ABOLITIONIST.

Moral duty we insist is always the precursor of civilization. Let it be established, and the stimulus you consider as necessary to promote industry will certainly follow. If any present obstacle appear, it is because there is no sense of moral duty yet impressed upon the negro's mind. Elevate his condition, cease to regard him as an outcast spurned even of God, and the same great principle which prompts mankind in general to labor, will not be lost upon the African. Your sturdy denial of the effects springing from moral duty, proves at once your depravity and the weakness of your cause.-Wilberforce's Appeal.

How do you account for the most moral nations being always the most industrious? Does this not prove the efficacy of morality, and expose the sophistry of your reasoning?-Cropper's Letter to Wilberforce.

Why should not industry flourish in the West Indies as well as in Europe? Is there any work of our great Creator debarred from becoming an object of appro

WEST INDIAN.

We uphold, as strongly as yourselves, the manifold advantages of moral duty and religion. All our recent acts are proofs in our favor. We consider that morals and religion are highly essential in subduing violent passions, correcting all the evil propensities of our nature, and thus removing great impediments in the progress of a barbarous people towards civilization. Morals and religion prepare the soil, but they do not themselves sow the seed. You conceive that, alone, they will accomplish every thing desired. We deny it, and maintain that other physical circumstances, infinitely more powerful in their operation, enter into the question; and that until they are remedied, all hope of steady industry under free labor, in the West Indies, is visionary.---Maj. Moody's 2d Report, p. 7, et seq.

You substitute cause for effect; nations are not so much industrious, because they are moral, as they are moral because they are industrious.-Speech of the Right Hon. W. Plunkett, 1816, on the State of Ireland.---M' Donnell's Considerations, p. 285.

Industry may flourish by free labor, as soon as you remove the grand physical difficulty. That consists, as we have already