrimina- 
 tion as to plantation Slaves in Jamaica, and also the 
 reliance placed on the parochial vestries, particularly 
 striking. 
 
 The Legislature of that island formerly shewed 
 great anxiety to obtain annual returns of the increase 
 and decrease of Slaves on the plantations. By its 
 meliorating or consolidation Slave Act of 1788, the 
 owner, overseer, or manager of every plantation in 
 the island, and also the doctor and surgeon, were 
 directed, under penalties, to make such returns on 
 oath, at the end of every year, to the parochial ves- 
 tries ; and, in order to encourage the breeding and 
 preservation of Slaves, a premium of twenty shillings 
 per head was given on every Slave born on the 
 plantation within the year, and living at the end of 
 it, to be determined by those returns*. In 1792, 
 
 * See the Act in the Privy-Council Report on the Slave Trade. 
 
50 
 
 a new consolidation law was passed, with amend-' 
 ments, by which the premium was extended to 31. 
 per head, but the decrease by mortality was directed 
 first to be deducted from the numbers added by 
 births. A further encouragement was also given by 
 exempting from the poll tax on Slaves every Female 
 Slave having six children living ; and this subject of 
 privilege, like the rest, was to be returned to, and 
 certified by, the parish vestries *. 
 
 These salutary provisions, though much boasted 
 of at the time by the advocates of the colonies in 
 this country, afterwards appeared to have been 
 generally, if not universally, quite neglected in 
 practice; so that when returns were required from 
 the Governor of Jamaica of the increase and decrease 
 on the plantations during three years precedent' to 
 1799, in consequence of an Address of the House of 
 Commons to his Majesty, of the llth July in that 
 year, the Governor and Council were obliged to 
 return for answer, that no such information was 
 attainable f. The Governor lost a year in vain 
 solicitations to the parochial magistrates and vestries 
 to supply the defect ; and some of these obtained 
 voluntary assistance from individual planters, who 
 made special returns for the purpose; but others 
 contumaciously refused, and their refusal was 
 
 * See the Act printed in Mr. Edwards's History of the West 
 Indies, . 33 to 36. 
 
 f Papers printed by "order of the House of Commons, of June 
 1804. Title, Jamaica, p. 53, G. 
 
57 
 
 thought by the vestry clerks, magistrates, and 
 council, an invincible obstacle to their compliance 
 with the requisition, and a sufficient excuse on their 
 part to his Majesty and Parliament *. That they 
 possessed a recent positive law, which ought to have 
 been obeyed or enforced, seems, from the official 
 correspondence, to have been wholly overlooked on 
 all sides ; so completely had those specious provisions, 
 of the first and second meliorating Acts, passed into 
 neglect and oblivion. 
 
 Now your Committee cannot but observe, first, 
 how extraordinary and inconsistent it appears, that 
 the Legislature of Jamaica, having manifested in 
 1788, and again in 1792, such a natural and lauda- 
 ble anxiety to obtain correct periodical accounts of 
 the natural increase or decrease of the Plantation 
 Slaves on every particular estate, and this, for very 
 important purposes, moral as well as political, should 
 in 1816 depart from a precedent to which it was in 
 many other points conforming, in order to shut 
 out this once much desired and highly interesting 
 information. 
 
 Even in a cold statistical view its interest had 
 obviously been much enhanced by that great revolu 
 tion in the colonial system, the cessation of the Slave 
 Trade. But, as furnishing the necessary means of 
 promoting, by bounties and otherwise, the native 
 increase and preservation of agricultural Slaves, the 
 
 * Papers printed by order of the House of Commons, of June 
 1B04. Title, Jamaica, especially pp. 16, 17, 18, 22, 4650, G. 
 
58 
 
 importance of such periodical accounts was, by the 
 same event, very greatly increased. To the mere 
 political economist, as well as to the philanthropist, 
 the progress of this main branch of the servile popu- 
 lation was become more than ever a subject of the 
 most anxious concern. How happens it, then, that 
 the same Legislature, which thought the increase or 
 decrease of Slaves on each plantation worthy of a 
 special census, while the foreign slave market was 
 open, now refuses at all to distinguish plantation 
 Slaves from others in its general census, though 
 precedent points out, and convenience strongly pleads 
 for, such a discrimination ? 
 
 Secondly. It seems not less strange, that the 
 same machinery which confessedly failed in the 
 former instances, should be employed again in the 
 present. The returns required by the consolidation 
 acts to be made to the vestries, were not made. The 
 pecuniary penalties imposed for defaults, were never 
 recovered, or sued for. The vestries, and vestry 
 clerks, tacitly acquiesced in the general contumacy 
 or neglect. Yet, to the same parochial officers and 
 bodies, are now committed the duties of receiving and 
 keeping the returns, and of preparing and transmitting 
 to the Secretary, as Registrar of Slaves, the docu- 
 ments which are to form the drafts of his highly 
 important records. The same impotent sanctions 
 also are again relied upon for enforcing regular 
 returns to the vestry clerks ; that is to say, pecuniary 
 penalties alone ! ! 
 
59 
 
 If your Committee were not afraid of seeming to 
 exceed its province, further considerations might be 
 adduced to shew the pre-eminent importance of a 
 correct registration in Jamaica; and the peculiar 
 obligations that were imposed upon its interior 
 Legislature to provide effectual means for that 
 purpose. 
 
 The former indeed must be obvious, to all who 
 consider the great extent of the island, its position 
 in respect of foreign colonies engaged in the Slave 
 Trade, and that its Slaves are by the latest accounts 
 upwards of 345,000 in number; being, probably, 
 equal to a moiety of the whole slave population of 
 the British colonies. 
 
 The duty of the Jamaica Legislature in this re- 
 spect is admitted even by itself, as what has been 
 already remarked may suffice to shew. But a full 
 review of its own Reports on the Register Bill would 
 make the force and urgency of this duty still more 
 manifest. Your Committee, however, will only re- 
 fer in general to the controversy between the friends 
 of the Register Bill on the one side, and the Assem- 
 bly and its agent on the other, respecting the pro- 
 gress of the black population ; as evidenced by the 
 poll-tax returns in that island. 
 
 Whatever inferences may be drawn, by men of dif- 
 ferent opinions, from a comparison of those annual 
 returns ; and whatever may be thought of the con- 
 duct of the Assembly, in the strangely erroneous 
 commentary upon them, contained in its Report of 
 
60 
 
 December 1815, in opposition to the Register Bill; 
 two points are clear, and were mutually agreed on both 
 sides : first, that accurate periodical accounts of the 
 increase and decrease of Slaves would furnish data of 
 high importance ; and secondly, that no such data 
 had ever been obtained; up to the date of that 
 Report. 
 
 The Assembly, in admitting that the poll-tax re- 
 turns were defective, still thought it very important 
 to reason from them, in defence both of the huma- 
 nity of the planters, and of their obedience to the Abo- 
 lition laws*. How much then did it concern the 
 credit of the Colony, and the satisfaction of Parlia- 
 ment, and the moral feelings of the British people, 
 that such data should be furnished with certainty and 
 accuracy hereafter ! 
 
 Their defectiveness, however, now turns out to 
 have been much greater than the Assembly then 
 stated ; so great, indeed, as entirely to annul the de- 
 fence that was founded upon them. " The returns," 
 said the Report, " have not the accuracy of an ac- 
 " tual census, and shew a number somewhat under 
 " the truth ;" but, it added, " the same description of 
 " errors has always pervaded them, and they are 
 " sufficiently accurate for comparing different pe- 
 " riods f." An exception is then made of three 
 
 * See the Report of December 20, 1815, on the Register 
 Bill, as printed and presented to Parliament, from page 30 
 to p. 32. 
 
 t Same Report, p. 30. The word " distant " is printed, in- 
 
61 
 
 particular years, 1809, 1810, and 1811 ; and a rea- 
 son is assigned, which, in a reply by a Member of 
 this Institution, was shewn to be evasive, and not 
 founded in fact*. It was also shewn, that one of the 
 annual returns, which the unfounded suggestion went 
 to invalidate, gave a sudden and very large increase 
 of Slaves, instead of the former progressive de^ 
 crease; and this at a very suspicious period. 
 
 Your Committee will not now digress so far as 
 fully to restate that argument, though invited to it 
 by the additional force it has acquired ; for the As- 
 sembly itself now shews, in a Report of December 
 1817, that the statement in question was ground- 
 less f, and resorts to a new explanation, which is 
 neither consistent with its own former Report, nor 
 with the explanations offered by its parliamentary ad - 
 vocates here ; and which, even if it were true, would 
 not at all remove the ground of that suspicion which 
 the Assembly wished to repel J. But it manifests 
 
 stead of " different ;" but the context shews it must be an 
 error of the press. 
 
 * See Mr. Stephen's Letter to Mr. Wilberforce, in defence of 
 the Register Bill. 
 
 f See it in the papers, No. IV. pp. 272 and 274. 
 
 t The new explanation in substance is, that the former 
 Report gave the number of Slaves returned for taxation, and 
 thereupon originally assessed ; not the numbers actually tax- 
 ed, after deducting the numbers over-assessed and relieved ; 
 and the latter are said to have amounted, in 181 1 (the suspect- 
 ed year), tolO,813; whereas in 1809, there were only (5745 ; and 
 in 1812, only 6789. This, without doubt, would account for 
 above 3000 of the suspicious increase in 1811, if the cause of 
 
62 
 
 more clearly, the singular and highly reprehensible 
 want of any certain statistical information on this most 
 
 deduction had been, that the gross numbers exceeded, in those 
 proportions, the Slaves actually on the island. But the grounds 
 of deduction being exemptions, or allowances, claimed by the 
 parties, either on the score of poverty, as the Reports seem to 
 intimate, or such exemptions as the Poll-Tax Acts are said to 
 allow, the explanation is quite foreign to the purpose. The 
 difficulty to be explained was a sudden increase of the numbers 
 actually returned by the owners, who could have no reason for 
 charging themselves in the poll tax with near 11, 000 Slaves 
 more than they actually possessed ; or for doing themselves a 
 greater wrong in this way in 1811, than in the preceding or fol- 
 lowing year. 
 
 Besides, the Assembly itself must have known, in December 
 1816, as well as in December 1817, the true nature and effect 
 of these population accounts. Why then at the former period 
 did it exhibit them, and found elaborate arguments upon them, 
 leading to important moral and political conclusions, unless 
 they really furnished in some degree a fair criterion of the 
 progress or decline of their Slave population ? 
 
 True it is, their former Report did not hold out the tax 
 rolls as containing an accurate account of all the Slaves in the 
 island ; but the inaccuracy was spoken of in very tender terms 
 in that Report, compared with those of the last. Then, it was 
 said, " they shew a number somewhat under the truth : " now, 
 " that the actual number greatly exceeds what appears on 
 them." And this is represented as having always been quite 
 notorious : but it was then said, and it is not now retracted, 
 that the errors being " always of the same kind, they were suf- 
 ficiently accurate for comparing different periods" The whole 
 of the Assembly's argument rested on the representation, that 
 though they were not accurate, they were pretty equably some- 
 what below the true amount, and therefore served the purpose 
 of comparison well enough. But it is plain, that if instead of the 
 actual returns, or the gross assessments founded on them, the 
 reduced assessments were to be taken, there could be no such 
 
63 
 
 interesting and important of all colonial subjects. 
 It results from the last Report, that the population 
 accounts which were set forth and reasoned upon in 
 the former Report, are wholly unworthy of confi- 
 
 equability; because we see that the deductions founded on 
 reasons foreign to the actual change of numbers, fluctuated 
 from 6600, to 10,000 in a single year. Besides, if the reduced 
 assessment was taken for 1811, so of course it ought to have 
 been for every other year of the fifteen that were compared 
 together ; whereas in all the rest, with the exception of 1810, 
 the amounts of the gross returns were taken. There was a good 
 reason for that exception, as there was no poll tax on Slaves 
 in that year. But why was 1811 to be excepted, and taken 
 at the reduced amount ? The former Report, indeed, found a 
 reason for it ; but a reason that now turns out to have been 
 untrue. We were desired " to put out of the question 1809, 
 1810, and 181 1 ; because in two of these years there was no poll- 
 tax." Means were found of disproving this; and now the Assem- 
 bly reduces the assertion to one year, which is 1810; without, how- 
 ever, noticing, much less apologising, for its former strange mis- 
 statements. 
 
 It was certainly not very clear why, because the returns of two 
 years were said to be wanting, three should be struck out of 
 the list ; and it is now still less evident why, because there is 
 no tax-roll for 1810, that of 1811 should be taken at the re- 
 duced, instead of the gross assessment. Such, however, is the 
 latest expedient for getting rid of the extraordinary returns of 
 that year, and of the misrepresentation by which the were first 
 explained. 
 
 In the review of this subject, it should never be forgotten that 
 the Assembly, in December 1815, had it not in its choice wholly 
 to suppress those population-returns, though it now discredits 
 them. They had been, by the agent of the island, made a powerful 
 use of, both with his Majesty's Government, and with the British 
 public, being alleged to manifest the non-existence of contraband 
 Slave Trade in Jamaica, as well as a progressive advance in its 
 native population, and in the humane' treatment of Ihe Slaves. 
 
64 
 
 dence ; that they do not even furnish that approach 
 to a comparative estimate of the increase or de- 
 crease at different periods, since the Abolition, which 
 they were before alleged to supply ; and that there 
 are no possible means of tracing back, during the 
 twelve years that have since elapsed^ the progressive 
 effects of that important commercial revolution, the 
 Abolition of the Slave Trade, in the greatest of our 
 sugar colonies. 
 
 The Directors may remember, that from the poll- 
 tax returns, as set forth in the Assembly's Report 
 of December, 1815, the Slaves then in that island 
 were stated to be 313,814. According to the ratio 
 of decrease in the two last preceding years, they 
 must have been reduced in 1817, to about 310,000*. 
 But the returns under the Register Act in that year, 
 imperfect though they probably are, amount to 
 345,252 f, being a difference of 35,252; or an 
 addition of about one ninth part to the probable 
 amount of the last poll-tax returns. 
 
 Your Committee will not stop to inquire whether 
 the reasons now anxiously assigned by the Assembly 
 for this great difference between the accounts it 
 formerly exhibited, and the result of the returns 
 made under the Register Act, are sufficient to pre- 
 
 * The Report does not furnish the poll-tax returns for 1816 
 or 1817; but from the pains it takes to guard against the suspi- 
 cion of unlawful importations on account of the now discovered 
 access of population, those returns would most probably have 
 been given if they had tended to lessen its apparent magnitude. 
 
 f See the last Report, Papers, No. IV. p. 273. 
 
65 
 
 elude the suspicion, which seems to be apprehended. 
 But that the difference far exceeded any previous 
 notions of that legislative body itself, may be fairly 
 assumed from the language of its Report in Decem- 
 ber, 1815. When it then spoke of the Poll-Tax 
 Returns, " shewing a number somewhat under the 
 " truth," who can understand it as having in view a 
 deficiency so enormous as a ninth part of the whole 
 slave population ? It would have been a perfect 
 mockery in that case to reason, as it confidently 
 did, from those returns to a progressive decrease of 
 the loss by mortality, and to the absence of slave- 
 trade. The Report triumphantly inferred, " That 
 " mortality during seven years (which had elapsed 
 " since the Abolition) had produced an average loss 
 " of only 1430, on an average population 6/318,820, 
 " not quite one half per cent*." But how idle and pre- 
 posterous would such an inference have been seen to 
 be, had it been understood that the annual census was 
 incorrect to a degree that might amount to no less 
 than eleven per cent, on the entire population ; or 
 twenty-two times the admitted decrease. The whole 
 loss, during the seven years, was demonstrated to be 
 only about 10,013 ; but the inaccuracy of the data in 
 a single year is now found to be above 35,000 ! ! ! 
 Such, as now confessedly appears, was the extrava- 
 gant looseness of the premises on which the British 
 Government and Parliament were taught four years 
 ago to rely ; not indeed as perfectly accurate, but 
 
 * Report of 1815, p. 30. 
 K 
 
66 
 
 sufficiently so for the purpose of comparing different 
 periods together, and evincing thereby the progressive 
 i mprovement in the treatment of Slaves in Jamaica, 
 as well as the absence of illicit importation ! 
 
 Instead, however, of acknowledging the error in 
 the former Report, and disclaiming the baseles rea- 
 soning contained in it, the Assembly would now treat 
 the discovery made by the late returns as a matter 
 of no importance ; and a fact which every one previ- 
 ously knew, who knew any thing of the subject ; nay, 
 which would be unworthy of notice, but for the dan-^ 
 ger of misrepresentation by the African Institution, 
 or the friends of the Register Bill ! ! ! 
 
 " The cause of this excess," says the last Report, 
 is familiar to all who are acquainted with the subject, 
 and it would not have been necessary to refer to it, 
 were it not desirable that no pretext should be left 
 for the unfounded clamour with which the honour 
 and character of this island have been assailed by 
 that party in England whose mischievous designs 
 against the whole colonial system, have led them to 
 " resort to every possible misrepresentation, and con- 
 " struction of our conduct and proceedings* " 
 
 It certainly was much easier to renew these idle 
 invectives, than to defend the former Report, upon 
 the facts that are now disclosed. It was politic also 
 to suppose, that the Poll-Tax Returns, and not the 
 unfair use mad6 of them, by the Assembly itself, 
 would be the subject of adverse remark. But had 
 
 * Report in Papers, No. IV. p. 272. 
 
67 
 
 this honourable body thought fit to acknowledge the 
 correction of its former errors, and to thank the 
 promoters of the Registry for the important infor- 
 mation their measure had produced, the conduct 
 might have been thought more natural and becoming, 
 in legislators really disposed to promote, by hu- 
 mane improvements, the preservation and native 
 increase of their Slaves, and to exclude a foreign 
 supply. 
 
 The fallacy of the Assembly's reasoning upon 
 the numerical returns, is not, however, the only 
 important discovery derived from the same source. 
 There is another, of a deeply interesting nature, 
 to which your Committee would now invite your 
 particular attention. 
 
 The distinction between male and female Slaves, 
 was one of the few particulars of personal descrip- 
 tion in the Trinidad Returns, which Jamaica did not 
 reject ; and the unexpected consequence is, that the 
 alarming pernicious disproportion supposed to exist 
 between the sexes, is proved to have no existence. 
 
 The whole number of males returned for registra- 
 tion is 172,589, and that of females is 172,663 ; so 
 that the small difference between them is actually 
 found to be on that side, the great inferiority of which 
 in Jamaica, and other Sugar Colonies, has been so 
 much insisted upon and deplored. 
 
 Here we have a striking instance of the fatal ig- 
 norance in which the local legislature of this great 
 colony has been content to remain, on points of the 
 
deepest interest, and the utmost practical importance. 
 Here also we discover the fallacy of those views 
 which have been assiduously propagated in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The supposed disparity between the sexes was 
 long, and, to the last, brought forward as the most 
 specious objection to the Abolition of the Slave Trade. 
 The agents of the islands, and the planters and 
 physicians, who were at different periods examined 
 before the Privy Council and Parliament, uniformly 
 represented this disparity as the chief and decisive 
 obstacle to the keeping up of the existing numbers, 
 without further importation ; and since the Abolition 
 took away the original use of this plea, it has still 
 been resorted to, in order to account for the decline 
 of the black population, without admitting that it 
 has arisen from the mal-treatment of Slaves. 
 
 Your Committee will only adduce the last instance 
 of this groundless excuse, in respect of Jamaica; 
 which must be the more impressive, because it is 
 only four years old ; and therefore preceded only 
 by two years those registered returns which have 
 produced its complete refutation. It is contained 
 in the same parliamentary document so often quoted 
 the Assembly's angry Report on the Register 
 Bill, of December 1815. * The principal cause" 
 says the Assembly in that Report, " which prevents 
 " the population from exhibiting what would be its 
 " natural appearance, is the disproportion of sexes" 
 " By actual enumeration it was found, and is 
 
69 
 
 " stated in a Report on the Minutes of this House, 
 " that the Africans brought to the country were in 
 " the proportion of two-fifths females, and three-fifths 
 " males. Seven years,'" adds this memorable Report, 
 " have been by no means sufficient to bring the sexes to 
 " a state of equality ; and until that be effected, the 
 " number of deaths must be, to that of births, in an 
 " unnatural proportion." " This evil," the Assembly 
 proceeds to say, " produces another, a greater de- 
 " gree of promiscuous intercourse, and more diffi- 
 " culty in correcting it by rewards or punishments. 
 " It is unnecessary to state how unfavourable this 
 " condition of society is to a natural increase, fyc. 
 " Your Committee presume to think that the causes 
 " which they have assigned, are more than sufficient 
 " to account for the population not having hitherto 
 " increased, without having recourse to the unfounded 
 " assumptions of cruelty, oppression, and neglect. 
 " Some," i.e. the disparity of sexes and its associated 
 evils, " are of a nature which time can only correct; 
 " others have been accidental, and may not recur. 
 " There is strong reason to believe, that even before 
 " the sexes shall be completely equalized, there will be 
 " a natural increase in the numbers, but not in the 
 " effective strength of the Slaves*." 
 
 Such were the statements and reasonings of the 
 Jamaica Assembly in December, 1815. In 1816, 
 
 * Printed Jamaica Report, of December 20, 1815, pp, 
 81, 32. 
 
70 
 
 they were presented to Parliament, and assiduously 
 circulated in this country. In 1817, returns, dis- 
 tinguishing the sexes, were for the first time obtained 
 by the Register Act, and the female Slaves are found 
 to out-number the males ! 1 1 
 
 On which side, then, were the " unfounded as- 
 " sumptions ?" And where is that superiority of local 
 information and judgment, on the presumption of 
 which the Assemblies have arrogated to themselves 
 a peculiar right to confidence, and an exclusive legis- 
 lative authority, in matters of interior concern ? 
 
 During how long a time the alleged disparity be- 
 tween the sexes, has served the purposes of those 
 who so successfully opposed, first the Abolition of 
 the Slave Trade, and, since that trade was abolished, 
 the interposition of Parliament for the protection of 
 Slaves, without any such disparity existing in point 
 of fact, cannot now be ascertained. But it is a most 
 observable circumstance, that those who brought 
 forward and profited by the pretext, could, most 
 easily, at any time, and yet never would, enable 
 themselves or us to ascertain its falsehood, or its truth. 
 Correct information on the subject was repeatedly 
 asked for by his Majesty's Government and by 
 Parliament ; but was by the Colonies always perti- 
 naciously withheld. It was admitted to be easily 
 attainable, and yet was never attained. 
 
 Q. " What," asked the Committee of Privy 
 Council in 1788, in its inquiries addressed to 
 
71 
 
 Mr. FULLER, Agent for Jamaica, Mr. LONG and 
 Mr. CHISHOLME, and to the COLONIAL COUNCIL 
 of that island, " what is the proportion between males 
 " and females ? " 
 
 A. " We must refer/' said the agent, and the 
 planters, " to information to be collected in the 
 " island, by general inquiry in every parish, which is 
 " very practicable, by a small alteration in the Quar* 
 " terly Returns, given into the vestry by each pro- 
 " prietor. At present these returns give the total 
 " number of Negroes, without specification of age 
 " or sexes." From the Jamaica Council, no answer 
 whatever was returned, nor was the defect afterwards 
 supplied*. u The slight alteration " in the return?, 
 of dividing the whole numbers into males and fe- 
 males, might have been made in any quarter of any 
 one of the nine and twenty years that elapsed from 
 the time of this fruitless inquiry, to that of the 
 Register-Act Returns in 1817; but no such altera- 
 tion was made. Mean while the great disparity of the 
 sexes continued to be assumed as an incontrovertible 
 fact, during all that long period ; and to furnish a 
 sufficient answer to those who might be " so censori- 
 " ous and irrational" as to infer the bad treatment of 
 the servile class in general from their rapid decrease, 
 in a climate to them salubrious, and in the healthful 
 employments of the field. To those who were fa- 
 natical enough to indulge moral and religious feelings 
 
 * Priry Council Report on the Slave Trade, Part III. Title, 
 Jamaica, A. No. 15. 
 
72 
 
 on the subject and were shocked by the neglect of 
 marriage, of religious instruction, and of all other 
 means of reforming licentious manners among the 
 Slaves, the same assumed fact was held a valid re- 
 ply ; and it has continued, we see, to be relied upon 
 for both purposes, till overthrown by the Register 
 Bills the very measure which it was adduced to 
 oppose. 
 
 It is a rule not only of law, but of universal rea- 
 son and justice, to presume against any allegation 
 of which the party alleging, and interested in sup- 
 porting it, could easily produce the proper evidence, 
 if true, and yet refuses to do so. Your Committee 
 might, therefore, without injustice, on this ground 
 alone conclude that the alleged disparity of sexes, in 
 Jamaica, has not really existed, in any material degree, 
 since the very commencement of the controversy 
 on the Slave Trade. But this opinion seems also 
 highly probable from the facts of the case, as now 
 brought to light by the returns; and still more so 
 on the premises adduced by the Jamaica Assembly, 
 in its Report of December, 1817, as quoted above; 
 for the balance being now in favour of the females, 
 it is very unlikely that it could have been much the 
 reverse in 1788, considering how much the popula- 
 tion has since been supplied, and on the whole in- 
 creased, by the Slave Trade. 
 
 The trade, while it lasted, was continually adding 
 to the existing numbers three males for every two 
 females ; even at the lowest estimate of that dispro- 
 
73 
 
 portion which has ever been made. The agent, and 
 the other witnesses before-named, stated it to be as 
 two to one*. 
 
 It may be naturally thought, that after the al- 
 leged disparity had been allowed as a plea for con- 
 tinuing the Slave Trade, the planters would avail 
 themselves of the means which that trade, while it 
 continued, afforded, of remedying the asserted evil 
 by purchasing more women than men ; nor can the 
 contrary be accounted for, supposing the disparity 
 to have been real, except upon principles which the 
 colonists have indignantly disclaimed. But no such 
 consistency of conduct has ever been alleged on their 
 behalf. On the contrary, females, up to the period 
 of the last importation, were in kss demand, and 
 sold for lower prices than males. Accordingly, the 
 Assembly 's Report of 1815 admits, as we have 
 seen, the ordinary disproportion in the imports to 
 have continued till the final termination of the trade; 
 reasonably remarking, that a term of seven years, 
 could not have sufficed to wear out the disparity 
 thus produced. 
 
 It undeniably results from the same principle, that 
 during the twenty preceding years, the supposed dis- 
 parity, if it really existed in 1787, must have been 
 increased rather than diminished ; because the im- 
 ports bore, during that time, a large proportion to the 
 amount of the previous population. The numbers 
 
 * Privy Council Report on Slave Trade, Part iii. Title, 
 Jamaica, A. No. 15. 
 
74 
 
 imported and retained in the island, from 1800 to 
 1808, are given from official returns in the same 
 Report, and they amounted to 78,935 ; whereas, the 
 whole slave population of the island, at the beginning 
 of that period, appears on the same authority to 
 have been only 300,939. But this had also, in a 
 large degree been made up by like importations 
 subsequent to 1787 ; for the population is then stated 
 in the Privy Council Report to have been only 
 256,000 ; therefore 44,939 must have been im- 
 ported prior to 1800, without reckoning the num- 
 bers that went to supply the loss by intermediate 
 mortality. This loss has been estimated by the Assem- 
 bly's Report as amounting, between the years 1 800 
 and 1 808, to 7000 annually ; and if we take an average 
 of only 5000 for each of the preceding thirteen years, 
 we shall have to add 65,000 to the former numbers ; 
 making in all 188,875 individuals, added to the 
 slave population of Jamaica by importations at dif- 
 ferent periods since 1787 ; of which, by the lowest 
 ratio of disproportion, 1 13,325 were males, and only 
 75,530 females. The difference is 37,775, added 
 to the supposed former excess of the number of 
 males. Now the medium amount of population be- 
 tween the two extremes of 1787 and 1817, being 
 300,626, the due proportion of females would be 
 150,313, of which 37,775 is about one-fourth part; 
 consequently, without supposing any disparity at all 
 at the present period, or on an average of the whole 
 thirty years, except among the Slaves imported 
 
75 
 
 during that term, four women must have been add- 
 ed by births to the population of Jamaica for every 
 three men, in order to produce the equality (not to 
 notice the small excess) that now exists on the part 
 of the females. 
 
 It would indeed be strange if such an effect had 
 been the work of thirty years ; but the wonder would 
 be much enhanced by admitting to the Assembly 
 and its agents, that there was, according to their for- 
 mer statements, a large antecedent disparity on the 
 same side. 
 
 There is abundant reason then to conclude, that 
 the British Government and Parliament were, from 
 the beginning, misled on this subject, by a misplaced 
 confidence in the representations of the colonists of 
 Jamaica ; and that an argument which so powerfully 
 contributed to the prolongation of the Slave Trade, 
 was not at any time founded in fact. 
 
 Your Committee may, perhaps, be thought to have 
 digressed from its immediate province by these re- 
 marks ; but it seemed right thus to shew how useful 
 and necessary a Slave Registry is, if considered 
 only as a source of authentic public information, on 
 subjects vital to the welfare of the sugar colonies, 
 and yet hitherto left in total darkness. 
 
 Nor can your Committee quit this subject without 
 congratulating the Institution on the good effects 
 which, in this view, the measure it patronized has 
 produced, either directly or indirectly, not only in 
 Jamaica, but in other sugar colonies. 
 
76 
 
 In SAINT CHRISTOPHER also, and in other 
 islands, the important fact is established, that the 
 supposed excess of males above females, if it ever 
 existed, is no more. In that island the males are 
 9293, and the females 9541*. 
 
 In DOMINICA, the former are 8838, and the latter, 
 9518f. 
 
 In BERMUDA, the males are 2175 ; the females 
 2408 J. 
 
 In NEVIS, the numbers (omitting a list of 955 
 Slaves in which the sexes are not distinguished), are 
 4026 males, and 4164 females . 
 
 In BARB A DOES, the printed returns, as trans- 
 mitted by Lord Combermere, are peculiarly full and 
 instructive in other respects, specifying the ages, as 
 well as numbers, but unfortunately they do not dis- 
 tinguish the sexes. Here, however, the sufficiency 
 of females cannot be doubted, and the fact of an 
 increasing native population seems to be ascertained ||, 
 
 Detailed accounts of the population of TOBAGO, 
 were made up to the year 1811, which, with other 
 papers, were printed by order of the House of Corn- 
 moos, of July 12, 1815; and they shew (in page 
 173), that the deficiency of females was, even at that 
 
 * Papers, No. IV. p. 117. f Papers, No. II. p. 112. 
 
 I Papers, No. II. p. 95. Papers, No. IV. p. 122. 
 
 H Papers, No. IV. p. 111. 
 
 N. B. These are not returns under Register Acts, but under 
 special Acts passed to supply the defect of a census, in con- 
 sequence of the discussions on the Register Bill, and in order to 
 avert that measure. 
 
77 
 
 date, nearly if not wholly repaired ; for the males 
 were 5931, and the females 5714, while there were 
 3439 children whose sexes are not distinguished. 
 
 In TRINIDAD alone, of all the colonies, returns 
 of whose population, distinguishing the sexes, are 
 before your Committee, is there a clear excess of 
 males ; a fact easily accounted for by the recent 
 settlement of the island, it having been made chiefly 
 by means of the Slave Trade. Yet even here the evil 
 
 is on the decline *. 
 |i 
 
 * The males originally registered there in 1813, were 10,017 
 adults, and 3255 children, together 14,172; the females 8206 
 adults, and 3339 children together 11,545; making a differ- 
 ence between the sexes of 2627. 
 
 There also must have been a considerable improvement prior 
 to 1813 ; because the returns to the commissary of population 
 in 181 1, represented the island as then containing 1 1,827 males, 
 and only 9316 females ; the difference being 2511, which, on a 
 population of 21,243, the amount of those defective returns is 
 a much greater disparity than 2627 in a population of 25,717. 
 
 But the case was improved by the returns of 1816 ; for 
 it will be found, on summing up the respective items of 
 increase and decrease of the two sexes, adults and children 
 together, that while the males have lost 14#, the females have 
 gained 302 ; making a difference in their relative numbers of 
 450, and reducing the total difference to 2177 f. If the impor- 
 tations within the three years from British colonies, are taken 
 out of the account, the emendation will be greater ; there hav- 
 ing been 611 males added to the population by that means, and 
 only 540 females; making a difference against the females 
 of71. 
 
 It cannot be doubted then, that even in this island, if the po- 
 pulation shall be left to its natural causes of advance or de- 
 cline ; and much more if the planters in their future imports 
 
 t Papers, No. II. page 94. 
 
78 
 
 On the whole, it may confidently be inferred from 
 the information now before Parliament, and which 
 your efforts to obtain a general registration of Slaves 
 in the colonies have chiefly, if not solely elicited, that 
 the grand alleged obstacle to native increase, and 
 moral improvement, was in respect of the British 
 West Indies in general, greatly magnified ; and that 
 if in the older islands it had any reality at all, it has, 
 from the beginning of the slave controversy, been 
 the mere effect of further extending that atrocious 
 practice, which it was brought forward to excuse. 
 
 That the evil has now totally ceased in most of our 
 colonies, and is on the point of ceasing in all, is 
 from the same premises still more incontestible. 
 Henceforth, therefore, that decline of the servile po- 
 pulation which too certainly still continues, must be 
 traced to some other sources than the defective ele- 
 ments of the population itself. 
 
 Important as these results of a Slave Registration 
 undoubtedly are, they would be still more so, if the 
 respective plantations were distinguished in the returns 
 of Jamaica, and of our old islands generally, as is 
 required by the Order in Council at Trinidad. 
 
 The advocates of the Colonial Slaves have always 
 alleged the causes of decline in the Slave population 
 to be chiefly two the excess of forced labour, and 
 the insufficiency of food ; to both of which abuses 
 
 from other British colonies, attend to this important interest, 
 preferring females to males, the disparity of numbers between 
 the sexes, which has been so loudly complained of at Trinidad, 
 will in a very few years wholly cease to exist. 
 
79 
 
 there are far the strongest temptations on sugar 
 estates. They have alleged also as a strong con- 
 current cause, that odious and pernicious method of 
 enforcing labour, which prevails in a peculiar degree 
 on sugar estates ; namely, driving in the field ; es- 
 pecially as it affects the female Slaves. Their views, 
 undeniably, have this primd facie confirmation from 
 experience, that it is in sugar colonies chiefly that the 
 evil of a decreasing population is found to exist. 
 But even in such colonies, all the Slaves are not 
 employed in the culture of sugar. In some, in Ja- 
 maica especially, there is a large mixture of coffee, 
 and live stock plantations. Cotton also is grown in 
 some colonies ; and in all, a considerable proportion 
 of the servile class is employed in handicraft trades, 
 in the labours of the towns and harbours, and in do- 
 mestic service. The question therefore between the 
 sugar planters, and those whom they call their ene- 
 mies, might easily be brought to the test of experi- 
 ment. A Registry, discriminating not only be- 
 tween plantation and personal Slaves, but between 
 one plantation and another, and between the sexes 
 in all, would shew by its periodical census, whe- 
 ther the causes producing a decline of the Black 
 population belong most probably to the longitude 
 and latitude of the place, or to the species of employ- 
 ment, and to the modes of labour and subsistence. 
 No such information, however, can be derived from 
 general returns of the Slaves of A. B. or C. D., still 
 less of the Slaves of which A. B. or C. D. is in pos- 
 
80 
 
 session; because he may be the owner, trustee, 
 manager, attorney, or possessor, not only of sugar 
 plantations, but of coffee plantations, of stock es- 
 tates, or penns, and of many personal Slaves. The 
 rejection, therefore, of such reasonable specifications, 
 and distinct returns, as the Trinidad Register Act 
 and Mr. Wilberforce's Bill required, is a withhold- 
 ing of some of the most necessary means whereby 
 the causes of a declining population may best be 
 traced, and the proper remedies supplied. 
 
 That the stock of Slaves in the British colonies 
 collectively, is declining, unhappily cannot be de- 
 nied ; and it is an evil which, unless speedily check- 
 ed, must march forward with a rapidly accelerating 
 pace. But the first step toward providing a cure for 
 any malady, is the knowledge of the disease ; and 
 the next, the discovery of its causes. A well regu- 
 lated Registry would effectually give the one ; and 
 help us far towards the other. But such Registries as 
 Jamaica and the other colonies have established, will 
 not suffice even for these purposes. 
 
 Indeed, these Acts cannot long, if at all, have 
 any good effect whatever, as your Committee will 
 proceed further to shew. 
 
 The only remaining provisions of a directory kind 
 which it seems necessary to review, under the second 
 division of the subject, are highly important ; namely, 
 those which relate to the transmission of copies or 
 abstracts, of the registered returns to England. 
 
81 
 
 By the Order in Council for Trinidad it was 
 directed, and Mr. Wilberforce's Bill proposed to 
 direct for all the colonies, that the Registrars should, 
 within the earliest period that could conveniently be 
 prescribed, transmit, through the Governors, authen- 
 ticated duplicates of the original register books, and 
 copies or abstracts of all the subsequent periodical 
 returns, to his Majesty's principal Secretary of 
 State for the colonial department in England ; to 
 the intent that they might be lodged and kept in a 
 general public Registry of colonial Slaves, to be esta- 
 blished in this country. 
 
 The objects of this essential part of the plan were, 
 First, To insure a regular active obedience to the 
 law, by the officers intrusted with its execution 
 abroad ; or else, to obtain a certain and early dis- 
 covery here, of any default in such obedience. 
 
 In many former cases, and some of them closely 
 analogous to the present, the duties prescribed by 
 positive laws in the colonies had, as has appeared, 
 been totally neglected, not only by private persons, 
 but by public officers; and this, from the moment of 
 the enactment of those laws by the local legislatures 
 themselves. Yet no prosecutions had ensued for the 
 penalties incurred by such neglects; and though no- 
 torious in the West Indies, they were unknown to 
 the British Government and Parliament, until many 
 years afterwards, when official inquiries, consequent 
 on parliamentary addresses, obliged the local autho- 
 
 M 
 
rities to avow their general default, but at a period' 
 when its evil consequences could not be repaired. 
 
 Such was the case of the Acts before noticed, 
 which, in Jamaica and in other colonies, required 
 annual returns of the births and deaths of Slaves on 
 the plantations, with the particular causes of morta- 
 lity. They were all passed as early as 1798; and 
 most of them nearly ten years earlier; yet in 1804, 
 when a circular Letter from the colonial depart- 
 ment, in pursuance of an Address of the House of 
 Commons, required the transmission, by the Gover- 
 nors, of lists or brief abstracts of these returns, and 
 of other information such as those documents would 
 have supplied, the answer in substance, from every 
 colony was, that no such returns had been made. 
 Most of the Governors, being either themselves 
 planters, or desirous of pleasing the communities over 
 which they presided, resorted either to awkward ex- 
 cuses, or to evasions and delay ; but an honest old 
 soldier, General Sir George Prevost, Governor of 
 Dominica, fairly avowed the plain truth ; stating that 
 the Act of that island " had been considered from 
 the day it was passed to that hour, as a political 
 measure, to avert the interference of the Mother 
 Country in the management of Slaves ;" consequent- 
 ly, that the returns had been wholly neglected *. 
 After such examples, it was impossible for persons 
 
 * Papers printed by order of the House of Commons, Feb.- 
 25, 1805, p. 86. 
 
83 
 
 -at all conversant with the subject, to rely on the 
 correct and permanent performance of the duties to 
 i)e prescribed by a Register Act in the Colonies, 
 unless means were found to manifest the execution 
 or non-execution of it in this country, so that the 
 British Government, and Parliament, and also pri- 
 vate persons interested in its due observance, might 
 have timely notice of any general official neglect. 
 
 Such a precaution was the more indispensable, 
 because, though the consequences of private and 
 ^particular defaults might fall only on the defaulters 
 themselves; gross neglects, by the Registrar, of his 
 general duties, might, by suspending the due action 
 of the machine, obstruct in a very embarrassing and 
 pernicious way all its future movements; and greatly 
 impair at least, if not wholly destroy, its beneficial 
 operation. Such neglects are here chiefly meant, 
 as would be apparent on the face of the Registrars 
 own Records. For example, if he were to suffer the 
 .proper entries in his books to be so long in arrear, 
 that a second periodical registration should become 
 due before a first was completely made; or if he 
 should keep his books in so slovenly and immethodi- 
 cal a manner, as to render the particular facts of due 
 registration doubtful; much more if, in collusion 
 with the enemies of the system, he were to suffer his 
 books, or any of them, to be lost, mutilated, or 
 destroyed. 
 
 In such cases, the Legislature would be placed 
 in a most painful and difficult dilemma. To adhere 
 
84 
 
 to the main principle of a Slave Registry, by still 
 making it necessary evidence of the masters' rights, 
 might be extensive injustice to individuals, and dan- 
 gerous to the community at large. Yet the only 
 alternatives would be, not only to impose a grievous 
 inconvenience on innocent persons, but to effectuate 
 perhaps the fraudulent and oppressive ends for 
 which the dilemma was contrived, by directing a 
 new general registration, in which every Negro 
 held in actual slavery within the Colony, however 
 wrongfully and recently introduced, might be safely 
 returned. All the security to freedom, and all the 
 certainty of titles, obtained by half a century per- 
 haps, of regular registration, might be thus irretriev- 
 ably lost. 
 
 But the books might also be destroyed by fire, or 
 by hurricane, or by an enemy in the time of war; or 
 even by ordinary causes ; as paper records are pecu- 
 liarly perishable in that climate. 
 
 A second reason, therefore, for providing a dupli- 
 cate Registry in England, was to prepare a resource 
 in cases of a total or partial destruction of any of 
 these important books. 
 
 The general Register Office for colonial Slaves 
 in this country, if as well guarded as our depositories 
 for other public records, would be an effectual assu- 
 rance against all irreparable ill consequences of such 
 events in the West Indies, when arising from acci- 
 dental causes ; and, therefore, it may be added, 
 would remove all temptation to their production by 
 
85 
 
 other means. The worst inconvenience from the 
 total destruction even of a whole colonial Registry, 
 would be, that a transcript of the duplicate books 
 in England, as continued and corrected by the last 
 transmitted periodical returns, must be made and 
 sent put to the colony; and that an Act must be 
 passed to suspend, in some measure, the operation 
 of the Register Act there, till this transcript should 
 arrive. 
 
 In addition to these decisive reasons, there was a 
 third object, of hardly inferior importance, to be at- 
 tained by establishing a general Registry in this coun- 
 try. Without such an establishment, the means of 
 ascertaining the observation of the law, by regis- 
 tration in the colonies, might be difficult, as well 
 as tedious. A merchant in London disposed to 
 purchase, or lend money upon, a West- India estate, 
 could not do so with safety, and with that dispatch 
 which such transactions often require; for he must 
 wait for, and trust to, the correctness of information 
 to be obtained from the colony. The proprietor 
 also, when resident here, might not be easily able to 
 discover neglects by which his title might be affected, 
 in due time to interfere and repair them. 
 
 The force of these latter considerations will be 
 more apparent, when the remedies and sanctions for 
 enforcing these laws, the last division of our subject, 
 comes under review. But your Committee, assum- 
 ing, for the present, that a general Registry in this 
 country is an essential part of the plan, will proceed 
 
86 
 
 to state in what manner the means of forming it have 
 been provided by the colonial Legislatures. 
 
 The Act of Jamaica directs, as has been already 
 seen, that the Secretary of the island, after register- 
 ing the different copies of parochial returns trans- 
 mitted to him by the Vestry Clerks of the twenty- 
 one parishes, shall deliver them to the Governor's 
 Secretary, to be transmitted to England. 
 
 The authority of the British Government, or Par- 
 liament, it may be said, will suffice for what is to 
 follow; and it must be admitted, that the Assembly 
 could not, with any propriety or effect, impose duties 
 on the King's Representative ; much less go on to 
 enact what shall be done with the returns after the 
 receipt of them by the Secretary of State in the 
 mother country, or what shall be the effect of re- 
 gistration or non- registration here. It is one of the 
 many inconveniences of leaving this important mea- 
 sure to the Assemblies, that the different parts of 
 one necessarily connected plan must be effectuated 
 by different legislative powers; and that even the 
 connecting links between the particular colonial Re- 
 gistries, and the general Registry here, cannot be sup- 
 plied by those authorities, to which the work has 
 been generally referred. 
 
 But the Assembly of Jamaica, if disposed to go 
 as far as it could go, in the exercise of that exclusive 
 power which it assumed to itself in this work, might 
 have directed that duplicates of the Secretary's Re- 
 gister Books should be made and transmitted, duly 
 
S7 
 
 authenticated by him, to the Governor, as was dr- 
 rected by the Order in Council for Trinidad ; or at 
 least, that a complete transcript in paper of those 
 books, should be so transmitted. In that case the 
 Jamaica Registry, imperfect as it is, might at least 
 have had its counterpart in the English office, 
 not only as to its substantial contents, but in point 
 of order and form: whereas, under the Act as it 
 stands, there will be no correspondence between them, 
 except such as it will soon become extremely difficulty 
 or quite impossible to trace. No order, let it be 
 again observed, is prescribed, in which the Secretary 
 is to enter the different returns ; and as to the form, 
 the only direction is, that it shall be " in the manner 
 " that other instruments are there recoiled." 
 
 How is the English Registrar to know what that 
 manner is; or in what order, or under what titles, 
 the contents of so many parochial lists are entered 
 in the Secretaries' books, and carried on by the peri- 
 odical returns ? It is highly improbable, as to the 
 original registration there, and quite impossible, as 
 to its future continuation by periodical returns, that 
 they should have any intelligible correspondence, 
 with that which ought to be their faithful and authen- 
 ticated counterpart in this country*'. 
 
 * Here, perhaps, some practical illustration may be useful. 
 
 Let it be supposed that A. B. is an extensive possessor of 
 Slaves, as proprietor, trustee, attorney, manager, and in other 
 characters, in the several parishes of Trelawny, Clarendon, and 
 Kingston ; and that in each of those parishes he has made his 
 returns for original registration. His lists, of course, will 
 
88 
 
 The Register Acts of other Colonies, without be- 
 ing substantially more defective in this essential 
 
 occupy very different places in the Registry of Jamaica, and in 
 the English Registry for that island respectively, unless the 
 Trelawny, Clarendon, and Kingston returns should by a strange 
 coincidence, happen to be transcribed in the same order rela- 
 tively to themselves, and to the other parishes, in the Register 
 books of both countries. 
 
 Very different is the case as to Trinidad. If the duplicates are 
 made pursuant to the Order in Council, a reference found in 
 any conveyance of Slaves, to the books of that colonial Re- 
 gistry, would be an exact direction to find the correspondent 
 entries in the Registry here. 
 
 The inconvenience of this departure from the original plan 
 will be better conceived, if it is kept in mind, that according to 
 the computation of the Jamaica Assembly itself, thirty-four 
 books will be necessary to contain the original registration of 
 that island. 
 
 Thus far, however, difficulty, not total impracticability, of re- 
 search and comparison, might be the consequence: but let us 
 look forward to the future periodical returns. Let it be sup- 
 posed, that prior to these A. B. is dead, or has removed from the 
 island, or has sold his estate, or has gone with his personal 
 Slaves to reside in some other parish, or is no longer trustee or 
 manager of, or attorney for, the owner of all, or some of the 
 Slaves, originally returned by him. Under whose names then, 
 and in what parochial lists, are the continuations, alterations, 
 and corrections, in respect of the same Slaves, or gangs of 
 Slaves, to be sought for? The Act says, that at the future tri- 
 ennial periods, " All persons who shall then be in possession, 
 " as owner, mortgagee, trustee, attorney, &c.&c. shall return 
 " lists, shewing the increase, decrease, &c. since the last re- 
 " turn ;'' and these lists are, by the Vestry Clerks, to be trans- 
 mitted to the Secretary of the island, and by him, after being 
 entered in his books, delivered to the Governor's Secretary, to 
 be sent to England, as in the case of the original returns. 
 Now the meaning is, or it is not, that the Secretary shall enter 
 these future periodical accounts of increase and decrease in his 
 
80 
 
 point, are more obviously so. Here again we 
 must except TOBAGO; the Legislature of which 
 island has, in most respects* honourably distinguished 
 
 books, with some arrangement, and under Home title, or with 
 some express reference, that shall connect the new lists intelli- 
 gibly, with the original and former returns of the same proprie- 
 tors. If such be not the intention (and there is nothing in the 
 Act to shew that it is), then undoubtedly it is needless to con- 
 sider further the consequences in the English Registry ; for the 
 whole use of the measure, both here and in Jamaica, is annihi- 
 lated. But if we suppose such means of reference and identifi- 
 cation to be tacitly provided, or intended, then how can the 
 arrangement and references in the English books, as to the 
 Slaves progressively returned by A. B. possibly tally with those 
 of the books in Jamaica ? And how can the English Registrar 
 supply any intelligible references at all ? 
 
 The Secretary in Jamaica, indeed, may by possibility know, at 
 the time of some triennial return, that A. B., late of Trelawny, is 
 now of Westmoreland parish ; and may enter his Slaves, therefore, 
 in the Westmoreland returns, under the name of " A. B. late of 
 " Trelawny," or with a reference to the last Trelawny returns; 
 or he may know that C. D. is now become owner, trustee, or 
 possessor of the estate in Trelawny, for which A. B. before 
 made the returns ; and may, therefore, under the names C. D. 
 in the returns of that parish, make a note of reference to A. B. 
 and vice versa. But the documents to be sent to England are 
 to contain no such information : they are to be mere copies of 
 the parochial returns. The English Registry for this island, 
 therefore, if not the Colonial also, must, from the want of all 
 means of tracing the Slaves and proprietors of different estates, 
 up to the original registration, soon become perfectly useless. 
 Nay more it must, by the operation of an Act of Parliament 
 of the last session, to which we shall hereafter refer, become in 
 a high degree inconvenient and mischievous, to all proprietors 
 of estates and Slaves in Jamaica. 
 
90 
 
 itself in this important and interesting work. In 
 conformity to the Order in Council for Trinidad, 
 it has provided for the transmission of duplicate 
 books of original Registry, and of accounts or ab- 
 stracts of future periodical returns*. We must except 
 also GRENADA, as hereinafter mentioned. 
 
 The legislatures of the other colonies have, for the 
 most part, wholly rejected this part of the precedent 
 before them. Their Acts require no duplicates, or 
 copies, or abstracts whatever to be transmitted to this 
 country; or delivered to the Governors; or prepared 
 and certified by the colonial Registrars j but leave 
 out this vital part of the plan altogether. Such are 
 the ActsofBAHAMAf, of DOMINICA J, of NEVIS, 
 
 St.CHRISTOPHER||,ToRTOLAOrVlRCIN ISLANDS^*, 
 
 and St. VINCENTS**. 
 
 The Act of BARBADOES directs duplicates of 
 the books of original registration to be made and de- 
 livered to the Governor for transmission to England ; 
 but is silent as to the triennial returns ff. The same 
 is the case at BERBICE and DEMARARYJ^. 
 
 The Act of MONTSERRAT on the contrary, di- 
 rects duplicates of the triennial returns, to be made 
 
 * Papers, No. III. pp. 43, 40. f Ibid. No. IV. pp. 1114. 
 t Ibid. pp. 3085. Ibid. pp. 8188. || Ibid. pp. 89-98. 
 
 IT Ibid. No. IV. pp. 98108. 
 
 ** Ibid, No. III. pp. 2331. But see a former Note as to 
 this document, which appears in the parliamentary papers to be 
 a Bill only, and not an Act. 
 tt Papers, No. HI. pp. 88. ft Ibid. No. IV. pp. 14- 36, 
 
91 
 
 and certified for transmission ; but contains no pro- 
 vision as to the original Registry *, 
 
 The Register Act of GRENADA, with that of 
 TOBAGO, pursues in this respect substantially the 
 precedent of Trinidad ; by directing duplicates, both 
 of the original and subsequent periodical returns, to 
 be delivered to the Governor, for transmission to 
 the Secretary of State. 
 
 Here, however, your Committee must take occa- 
 sion to notice, with concern, a grand and radical de- 
 fect in the Act of Grenada, which more than coun- 
 terpoises its superiority in some respects to those of 
 many other colonies. In adopting an institution, 
 the perpetuity of which, no$ only in effect, but in 
 the present expectation of those who are affected by 
 it, is indispensably necessary to its principles, and its 
 objects, the Legislature of Grenada has strangely 
 thought fit to limit the duration of She Act; and this 
 to the short term of four years ! ! ! 
 
 In framing records which are to be the evidence of 
 future genealogies, and the tests of the legal condition 
 of multitudes in generations yet unborn, such a limi- 
 tation is plainly inconsistent with the practical ob- 
 jects of the law. It is, also, utterly subversive of 
 the hope that these laws will have a beneficial in- 
 fluence on the present treatment of Slaves. 
 
 It is needless to explain here at length the views 
 on which that hope was founded. They were suffi- 
 ciently opened in your Report on the Register Bill; 
 * Papers, No. IV. pp. 7480. 
 
92 
 
 and your Committee will only remind you, that they 
 wholly rested on that perpetual exclusion of a foreign 
 supply of Slaves, which the registration, if universal 
 in the British colonies, would ensure; and the utter 
 despair which would consequently be felt, both by 
 planters and their mortgagees, of any future substi- 
 tute for a native succession or increase. 
 
 It was not essential to the value of this considera- 
 tion, as our opponents affected to suppose, that we 
 should assume the disputed fact of an existing con- 
 traband importation. The known practicability of 
 that abuse was quite enough for the argument ; and 
 that it is easily practicable, in the absence of a well- 
 regulated Registry, no man at all acquainted with 
 the case can possibly doubt. The Assemblies, and 
 their agents, formerly made the notoriety of this 
 truth, and the absolute impossibility of preventing 
 the abuse by external means, a prominent argument 
 against the abolition of the trade by law*. 
 
 But how can an Act, limited in its duration to a 
 few years, produce the desired effect? Instead of the 
 salutary despair of a future extraneous resource, the 
 limiting clause itself will suggest to the indigent 
 planter's mind, and to the minds of his creditors, that 
 the painful present sacrifices, necessary to the preser- 
 vation and increase of his gang, may yet be avoided. 
 It will tell them, with a most intelligible voice, that 
 the measure is a mere expedient of temporizing po- 
 
 * See the many quotations to this effect, in Mr. Stephen's 
 first Letter to Mr. Wilberforce, in defence of the Register Bill. 
 
93 
 
 licy, and not designed to be permanent ; since a li- 
 mitation, so incompatible with the general principle 
 and objects of the law, could have been annexed to it 
 at its birth, only in order to keep its duration in the 
 power of the Assembly. 
 
 The framers of the clause were evidently con- 
 scious of its being, in this view, of an objectionable 
 nature ; and they therefore prefixed to it a preamble, 
 in which they endeavoured ingeniously, but most 
 unsatisfactorily, to defend it. " Whereas the pre- 
 " sent Act, being of great importance, and may not 
 " in its present enactments be calculated to answer 
 " all the purposes intended thereby, but may by 
 a experience be found defective, and require altera- 
 " tion ; in order, therefore, to afford the Legislature 
 " an opportunity to give the measure a fair trial, 
 " and to remedy any defects or imperfections that 
 " may be found therein,"" Be it further enacted," 
 &c.* 
 
 We have here several distinct considerations 
 grouped together, with an apparently studied confu- 
 sion ; namely, the importance of the Act, its expe- 
 rimental nature, and the possible defectiveness or 
 imperfection of its enactments, as motives for a 
 limitation to which neither of those considerations 
 could with any colour of reason lead. The importance 
 of the Act is plainly quite beside the question, whether 
 it ought to be a permanent or temporary law ; and if 
 * Papers, No. IV. p. 46. 
 
94 
 
 the measure were " experimental," it is at least one 
 that would require a far longer term of experiment 
 than four years. So to limit a census of progressive 
 population, and a register of hereditary slavery, is about 
 as rational as it would have been in the Nullum Tem- 
 pus Act, which gave a prescription of sixty years 
 against the Crown, to say that it should be in force 
 till the next session of Parliament. As to the pos- 
 sible " insufficiency" or " imperfection" of the 
 enactments, the reasoning seems to imply, that there 
 is no way to amend an Act, but by letting it first 
 expire, and then reviving it in a better form ; but 
 the Grenada Legislature has itself shewn its know- 
 ledge of the contrary, by amending this very Act in 
 the same year *. 
 
 A more intelligible motive pretty clearly discovers 
 itself in this preamble ; viz. That of keeping it in 
 the power of the ASSEMBLY, without the con- 
 currence of the Governor and Council and the 
 Crown ; soon to get rid of this law ; for it is not 
 easy otherwise to understand what is meant by " af- 
 fording the Legislature an opportunity to give the 
 measure a fair trial." It was apprehended, no 
 doubt, that difficulties might be found in obtaining 
 the assent of the King's Representative, and the 
 allowance of the Crown, to the repeal of a law 
 which the Parliament of the mother country had 
 
 * See the Amending Act, printed next to the former, in 
 Papers, No. IV. p. 49. 
 
95 
 
 strongly recommended, and the want of which, in a 
 single colony, would unhinge a general system*. 
 
 The Act of the BAHAMAS is the only other Act, 
 before your Committee, which agrees with' 5 that of 
 Grenade, in this last particular. It is limited in 
 duration to six years. But then it is not a Register 
 Act, even in name, though it prescribes a periodical 
 census. All the other colonial legislatures have 
 professed to adopt the system of registering . their 
 Slaves, and have perceived the flagrant inconsistency 
 of adopting such a measure at all, without making 
 it perpetual. 
 
 Your Committee might point out many more de- 
 fects of various kinds in the Acts of the different 
 colonies, under the second of the general heads 
 into which this review has been divided ; but it is 
 high time to proceed to the third and last, viz. 
 
 * Should it seem harsh to the Grenada Assembly to conjec- 
 ture a motive like this, let it be recollected that the same legisla- 
 tive body acted just in the same manner in passing its meliorat- 
 ing Slave Act in the year 1788. Upon a call for reformation from 
 Parliament, it exceeded most of the other colonies in the spe- 
 cious humanity of its enactments; especially in the constituting 
 public guardians of Slaves a plausible expedient adopted by 
 two only of our islands. But the Act had a clause limiting its 
 duration to four years, at the end of which term, viz. in 1792, it 
 was suffered to drop into non-existence, without even an at- 
 tempt to revive it, (though it contained the whole much-boasted 
 code of ostensible melioration in that island) until five years 
 after, when upon new discussions in Parliament relative to 
 the state of the colonial Slayes, most of its clauses were sud- 
 denly re-enacted. 
 
THIRD GENERAL HEAD. 
 
 The Sanctions by which Obedience to these Laws is 
 promoted or enforced. 
 
 It cannot be necessary to shew, that the main 
 difficulty attending the plan of a Slave Registry 
 in general, is to ensure its punctual execution 
 in the colonies. The impotence of judicial and 
 executive authority there, when opposed to the 
 current of local 1 prejudices and interests, is too no- 
 torious to be denied. It is an evil inseparable per- 
 haps from small societies ; and that in proportion to 
 the degree of liberty which they enjoy. But it is 
 pre-eminently felt in the British West-India colo- 
 nies, where the extreme degrees of civil freedom, 
 and civil prostration, divide a small number of indi- 
 viduals possessing all the power, and all the privilege, 
 from the mass of the society at large ; and where the 
 laws can only be enforced through the verdicts of 
 juries, and by the testimony of witnesses, taken ex- 
 clusively from the small privileged class. Above 
 all, the arm of every colonial legislature is paralyzed 
 from this cause, whenever it attempts to protect 
 the large enslaved majority from the wrongs of the 
 privileged few. 
 
 These truths are not more credible in theory, than 
 incontestible in fact. They are admitted by many 
 respectable colonists, sufficiently zealous in defence 
 of their interior system, and are attested by irre- 
 sistible evidence. No other apology can, in fact,. 
 
97 
 
 be made for the acknowledged non- execution of the 
 many meliorating Slave Acts which the last thirty 
 years have produced in most of our West-India 
 islands. Well was it observed of them by Mr. 
 Burke, " / have seen what has been done by the 
 West- Indian Assemblies. It is arrant trifling. 
 They have done little ; and what they have done is 
 good for nothing ; for it is totally destitute of an 
 executory principle.''' 
 
 From these considerations it is evident, that no 
 punctual or permanent execution of the laws for 
 registering Slaves, could rationally be expected from 
 such ordinary sanctions, as civil remedies to be pro- 
 secuted, or penalties to be recovered, in the colonial 
 courts. 
 
 The promoters of the Register Bill were well aware 
 of this ; and so was his Majesty's Government, when 
 framing the Order in Council for Trinidad. An exe- 
 cutory principle) therefore, was sought for, and found, 
 in the self-interest of the master ; his future title to his 
 Slaves being made to depend on their due registra- 
 tion. Ample provisions were made to protect him 
 against the neglects of others, or his own involuntary 
 defaults ; but, subject to a fair allowance for these, 
 his rights as an owner were virtually forfeited, if the 
 law was disobeyed. In making out his title in a 
 court of law, against any person withholding his pro- 
 perty in Slaves, he was bound, as an indispensable 
 preliminary, to shew that they were registered as 
 belonging to him, or to the person under whom he 
 
 o 
 
98 
 
 claimed. In asserting his right against a Negro 
 claiming to be free, he was held to the same preli-* 
 minary proof. 
 
 As a sanction founded on the same principle, and 
 of still greater efficacy, the validity of a sale or 
 mortgage was made to depend on the same condi- 
 tion : unregistered Slaves could not be conveyed as 
 property ; and by the provisions of the "Register 
 Bill, the insertion of them in any deed of sale or 
 mortgage annulled the whole conveyance. 
 
 It was from the operation of this last rule, that 
 the general Registry of Colonial Slaves in England, 
 to be formed through the transmission of duplicate 
 books, and copies of periodical returns, was to de- 
 rive its grand importance. The great frequency of 
 sales, and the still greater frequency of mortgages 
 and assignments of such property, executed here, 
 made it highly desirable or necessary, that official 
 evidence of due registration should be attainable in 
 this country ; and being attainable* every proprietor 
 of Slaves, every planter at least, would, for his own 
 sake, take care that such evidence should not be 
 wanting, through his own default, or that of his 
 agents abroad. His credit with his consignee, his 
 power of raising money by mortgage, or that of sell- 
 ing his estate, objects which every sugar-planter feels 
 to be of the last importance, would all depend on the 
 due observance of the law. The consequence is 
 obvious. All the proprietory influence over the colo- 
 nies would be engaged on the right side ; and the 
 
local authorities, instead of having to struggle against 
 the tide of popular feeling in discharge of their duty, 
 would find no ease or security to themselves but in 
 its strict and punctual performance. Register Acts, 
 in short, when thus guarded, would want little or 
 no aid from colonial courts and juries. They would 
 execute themselves. 
 
 The most anxious inquiry of your Committee, 
 therefore, has been, in what degree these grand ex- 
 ecutory means have been adopted by the Acts under 
 its review ; arid you will hear with pain the disheart- 
 ening general result : with a few partial and useless 
 exceptions that shall be noticed, they have not been 
 adopted at all. 
 
 The last-mentioned, and most efficacious expe- 
 dient, has been wholly rejected by every colonial 
 legislature, in every Register Act before your Com- 
 mittee, but that of Tobago, which has prohibited 
 the sale or other alienation of Slaves not duly re- 
 gistered, but without avoiding the conveyance as to 
 any other property comprised in it. With this ex- 
 ception, the transfer by sale, mortgage, or otherwise^ 
 of unregistered Slaves, is no where at all restrained ; 
 much less rendered impracticable, by any avoidance 
 of the deeds. 
 
 The consequences of this fatal departure from 
 the plan, are not only the loss of that salutary influ- 
 ence, on the minds of proprietors, which would best 
 insure the regular execution of these laws, but the 
 easy frustration, at the master's will, of such feeble 
 
100 
 
 remedies as the Acts affect to provide against the 
 holders of Slaves, or of Negroes treated as such, 
 whom they have never returne dfor registration. It 
 would be too tedious to set forth these provisions 
 fully ; otherwise, it could be clearly shewn, that a 
 Negro, entitled to claim his freedom from non-registrar 
 tion, might be effectually deprived of the benefit of 
 the law, by selling him to a third person, who would 
 include him in his next returns. 
 
 This great and universal defect will appear the 
 more extraordinary when it is observed, that the prin- 
 ciple of avoiding titles to Slaves, as well as to lands 
 and tenements, for want of registration, has long been 
 familiar to all the colonial assemblies. Every island 
 has its public registry of deeds and wills; and 
 no man there can safely purchase lands or Slaves, 
 or advance money on a mortgage of such property, 
 without ascertaining first by a search in the office, 
 or by the Registrar's certificate, that the seller's 
 or mortgagee's title has been duly registered. The 
 same is the case as to manumissions. Freed men 
 cannot claim their liberty under those instruments, 
 unless they are duly registered. How happens it, 
 then, that in acts made for preventing, by a like 
 simple and useful institution, the atrocious oppres- 
 sion of imposing a tortious slavery, the same sanc- 
 tions are almost universally refused? 
 
 The Assemblies are, in other cases, peculiarly 
 partial to the notoriety of recorded evidence for the 
 prevention of frauds. They have required not only 
 
101 
 
 the registration, in public offices, of judgments and 
 executions, and powers of attorney, and various 
 other private instruments; but in some islands have 
 obliged creditors to put on record the proofs of their 
 debts, and of the balances which they claim under 
 unsatisfied judgments ; and the sure expedient to 
 which they have always, except in the present case, 
 resorted, is (not to impose pecuniary penalties but) 
 to avoid, in case of his non-compliance with the law, 
 that right which the defaulter would otherwise possess. 
 Why have they, then, reversed these views in the 
 case of unregistered Slaves? 
 
 There is still another singularity in this unfor- 
 tunate defect, 
 
 Great clamours were raised against that provision 
 of the Register Bill which made non-registration 
 evidence of freedom. Anxiously guarded though 
 this provision was, to prevent any hardships that 
 might be sustained by innocent though improvident 
 owners, or persons out of possession ; and indispens- 
 ably necessary, though it obviously was to the moral 
 consistency of the plan, to set those persons at li- 
 berty who were presumed to be wrongfully enslaved ; 
 still this provision was strongly objected to on the 
 part of the colonies. It was represented to be of a 
 highly alarming tendency to the proprietors of Slaves, 
 and even incompatible with the interior safety of 
 our West-India islands. Now, the avoidance of 
 conveyances of unregistered Slaves, as between free 
 persons, was plainly not liable to the same mis- 
 
102 
 
 representation ; and could give rise to no plausible 
 pretence of political alarm ; and it was, in fact, much 
 less, if at all, complained of. We might naturally 
 have expected, therefore, that when this great 
 work was left to the Assemblies, the enfranchising 
 clauses, would have met a far more general rejection, 
 than those which avoided the deeds. But the very 
 reverse has been the event. The former have been 
 retained (though with various and strange altera- 
 tions) by most of the Assemblies ; the latter, by one 
 alone. 
 
 Your Committee must not presume to explain 
 these phenomena ; tut they may be allowed to remark, 
 that of these two executory provisions, the invalida- 
 tion of deeds is that by which defaulters would be 
 most endangered ; for the enforcing of it would re- 
 dound to the benefit of free persons, prompted by self- 
 interest to assert their rights, and able to maintain them 
 bylaw ; whereas the right to enfranchisement would 
 belong only to persons whose ignorance, and want of 
 property, and civil incapacities, make their legal 
 remedies, especially against a master, de facto, of 
 no easy attainment. Another difference, also, may 
 have been felt. It would have been difficult to find 
 a medium between the validity and invalidity of a 
 conveyance ; and as difficult to embarrass the esta- 
 blishment of a right that demands, for its evidence, 
 merely a comparison of names and descriptions in a 
 public office. But the right to be enfranchised, and 
 the means of establishing it, were much more tract- 
 
103 
 
 able subjects. They admitted of, and seemed even 
 to require, regulation ; and it was found easy so to 
 modify the right, and so to regulate the remedy, upon 
 plausible grounds, that the most determined enemy 
 of enfranchisement would have reason to be content* 
 
 Your Committee feel that the great and unavoid- 
 able length of this Report forbids the further en- 
 larging of it by long extracts from these laws ; other- 
 wise the clauses of the Jamaica Act that relate to 
 the enfranchisement of unregistered Slaves well il- 
 lustrate the last remark, and would deserve a literal 
 insertion. They are in substance as follows : 
 
 The owner or possessor of a Slave, omitting or 
 neglecting to return him, as required by the Act, for 
 registration, is subjected to a penalty of 100/. cur- 
 rency ; one half of which is given to the prosecutor. 
 This penalty is made recoverable by action of debt in 
 the supreme court of the island ; but the issue is to be 
 tried in the county where the cause of action arose. 
 Upon judgment recovered for the penalty, the At- 
 torney-General is to file an ex-ojficio information 
 against the Slave ; but the issue joined therein says, 
 the act shall be tried " as and for an importation of 
 " Slaves contrary to the Abolition laws." 
 
 It is next declared, that " the record of the judg- 
 " ment for the penalty shall be sufficient evidence to 
 " maintain the information ; but that it shall be 
 " lawful for the defendant to take defence,either in his 
 " own name, or in the name of the person he holds the 
 " Slave in possession for, and to plead not guilty: and 
 
104 
 
 " thereupon to prove that the Slave was not imported 
 " into this island contrary to the Abolition laws." 
 
 It is afterwards provided, that if such defence is 
 not taken at the first court, the information shall be 
 continued over to the next grand court; and then 
 any person claiming any estate or interest in the 
 Slave, in reversion or expectancy, or any mortgagee 
 or judgment creditor of the defaulter, may take 
 defence and plead and prove as aforesaid. 
 
 If, upon the trial of this information, a verdict is 
 found and judgment given for the defendant, the 
 Slave is " to be held and enjoyed as before. 1 ' But 
 if judgment be given for the Crown, by verdict, or 
 default, the Slave " shall be treated and disposed of 
 " as if he had been imported contrary to the Abolition 
 " laws." And for that purpose, " the Judges " shall 
 make order for the production and delivery over of the 
 Slave, 8$c.* 
 
 For what good purpose, or upon what consistent 
 principle, all these tedious and costly proceed ings are 
 to be had, before a man held in slavery, without that 
 which the law has made the proper and necessary 
 evidence of his servile condition, can be delivered 
 from the law-breaker's yoke, or even protected from 
 final and remediless oppression, it is hard to con- 
 
 ceive. 
 
 If non-registration was not, as in Trinidad, to give 
 a title to freedom, it would seem, at least, that the 
 first conviction ought to have been decisive. 
 * Papers, No. III. pp. 13, 14. 
 
105 
 
 The act had previously provided, with at least a suf- 
 ficient latitude of indulgence, for repairing uninten- 
 tional defaults of the owner or possessor*. Yet his 
 unrepaired, and unexcused default of registration, is 
 not thought even a sufficient primd facie ground of any 
 proceeding for the release of the unregistered Slave. 
 There must next be a voluntary private informer and 
 prosecutor, if any such man can be found, to carry 
 on a suit in the supreme court, and try an issue in 
 the master's neighbourhood, for the chance of receiv- 
 ing 5Ql. currency. Even then, if the defendant has 
 not sinned wilfully, or, to use the words of the Act, 
 " if the omission in the return, or want of his re- 
 " turn, can be made to appear, to the Governor's 
 * satisfaction, to have arisen from accident or some 
 " unavoidable impediment, or from other cause 
 " which may appear to him as a satisfactory ground" 
 the action may be stopped on payment of costs ; and 
 the return supplied, or amended f- But if the de- 
 fendant has no such excuse to allege ; if he proceeds 
 to trial, and has a verdict and judgment against him ; 
 what is the consequence ? That the Negro is enfran- 
 chised ? By no means, That he is taken out of the 
 defendant's custody? Far from it. The law-break- 
 ing default, the failure of any excuse for it after 
 repeated opportunities given, the verdict, and the 
 judgment, all go for nothing; or only serve to raise 
 
 * See the proviso in p. 11, and the clause in pp. 14 and 15, 
 of same papers. 
 
 f See clauses in pp. 14, 15, same papers. 
 
 P 
 
106 
 
 that primd fade evidence in the subsequent suit 
 next required to be instituted, which, according to 
 the law of Trinidad, and the plain reason and justice 
 of the case, ought to have been raised by the want 
 of registration alone. 
 
 The Negro is even still to remain in the convict- 
 ed defaulter's custody (if he is unwise enough not to 
 send him out of the jurisdiction) until a new and 
 tedious further litigation is brought to a final close. 
 
 For what reason an issue even in the first suit is to 
 be sent, from the supreme court, to be tried in the 
 master's county, cannot be discovered; unless it be to 
 give the defendant a chance, that his neighbours and 
 brother slave-holders will allow of a defence which 
 was too weak to be submitted to the Governor, and 
 so absolve him from the necessity of any registration 
 at all; for the registration or non-registration, the 
 return or default of return, let it be observed, is not 
 such matter of fact as can require an investigation 
 by a jury of the vicinage ; but is matter of record in 
 a public office, proper to be tried only by inspection 
 of the record itself. 
 
 As to the intention, or quo ammo of the default, this 
 is either meant to be part of the first issue, or it is 
 not. In the latter case, what has the jury to try? In 
 the former, a verdict and judgment for the prosecutor 
 establishes not only the defendant's default, but his 
 guilt: yet still it is to be of no avail to the injured 
 and unfortunate captive ! ! ! 
 
 The Attorney -General is next to take up the case 
 
107 
 
 on the part of the Crown. He, by the way, or some 
 other public officer, certainly ought to have been 
 directed to do this in the first instance; since the un- 
 registered Negro was not enabled to sue for himself. 
 But the Attorney-General is to wait, it seems, until 
 a conviction has been first obtained by a voluntary 
 prosecutor; and in what manner is he then directed 
 to proceed ? The device is certainly novel and in- 
 genious. He is to file an information, ex officio, " as 
 " for an importation of African Slaves contrary to 
 " the Abolition laws" 
 
 But against whom, or what ? 
 
 There are in law informations and prosecutions, 
 either in personam or in rem ; against the offenders 
 personally to recover penalties ; or against the goods, 
 to obtain their confiscation; but we have here a de- 
 vice of which the effect seems to be, that it shall 
 neither be regularly, nor usefully, nor intelligibly, 
 against the one nor the other. The convicted de- 
 fendant in the former action " may take defence" it 
 is said, " in his own name, or that of the owner he 
 " acted for ;" and so may any " other person claim- 
 " ing an interest." No particular party, therefore, is 
 prosecuted, as a defendant and delinquent, by the 
 information itself. 
 
 The words are, " against the Slave or Slaves omit- 
 " ted to be registered" It would rather appear, there- 
 fore, to be a proceeding in rem; Slaves being 
 regarded as property. But in every such process, 
 the res itself is first brought by seizure into the cus- 
 
108 
 
 tody of the court ; or at least of the party prosecut- 
 ing, and bringing it before the court for judgment^ 
 and the owner becomes a party, not as " taking de- 
 fence" but as a claimant demanding restitution, 
 and, as such, bound to prove his property, as well as 
 to traverse the criminal charge. 
 
 Such is the effect of the prescribed course under 
 the Acts of Parliament, for abolishing the Slave 
 Trade. 
 
 Why are these new terms, and troublesome and 
 anomalous methods, thus laboriously and obscurely 
 devised ? The only apparent answer is, because the 
 Legislature meant to give the defendant the chance 
 of a second trial ; but did not mean, either that he 
 should be prosecuted for the pains and penalties of 
 the Abolition Acts or that the Negro should be 
 delivered by seizure out of his hands, pending even 
 this second suit or that he should be obliged to 
 prove his property as a claimant. 
 
 It might naturally, however, be supposed that the 
 asserted master would be obliged, in this last in- 
 stance at least, to shew that the party detained by 
 him as a Slave was really such ; but even this is 
 thought, by the Assembly of Jamaica, too great a 
 burthen to be imposed on the twice-convicted de- 
 faulter. He is only required to prove that the al- 
 leged Slave " was not imported into that island con- 
 " trary to the Abolition laws" If he proves this, 
 there is an end of all proceedings ; and the unfor- 
 tunate subject of the successive suits may remain 
 
109 
 
 in bondage for ever, after all that the benevolent 
 private prosecutor, and the official prosecutor too, 
 have successively done for his relief. He may have 
 been born free within the island, or, being free by 
 law before he became an inhabitant of Jamaica, may 
 have come there of his own accord ; or he may be 
 an African, originally smuggled into some other Bri- 
 tish colony, but afterwards brought to Jamaica with 
 proper clearances ; and therefore, in either of these 
 " cases, not imported into that island contrary to the 
 " Abolition taws." In these, and other supposable 
 and very probable cases, the issue on the information 
 may be sufficiently maintained on the part of the 
 defendant, and a verdict of not guilty properly given 
 under this most singular Act; and the oppressed 
 party may consequently remain in perpetual and re- 
 mediless bondage, notwithstanding the thrice-record- 
 ed violation of that law which was framed for his 
 protection and relief! 
 
 If, on the other hand, the defendant should fail in 
 such proof or if even the public prosecutor should 
 prove affirmatively, and to the satisfaction of a West- 
 Indian jury, that the injured party was imported 
 contrary to the Abolition laws by the defendant him- 
 self the Act still goes no further than to provide, 
 that the judge " may make order for his production 
 " and delivery, to be treated according to the regu- 
 lations of the Abolition Acts:" that is, to be 
 bound as an apprentice by public authority, as 
 if he had been a newly arrived, helpless African, 
 
110 
 
 delivered from the hold of a slave ship, and unable, 
 without previous instruction, to provide for his own 
 subsistence. Such is to be the fruit to him of these 
 complicated and tedious proceedings ; while his op- 
 pressor, though proved to be a felon, is to incur, so 
 far as this Act goes, no further inconvenience. 
 
 After such a statement and exposition of the Act 
 of our principal colony, your Committee may well 
 abstain from any, but a very summary, view of the 
 Acts of other islands, that provide in any degree for 
 the same important object. 
 
 The Act of BAH BADGES delares, that " every 
 Slave wilfully neglected to be returned for registra- 
 tion shall be entitled to freedom, if an African, 
 unless the defaulter shall, within six months after the 
 discovery of the omission, establish by sufficient evi- 
 dence before the Governor and Council that such 
 African Slave had been legally imported*." 
 
 Most of the observations that have been made on 
 the Jamaica Act obviously apply to this. The re- 
 lief is expressly limited to Slaves from Africa; and 
 a legal importation into Barbadoes, though after an 
 illicit importation into some other British island, ex- 
 cludes even an African from relief, however clear 
 the right to freedom may be. This too, against a 
 " wilful defaulter," who has six months given to him, 
 not after his " wilful violation " of the Act only, 
 but " six months after the detection of it" to set 
 up this very equivocal defence. The Act differs 
 * Papers, No. III. p. C. 
 
Ill 
 
 from that of Jamaica, chiefly in omitting to prescribe 
 difficult newly invented remedies ; but without sub- 
 stituting any express remedy at all. 
 
 The Act of DEMARARY agrees exactly and ver- 
 batim in these provisions with that of Barbadoes*. 
 
 So does the Act of BERBICE f. 
 
 The Act of MONTSERRAT provides, that Slaves 
 not duly registered " may be prosecuted " (not 
 seized), " and condemned to the use of his Majesty ," 
 unless the person claiming " title thereto shall 
 " establish, by positive or strong presumptive proof, 
 " that they were not imported into that island con- 
 " trary to the laws in force for abolishing the 
 " Slave Trade;);." 
 
 The Act of ST. CHRISTOPHER'S, also, declares 
 unregistered Slaves forfeited to the Crown; and is 
 equally silent as to their enfranchisement. It di- 
 rects a proceeding by ex-officio information, which 
 the master is " to appear and answer to, in the 
 " manner, as is practised in civil actions within this 
 " island" What this means, and what defence shall 
 be allowed, is not expressed ; nor is it easy to disco- 
 ver ; for the information is to be for the non-regis- 
 tration of the Slaves, and the Registrar's certificate 
 of non- registration is directed to precede the prose- 
 cution : and yet some issue, to be the subject of a 
 trial by jury, is supposed to follow ; for it is after 
 
 * Papers, No. IV. p. 27. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 21; and No. V. p. 8. 
 
 \ Papers, No. V. p. 70. 
 
112 
 
 verdict, &c. that the Slaves are to be condemned to 
 his Majesty's use*. 
 
 The Legislature of Tobago even has not, in this re- 
 spect, better provided for the due execution of its 
 Act, and for the defence of violated freedom. After 
 the master has been convicted and fined for a "frau- 
 dulent and wilful omission" in his return, he has a 
 term of twelve months allowed to him, for proving 
 before the Governor and Council, that the asserted 
 Slave " was not illegally imported, but came bona 
 " Jide into his possession ;" and it is only on his de- 
 fault of doing so, that the unregistered Negro or 
 Mulatto is to be (not set at liberty but) dealt with 
 as a Slave, imported contrary to the Abolition lawsf . 
 
 The other Colonial Acts before your Committee 
 are wholly silent as to this most essential and inte- 
 resting point. They contain the most ample and 
 indulgent provisions for enabling the owners or par- 
 ties to retrieve defaults of registration, as if their pro- 
 perty were meant to be at stake ; and yet the default, 
 however wilful, persevering, and contumacious, is to 
 raise no presumption of unlawful slavery; or at 
 least is not made the ground of any proceeding for 
 the deliverance of those who are thus unlawfully 
 treated as Slaves. 
 
 It remains to state, in what degree the Assemblies 
 have adopted the third expedient that has been no- 
 ticed for insuring the due execution of the laws 
 that of making due registration a necessary part of 
 
 * Papers, No. V. p. i)6. t Papers, No. III. p. 48. 
 
113 
 
 the evidence to be produced by the owner, in all 
 forensic proceedings for the recovery of Slaves, either 
 against parties of free condition in possession of 
 them, or against asserted Slaves themselves, on the 
 question of Slave or free. 
 
 The provision of the Trinidad Order in Council is^ 
 " That whenever, in any action, suit, or prosecution, 
 " or other judicial proceeding, it shall be necessary 
 " for the master or claimant of any Slave or Slaves, 
 " or of any Negro, Mulatto, or other person or 
 " persons asserted to be a Slave or Slaves, to 
 " prove his property therein, such master, owner, 
 " or claimant, shall in the first place be bound to 
 " shew that such Slave or Slaves hath or have been 
 " duly registered as such/' &c. 
 
 It is not easy to conceive what specious reason 
 can be assigned for the rejection of a rule like this. 
 It rests on the same judicial policy with the provi- 
 sions of many British statutes, which, in this respect 
 at least, are not subjects of complaint. It is rea- 
 sonable that a party applying to the law for a re- 
 medy, should entitle himself to it by a previous 
 obedience to the law ; and if the fear of losing that 
 remedy, in case of need, may insure his obedience, 
 no gentler or less objectionable sanction can possibly 
 be desired. 
 
 It cannot, therefore, fail to excite strong observa- 
 tion, that the Assemblies have unanimously rejected 
 this very useful and inoffensive part of the precedent 
 before them. In ho colony is registration made ne- 
 
 Q 
 
114 
 
 cessary evidence in its courts of law, to maintain an 
 action for Slaves. In two islands, only, it is re- 
 quired on the issue of Slave or free; and even there 
 in a most inadequate manner. 
 
 By the NEVIS Act, it is provided, that in actions, 
 or suits to be brought, for " establishing the right of 
 freedom in any Negro, or Coloured person, claimed 
 as a Slave," the Registrar's certificate, or books, shall 
 be produced, " or their non-production accounted 
 for to the satisfaction of the Court ;" otherwise the 
 party " shall thenceforth be reputed free*." 
 
 The Act of TORTOLA, or the VIRGIN ISLANDS, 
 has a clause in the same wordsf. 
 
 The rule of evidence in both, therefore, is con- 
 fined, not merely to the direct question of Slave or 
 free, but has place in such cases only in which an 
 action or suit is brought to establish the right of free- 
 dom. When, therefore, a free Negro brings an action, 
 or prefers an indictment, for a personal wrong, and 
 slavery is pleaded, non-registration will not avail him ; 
 or, if the party, holding him in wrongful slavery, should 
 prosecute him for desertion, or for any of the other nu- 
 merous offences, for which a Slave is liable to corporal 
 punishment by order of the magistrate, he might make 
 the law itself minister to his oppressive purposes, al- 
 though the prisoner had never been registered . Even in 
 the single case in which the rule of evidence applies, 
 if the default be " accounted for " in any way that 
 a colonial court may think fit to deem satisfactory, 
 
 * Papers, No. IV. p, 86. f Sam? papers, p. 106. 
 
115 
 
 there will be aa end to this slender protection. It 
 can hardly be said, therefore, that the law of Nevis 
 and Tortola is materially better in this respect than 
 that of the other colonies, in which the rule has 
 been rejected altogether. 
 
 Two of the colonial legislatures, however, have 
 distinguished themselves on the other side, in a way 
 to which your Committee must beg leave to call your 
 particular attention. 
 
 It would hardly be credited, perhaps, on less deci- 
 sive evidence than the official copies of their acts, that 
 they have not only rejected this useful and equitable 
 provision, but have actually thought fit to invert 
 its rule; and instead of making non-registration 
 evidence of freedom, have made registration legal 
 evidence of slavery! I ! 
 
 Such nevertheless is the fact. 
 
 In the Act of BARBADOES is this extraordinary 
 clause : 
 
 " Be it further enacted, that upon all questions 
 " respecting the freedom or slavery of any indivi- 
 " dual, arising in any court, or before any magistrate, 
 " in this colony, a duly certified copy of the registra- 
 " tion of such individual in the books of the said 
 " Registrar shall be received as sufficient prima facie 
 " evidence of the slavery of such individual *." 
 
 The Act of DOMINICA has a clause precisely in 
 the same words f. 
 
 In this latter case, the great danger and injustice 
 of enabling a man, by his own return, to make evi- 
 
 * Papers, No. III. p. 7. t Papers, No. IV. p. 34. 
 
116 
 
 dence, n his own favour, against the dearest rights 
 of his opponent, were not overlooked. The Le- 
 gislature of Dominica has even manifested, that 
 it felt at the moment the force of those objec- 
 tions, when property was in question ; for, improv- 
 ing on the work of its neighbours in Barbadoes, 
 it annexed to the clause the following proviso: 
 <c Provided always, that where any dispute shall 
 cc arise respecting the right or title of any person or 
 "persons to any Slave or Slaves, such registration 
 " shall not be deemed evidence of the property of such 
 " person or persons as shall be set forth in the said 
 " books of Registry as the reputed owner of suck 
 " Slave or Slaves*." That is, the Registry is to be 
 wholly inadmissible in evidence between free persons 
 contesting the right of property in an admitted 
 Slave; but sufficient evidence to consign to perpetual 
 hereditary slavery a person claiming to be free ! 
 
 It was felt, that the party setting up the title could 
 easily create, by his own fraudulent act, such evi- 
 dence to sustain it; a good reason certainly for re- 
 jecting such evidence; but palpably much stronger in 
 the question of freedom, than in that of property. Be- 
 tween two free persons contesting the right of property, 
 some presumption might reasonably arise in favour of 
 the registered against the unregistered title ; at least if 
 there had been long acquiescence in the possessor's 
 return of ownership; whereas the free Negro, or 
 Mulatto, cannot possibly, by any means in his power, 
 prevent an act that may be fatal to his liberty, nor 
 
 * Papers, No. IV. p. 34. 
 
117 
 
 even know whether, among the numerous returns in 
 the colony, some man may have thought proper to 
 insert a name and personal description, correspond- 
 ing with his own, in some return of Slaves. Yet 
 against him, and him only, such a return, without 
 acquiescence, and without notice, is made good evi- 
 dence ; and may deprive him of his liberty for life ! 
 The opposite rule of the same act, as between 
 free persons, though not necessary to shew, does 
 most glaringly shew, the enormity of this injustice ; 
 for if registration amounts in reason to B.primd facie 
 presumption of slavery, then non-registration must 
 raise at least as reasonable a presumption of free- 
 dom. It is indeed more likely that a man will re- 
 cord a right of property which he does not, than 
 omit to record one which he does possess. If, 
 therefore, the master's claim is to be sustained by 
 his own act, it ought still more to be impeached by 
 his own law-breaking default. 
 
 These clauses are not more repugnant to reason and 
 consistency, than diametrically opposite to the whole 
 spirit of the Slave Registry laws. Instead of giving 
 new security to freedom, they expose it to new and 
 unprecedented dangers. Instead of preventing, they 
 tend to facilitate and protect, a contraband Slave 
 Trade. In seizures and prosecutions, under 
 the Abolition Acts, the onus probandi rests on 
 the claimant; and in cases of clandestine importa- 
 tion, it might sometimes be impossible for him, with- 
 out the aid of glaring perjury, to make out a colour* 
 
118 
 
 able case, or safely to adduce any evidence at alL 
 But in Barbadoes and Dominica, this will no longer 
 be difficult. The importer of Slaves has only to 
 include them in his next periodical return ; and he 
 will then have in the Registrar's certificate sufficient 
 frimd facie evidence of their slavery in law. In 
 a variety of other cases also, frauds against the 
 Abolition laws, as well as the wrongful imposition of 
 slavery within the islands, will be shielded from ju- 
 dicial detection by the same oppressive rule: in 
 cases, for instance, of smuggled and unregistered 
 Negroes, brought to Dominica or Barbadoes, from, 
 another British colony, to avoid their being enfran- 
 chised there by law; an expedient, which it has been 
 shewn, that the lax provisions of the Colonial Register 
 Acts leave open to the master, even up to the last 
 stage of any legal proceedings that may be instituted 
 against him. It has been observed, that the not re- 
 straining and avoiding of conveyances of unregistered 
 Slaves renders it easy to elude, by a legal transfer of 
 property, most of the feeble sanctions that these laws 
 provide. Still, if the new master to whom the 
 victim may be transferred, or the first oppressor him- 
 self, were liable to be called upon in every British 
 colony to which the Negro might be sent, to shew 
 the origin of his title, some chance of discovery and 
 deliverance might remain. But registration in Bar- 
 badoes, or Dominica, will cut off this slight risk of 
 the oppressor, and this last hope of the oppressed. 
 The Registrar's certificate will draw a veil over all 
 
119 
 
 the past, unless the poor helpless subject of it could 
 himself sustain the burthen of proof as to his own 
 genealogy, or as to the acts or defaults of a former 
 owner, arising perhaps in a distant colony, or at 
 least in a different island and jurisdiction. 
 
 Your Committee needed not perhaps to have no- 
 ticed so fully these gross and singular perversions of 
 the institution which you have laboured to promote. 
 They must shock the equitable feelings of every 
 man, -who for a moment considers their nature and 
 effects. But they are worthy of a particular atten- 
 tion, because they mark most clearly the spirit of 
 colonial legislation on these important subjects. 
 
 But let us not, the Committee, be supposed to regard 
 these aggravations of the general case, in two particu- 
 lar colonies, as forming any considerable part of the 
 objections to these impotent laws. The omission of 
 the rule of evidence alone would, without its inversion, 
 be sufficient, at least when added to the other defects 
 that have been noticed, utterly to frustrate your hopes, 
 and to render a Slave Registry useless. If a pos- 
 sessory title to Slaves is to be good without their regis- 
 tration good, not only for the purpose of holding 
 them in slavery, as between themselves and their 
 master, but for that of conveying them by mortgage 
 and sale to third persons, and also good in point of 
 evidence, when the servile condition or right of pro- 
 perty is controverted in courts of law the first prin- 
 ciples of the plan are subverted. It is of little 
 moment, therefore, that these positive deteriorations 
 of the slave codes, which the system of registration 
 
120 
 
 was meanf to improve, are contemptuously grafted 
 upon it ; for they will cease with the general institution 
 itself, which must be soon swept away as a useless 
 incumbrance. 
 
 Your Committee might point out other defects, and 
 other very objectionable clauses indifferent Acts; but 
 they think it right to stop here. 
 
 The three classes of provisions, into which the 
 subject was originally divided, have been fairly, and 
 with sufficient fulness reviewed ; and in each of them 
 defects have been shewn, which clearly establish the 
 utter insufficiency of the laws as substitutes for the 
 Register Bill. Neither in the organization of the 
 Registries themselves, nor in the form or substance 
 of the returns to be made, nor in the other positive 
 duties directed to be performed by individuals and 
 public officers, nor in the sanctions by which obedi- 
 ence to these laws is to be promoted or enforced, 
 are they at all adequate to the ends proposed. 
 It may clearly be foreseen, that they will not 
 even supply that grand and unfortunate defect in 
 our colonial policy, so long strangely suffered to exist, 
 the want of an accurate periodical census of the 
 Slave population. Much less can laws like these 
 effectually exclude a clandestine Slave Trade, pre- 
 vent the imposition of illegal slavery, and pro- 
 duce that salutary despair of any future foreign 
 supply which would most effectually promote 
 the humane treatment of the plantation Slaves, 
 and their consequent preservation and increase. 
 
121 
 
 The Acts, in short, will not be executed; and their 
 execution, as they stand, would be useless. 
 
 It is reported, that the Assemblies have already 
 found their own work so inconvenient and objec- 
 tionable, as to have thought it expedient to pass, in 
 several colonies, explanatory and emendatory Acts. 
 As these are not before them, your Committee cannot 
 state in what degree, or whether in any degree, they 
 may have tended to remove any of the objections that 
 have been stated. Many of these, indeed, are plainly 
 incapable of being removed , without cancelling all that 
 has been done under the former Acts, and resorting 
 again to a new original Registration. Such are most 
 of the objections that are to be found under the first 
 and second general heads; more especially those 
 which respect the inadequate descriptions and speci- 
 fications in the original returns. 
 
 Your Committee, however, find no reason to an- 
 ticipate that such emendations as are practicable in 
 their nature will be found to have been effectually 
 made. The same views which led to the rejection 
 of almost every thing most useful and efficacious, in 
 the precedent of Trinidad, and in the Register Bill 
 brought in by Mr. Wilberforce, remain, it may be 
 presumed, unchanged. It is, therefore, a probable 
 -conjecture, and is supported by the same rumours 
 which state the passing of new Register Acts, that, 
 instead of retrieving fundamental defects, they 
 relate chiefly to points of minor importance, 
 and tend rather to encumber than strengthen the 
 
 it 
 
122 
 
 flimsy and baseless edifices to which they a*e 
 attached. 
 
 And here your Committee would remark, that the 
 great number and diversity of these laws, if they are 
 to continue in action, will in itself be no trivial evil ; 
 and an evil which will be greatly multiplied, if each 
 of the colonial legislatures is from time to time to 
 pass new laws, altering and new-modelling the prin- 
 ciples, and elemental forms of its Registry, and the 
 rights and remedies connected with them, according 
 to its own particular views. 
 
 The Registration of Slaves should be regarded as 
 an entire and general system of legal and moral po- 
 licy ; the action of which is to be felt, not merely in 
 each particular island, but in all the British colonies, 
 and in the mother country itself. 
 
 Here, indeed, it cannot affect the rights of persons; 
 for in England, happily, neither registered nor unre- 
 gistered slavery can exist ; but even here, the system, 
 unless its first principles are to be discarded, will 
 have very important effects on rights of property, as 
 long as British merchants, or persons resident in 
 England, are permitted to buy estates in the sugar 
 colonies, or to lend money on the security of such 
 estates. 
 
 In those colonies, collectively considered, the 
 effects will be far more momentous ; because these 
 widely varying laws must, in many cases, decide the 
 important question, whether individuals are intitled 
 to all the privileges of British liberty, or are liable 
 
123 
 
 in law, to an extreme, perpetual, and hereditary bond- 
 age. Now it is plainly and highly desirable, that a 
 system of such extensive and important operation, 
 should, both in its principles, and in its practical 
 rules, be simple, uniform, and permanent. If, on 
 the contrary, its complexity, and its diversities in 
 different colonies, should be very great, and if it 
 should be the subject of frequent changes, even in 
 the same colony, the inconveniences must be serious ; 
 and so will probably be the dangers, both to per- 
 sonal and proprietory rights. It will be difficult in 
 England to discover whether Slaves in a given island, 
 the proposed subjects of sale or mortgage, have 
 been duly registered according to the last and still 
 existing laws of that island, or not. Their names may 
 appear in the general Registry here; but a lawyer 
 must be found, acquainted with all the varieties of 
 the system, to advise the West-India merchant, 
 whether the registration is regular or good in law, 
 under the peculiar and subsisting Register Acts of 
 that colony. In the West Indies, the question will 
 be more difficult, and in many cases more moment- 
 ous. There is no interchange of legal information 
 between one island and another. There is nc com- 
 mon tribunal of appeal in that part of the world, 
 which might make the Acts of all the colonies 
 matter of occasional cognizance at the seat of that 
 common jurisdiction. There is no commercial in- 
 tercourse, to convey through the chain of the An- 
 tilles some practical mutual acquaintance with their 
 
124 
 
 respective institutions. How difficult, then, will it be 
 to ascertain, in Jamaica, 'what is the existing state 
 of the Register law in Dominica, Antigua, or Gre- 
 nada; or, vice versa, to know in those windward 
 islands, what the Legislature of Jamaica may have 
 last enacted on this important subject ! 
 
 If this Report indeed should be printed and pub- 
 lished, it may convey to the different colonies some 
 general acquaintance with the now existing Register 
 Acts of each other; but it may be safely affirmed, 
 that the information will be in a great measure new 
 to them ; and, stopping at the dates of the parlia- 
 mentary documents, will leave them ignorant of the 
 alterations subsequently made ; yet let it be remem- 
 bered, that Slaves, or persons held in slavery, may 
 be lawfully sent from one British island to another. 
 No security will therefore be found by any Negro or 
 Mulatto free, through the provisions of the Register 
 Act in the island he inhabits, unless those provi- 
 sions are known in every other island to which he 
 may go, or be sent. The system, in short, cannot pos- 
 sibly work well, or maintain its credit on either side 
 of the (1 Atlantic, unless the influence of Parliament 
 or/ 'What would be far easier, the authority of 
 Parliament shall deliver it from this varying, and 
 complex, and shifting texture. It will fall under 
 the enormous weight of its own multiform and dis- 
 jointed members. 
 
 Your Committee cannot forbear noticing another 
 injurious consequence of this vast diversity and mul- 
 
125 
 
 tiplication of laws. The British Government and 
 Parliament, nay, even those members of both who 
 have taken the most zealous part in promoting colo- 
 nial reformation, will become weary of those endless 
 details which the system so diversified must involve ; 
 or will not be able to find time to investigate and 
 comprehend them, so as to direct aright the influ- 
 ence of the mother country towards the correction 
 of every thing that may be fatally wrong in every 
 particular place. Yet it is a truth which your Com- 
 mittee hope will never be lost sight of in the consi- 
 deration of this Report, that defect in any one island 
 is defect and possible frustration in all. So long as 
 Slaves can be conveyed lawfully from one British 
 island to another, the benefit of the whole system 
 may be lost, by leaving any one of the insular Re- 
 gistries in that ill constituted state in which they all 
 at present stand. 
 
 A general consequence to which all these obser- 
 vations tend is sufficiently obvious. The course 
 unfortunately taken, of leaving this great and neces- 
 sary work to the colonial legislatures, is an experi- 
 ment that has failed ; and is not, by being repeated, 
 at all likely to succeed. Uniformity, as well as 
 efficiency is wanted ; and neither can be rationally 
 expected from thirteen different bodies, who have no 
 communication with each other, much less any de- 
 ference for each other, and who all come with un- 
 concealed reluctance to the task. 
 
 Into the motives of their dislike to an efficient Re- 
 gistry, your Committee will not directly inquire; but 
 
126 
 
 it may be allowable to remark, that neither the 
 avowed objection to parliamentary interference, nor 
 the offence alleged to have been given by your for- 
 mer Report, can account for such acts as are here 
 reviewed. The expedient of adopting your plan in 
 name, and partly in form, but stripping it of all 
 its practical efficacy, could neither be suggested by 
 a punctilious constitutional jealousy, nor by the 
 indignant feelings of conscious innocence. It was 
 too much for the one, and far too little for the 
 other. 
 
 But whatever the motives may have been, the con- 
 duct of the Assemblies has at least well justified 
 those predictions in your former Report on this sub- 
 ject of which they so strongly complained. You 
 said, " The work, if left to them, certainly will not be 
 " done." You added, "Should the fear of the mother 
 " country taking the work into her hands* now pro- 
 " duce a less openly contumacious spirit than before, 
 " the fruit would be no better than ostensible and im- 
 " potentials. Registries would be established per haps; 
 " but on such a defective plan, and with such inade- 
 " quate legal sanctions, that the desired effect would 
 " be lost, and the system itself would be brought into 
 " discredit ; nay, would be made, perhaps, a cover 
 " for those very frauds which it was designed to 
 " prevent*." 
 
 Let the impartial nay, let those whose prepos- 
 sessions in this controversy were most strongly on 
 
 * Report of the African Institution, on the Registration of 
 Slaves, .published in 1815, p. 107. 
 
127 
 
 the side of the colonies, fairly compare this antici- 
 pation with the event, as exhibited in the present 
 Report ; and then ask themselves whether your ap- 
 plication to Parliament was needless ; whether the 
 clamours to which it gave rise were just; and to 
 whose charge some mischievous effects of those cla- 
 mours may fairly be laid. 
 
 One only of the predictions, here quoted, yet re- 
 mains to be verified : " The system itself" is " not 
 <c yet brought into discredit." 
 
 To prevent this ultimate and fatal consequence, 
 your Committee would earnestly recommend that 
 this Review of the colonial Register Acts may with- 
 out delay be submitted to the British public. Your 
 silence might be construed into an acquiescence in 
 those mutilations and perversions of your plan, 
 which must certainly frustrate all its objects, and 
 produce in its operation nothing but inconvenience 
 and mischief. 
 
 Your Committee does not hesitate to add, as its 
 clear opinion, that unless effectual measures shall 
 now be taken by Parliament, to establish a Slave 
 Registration throughout the British West-Indies, on 
 a uniform plan, and with the only adequate execu- 
 tory provisions, the plan had better be altogether 
 abandoned. 
 
 To this alternative, however, the promoters of 
 the measure can hardly be driven. The credit of 
 the Government and of Parliament, and even the 
 honour and moral character of the Nation itself, in 
 
128 
 
 the eyes of foreign powers, are pledged to the 
 establishment of this system in a really efficacious 
 way ; as the best means of giving certain effect and 
 perpetuity, within our colonies, to the Abolition of 
 the Slave Trade. 
 
 The mutual declarations of the French and British 
 governments, on this subject, at the Congress of 
 AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, are of such high importance, 
 that your Committee think it right here to recal them 
 to your recollection. 
 
 The former government declared its willingness 
 to introduce into its own colonies the regulations of 
 our Register Bill, as the best means of effectually 
 excluding a contraband importation of Slaves. It 
 offered, also, to agree that this measure, though one 
 of interior administration, should be a matter of mu- 
 tual concert among all the colonial powers*. 
 
 The reply of the British Plenipotentiaries accept- 
 ed this concession, as one of those " beneficent ar- 
 " rangements which may be expected to operate 
 " powerfully in suppressing the contraband Slave 
 " Trade, as far as that mischief has decidedly a 
 " French character." " They view," says their 
 last note, " with the highest satisfaction, the deter- 
 " mination now announced, of introducing into all 
 1 the French colonies a Registry of Slaves f ." 
 State papers like these, would become monuments 
 
 * Papers relating to the Slave Trade, presented to Parlia- 
 ment in February 1819, p. 85. 
 t Same Papers, p. 92. 
 
129 
 
 of everlasting disgrace, instead of the purest glory to 
 our country, if we should ourselves recede from the 
 measure which France, through our example and per- 
 suasion, stands pledged to adopt. 
 
 If recent advices from North America may be 
 credited, the evil and the disgrace in that country also 
 would be great; for the Congress of the United 
 States is said to have adopted, or to be about to 
 adopt, by recommendation to the several States in 
 the Union, the British system of excluding Slave 
 Trade, and unlawful slavery, by means of a general 
 Registration. 
 
 Nor would it be any palliation of our reproach to 
 allege, that we had left this great and essential work 
 to the Colonial Assemblies, who had frustrated it by 
 departures from the original plan, in their weak ino- 
 perative laws ; for in leaving it to them, we left it 
 to its avowed and violent enemies. We had not to 
 learn from experience, in this instance, the expedient 
 to which the Assemblies would resort. During nearly 
 thirty years, they had been in the habit of averting 
 the interposition of Parliament, in regard to th& 
 Slave Trade and slavery, by the very same means; 
 amusing the mother country with plausible reforma- 
 tory laws, the inefficiency and open neglect of which 
 had become notorious, and were established without 
 contradiction on the records of Parliament itself. 
 
 Should France now charge us with flagrant incon- 
 sistency and subterfuge, in waiting four years for the 
 
130 
 
 result of so hopeless an experiment, it is not easy to 
 say what satisfactory answer could be given. The 
 dangers of delay ; the confusion inevitably to arise 
 from a multitude of various laws in different colonies, 
 on a practical system common to them all, and in 
 which all must concur, in order to execute it with 
 success ; the absolute necessity of making the system 
 efficient in every British island, in order to prevent 
 its easy evasion in the rest ; the necessary connec- 
 tion with an establishment in England which Parlia- 
 ment alone could form ; these, and a variety of other 
 considerations, stated in your Report of 1815, might 
 be fairly adduced to prove that the course which has 
 been taken was obviously unwise, if not absolutely 
 hopeless from the outset. 
 
 The difficulties, on the other hand, of Parliament- 
 ary interposition, were such only as we disregard in 
 every other case ; in every case at least, in which 
 the fiscal, or commercial rights of the mother 
 country, or the interests of her navigation, are 
 concerned. 
 
 But should these difficulties be indulgently regard- 
 ed as an apology for the past, they clearly can furnish 
 none for the future. The particular experiment 
 itself has now been tried. It rests no longer upon 
 rational inference, or analagous facts : but on direct 
 
 ' O ' 
 
 specific experience, that colonial legislation on this sub- 
 ject is useless. The Register Bill referred to in the 
 conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Register Law en- 
 
131 
 
 forced by the British Government at Trinidad, has been 
 so mutilated and nullified in every British colony, that 
 the Acts cannot, with gravity or decency, be held forth 
 to France as the efficient adoption, on our part, of 
 the system in which we invited her concurrence. If 
 she should offer to redeem her public pledge by esta- 
 blishing a Slave Registry, not on the model of Trini- 
 dad, but on that of Jamaica, we could neither reject 
 the offer with decorum, nor accept it, without be- 
 traying the cause of Africa ; a cause which we have 
 advocated before assembled Europe. We must re- 
 nounce, therefore, the important ground we gained 
 at Aix-la-Chapeile, and our national credit along 
 with it; or we must now at length vindicate our 
 consistency and our honour, by establishing ef- 
 fectually, throughout the British West-Indies, an 
 institution of which we ourselves have given the true 
 model, and which we have justly represented to be 
 one of the best means of suppressing a contraband 
 Slave Trade. 
 
 Your Committee, however, can entertain no fear 
 of the moral apostacy and disgrace which would at- 
 tend the former alternative. The Parliament of this 
 country, as well as its Government, is pledged to 
 make this great measure effectual ; and still more 
 decisive encouragement may be found in what both 
 have actually and very recently done. 
 
 Here your Committee have arrived at the most pleas- 
 ingpart of their labours; and they heartily congratulate 
 
132 
 
 the Institution on the Act of the last Se/ssioa, brought 
 into Parliament by the Under-secret? A ry of State for 
 the colonial department, and passed in both Houses 
 with perfect unanimity, for establishing a general 
 Registry of Colonial Slaves in England*. 
 
 " A more effectual mean, perhaps, than any other," 
 said your Report of 1815, " of securing obedience to 
 " a Register Act, would be, to prohibit the lending 
 " money, by persons resident in the United King- 
 " dom, on the security ' O f West-India estates and 
 " Slaves, unless the la.tter shall appear by returns 
 " to the English offir je to have been duly register- 
 " ed." " To this measure," it was added, " the 
 " Assemblies thernselves will hardly object, as ex- 
 " ceeding the fair exercise of the authority of Par- 
 " liamentt-" 
 
 The Institution, therefore, ^cannot but rejoice to 
 find, that in the Act of Parliament referred to, a 
 spontaneous measure of his Majesty's Government, 
 there is a provision of this salutary kind: 
 
 " Be it further enacted, that from and after the 
 1st day of January, 1820, it shall not be lawful for 
 any of his Majesty's subjects in this United King- 
 dom, to purchase, or to lend or advance any money, 
 
 * See the statute, 59 Geo. III. cap. 120, entitled, " an Act 
 for establishing a Registry of Colonial Slaves in Great Britain, 
 and for making Provision with respect to the Removal of Slaves 
 from British Colonies." 
 
 t Report on Registry of Slaves, of 1815, p. 111. 
 
133 
 
 goods, or effects, upon the security of, any Slave or 
 Slaves in any of his Majesty's colonies, or foreign 
 possessions, unless such Slave or Slaves shall appear 
 by the returns received therein, to have been first 
 duly registered in the said office of the Registrar of 
 colonial Slaves ; and that every sale, mortgage, or 
 conveyance, or assurance of, and any charge or other 
 security upon, any Slave or Slaves not so appearing 
 to be registered, which at any time or times after the 
 said 1st day of January, 1620, shall be made or ex- 
 ecuted within the United Kingdom, to or in trust for 
 any of his Majesty's subjects, shall be absolutely 
 null and void, in respect of any such unregistered 
 Slave or Slaves ; and that for this purpose, no Slave 
 or Slaves shall be deemed and taken to be duly re- 
 gistered, unless it shall appear that a return of such 
 Slave or Slaves duly made by the owner or owners, 
 or other persons on his or their behalf, in the man- 
 ner and form required by law in the colony in which 
 such Slave or Slaves may reside, or a copy or ab- 
 stract of such return, shall have been received in the 
 office of the said Registrar, from the colony in which 
 such Slave or Slaves shall reside, within the four 
 years next preceding the date of such sale, mortgage, 
 conveyance, or assurance, charge, or security, as 
 aforesaid." 
 
 " And it is hereby further enacted, that from and 
 after the said first day of January, 1820, no deed 
 or instrument made or executed within this United 
 
134 
 
 Kingdom, whereby any Slave or Slaves in any of the 
 said colonies shall be intended to be mortgaged, 
 sold, charged, or in any manner transferred or con- 
 veyed, or any estate or interest therein created or 
 raised, shall be good or valid in law to pass or 
 convey, charge or affect any Slave or Slaves, unless 
 the registered name and description, or names and 
 descriptions, of such Slave or Slaves shall be duly 
 set forth in such deed or instrument, or in some 
 schedule thereupon endorsed, or thereto annexed, 
 according to the then latest registration, or corrected 
 registration, of such Slave or Slaves in the said office 
 of the Registrar of Slaves*." 
 
 This Act indeed seems to suppose, what, from 
 the review now given of the colonial Register Acts, 
 -will be found to be the reverse of the existing case; 
 namely, that means have been provided to supply 
 the English Register-office with duplicates of the 
 books of original Registration, and of the periodical re- 
 turns, from all our colonies. It also seems to suppose, 
 what the observations quoted from your former Report 
 implied, that the returns, original and periodical, will 
 be such as the Register Bill designed ; or at least 
 will be sufficiently particular, descriptive, and full, 
 to shew the progressive numbers, and the identity, of 
 the Slaves on a given plantation, who may be the 
 subject of mortgage or sale : whereas the colonial 
 Acts, supposing them to be ever so punctually 
 * Sections 8 and 9. 
 
135 
 
 executed, will produce no such information, even 
 within the respective colonies ; still less in the books 
 or documents which some of them direct to be 
 transmitted to this country. 
 
 Till these defects, therefore, are supplied, the 
 Act of Parliament must operate rather to prohibit 
 totally, than to regulate, mortgages or sales of Slaves 
 by conveyances to be executed in this kingdom, or 
 to persons resident here. But this inconvenience 
 cannot be charged on the promoters of the Register 
 Bill. Neither will it justly be imputable, by the 
 .colonies which may suffer by it, to the late Act, or to 
 its official patrons. The fault is entirely their own. 
 If there has been an error in Government or Parlia- 
 ment, it has been that of reposing too much con- 
 fidence in, and acting with too much complaisance 
 towards, themselves ; of which they at least would 
 with a very ill grace complain. 
 
 A great national measure has been committed to 
 their regulation, that part of it excepted which can 
 emanate from the authority of Parliament alone ; and 
 if they will not perform their part of the work, the 
 mother country must at least perform hers. It 
 would be arrogant in the extreme to require that the 
 English Registry should be accommodated to their 
 own vague and useless provisions; or guarded only 
 by the same impotent sanctions. It is indeed now 
 plain, that if the work is still to be left to the 
 colonial legislatures, the inconveniences that their. 
 
136 
 
 constituents may feel from the neglect of it are 
 the only sources to which we can possibly look for 
 its effectual future performance. 
 
 Your Committee, however, in this and in other 
 views, cannot regard the Act of the last Session as 
 adequate to its very important objects. 
 
 They must especially object to that departure from 
 the plan of the Register Bill, which, instead of avoid- 
 ing an entire conveyance, for comprising unregister- 
 ed Slaves, avoids it only as to its effect ori Slaves 
 of that description. 
 
 If Parliament should stop here, the expedient will 
 be of little value. Of what avail would be our sta- 
 tutes against usury, if the security were avoided, only 
 as to the surplus beyond legal interest ; and remained 
 good as to the principal, and five per cent. ? The 
 lender would take his chance of obtaining, without 
 detection or controversy, the usurious excess ; secure, 
 that at worst, he would be in as good a situation as 
 if he had not broken the law. In like manner, 
 the mortgagee or purchaser of a West- India estate, 
 with many unregistered Slaves, would disregard the 
 late Act of Parliament: being safe as to the land 
 and the registered gang, he would trust to the point 
 of honour, with the known disposition also of colo- 
 nial courts in his favour as to the rest. 
 
 We do not treat thus tenderly defects in the re- 
 gistration of annuities, or of ships; in both of which, 
 an omission or misrepresentation of any particular 
 
1ST 
 
 is fatal to the whole title. Nor do we consider 
 it an adequate security against contraband com- 
 merce, or frauds on the customs or excise, to con- 
 demn the part of a cargo or stock that is the subject 
 of illicit transaction. Yet, in neither of those cases, 
 is there so littls danger to innocence, from a whole-* 
 some severity, as in that of unregistered Slaves. 
 There can be no hardship or inconvenience in com- 
 pelling a man who buys or lends money on a West- 
 Indian estate, to have a schedule of the Slaves an- 
 nexed to his conveyance ; and to take care that their 
 names and descriptions correspond with the latest 
 returns in the Registrar's office. As to the risk of 
 clerical errors, it is already sufficiently guarded 
 against by the indulgent provisions of the Act. 
 
 But, though this parliamentary measure cannot 
 be regarded as having done all that its principle re- 
 quires, your Committee consider it as a new and 
 unequivocal pledge of the determination of his Ma- 
 jesty's Government, and of the British Legislature, to 
 make the system of Slave Registration general and 
 effectual. 
 
 The Institution may also derive further encourage- 
 ment from the manner in which the office of Regis- 
 trar in England has been filled ; for your Committee 
 have the pleasure to learn, that the gentleman appoint- 
 ed to it is one whose respectable character and tried 
 official talents give the best presage of an able and 
 faithful discharge of the novel and important public 
 functions with which he has been entrusted. 
 
 x 
 
138 
 
 On the whole, therefore, this interesting branch of 
 the great cause which we are associated to promote is 
 in a more encouraging state than when it was last 
 under your review. The Colonial Legislatures have 
 done nothing effectually ; but it was not by them 
 that you expected any thing effectual would be done. 
 They have, however, admitted the principle of the 
 Register Bill, even while discarding all its efficacious 
 provisions ; and have relieved the controversy from 
 every rational doubt whether your appeal to Parlia- 
 ment was matter of necessity or choice. Henceforth 
 the only question can be, whether a measure founded 
 on such urgent considerations, both political and 
 moral a measure to which the Government and Par- 
 liament stand pledged to the people of this country; 
 and the nation at large to the whole civilized world; 
 and the necessity or high expediency of which the 
 colonies themselves have admitted shall be carried 
 into execution by the authority of the British Legisla- 
 ture; or wholly and openly abandoned. 
 
 The evasive middle course of leaving it to be 
 frustrated by such impotent and useless laws as your 
 Committee have here reviewed, Would be a short- 
 lived, as well as unworthy expedient ; and could not, 
 in any degree, save the credit of the country ; while 
 it would produce in practice such inconvenience and 
 confusion as could not long be endured. 
 
 But these colonial Acts might live long enough to 
 bring the whole system into disgrace. Your Commit- 
 tee, therefore, earnestly recommend, that if this Report 
 
139 
 
 should be adopted by your Board, it may be speedily 
 submitted to the public ; lest it should be thought 
 that these ostensible and practical adoptions of the 
 great measure you have recommended, are regarded 
 by the African Institution as adequate substitutes 
 for the Register Bill ; or as putting to a fair practical 
 test the principles on which it was framed. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Ellerton and Hendersou, IMuters, 
 Johnson's Court, London. 
 
* TJ^* fr m Whid > "orrowed. 
 
 l5Apr'52KU 
 
 FEB 08 1988 
 
 NOV1 7 1954 
 
 
 La 
 
 FEB201988 
 
YE 
 
 M270665 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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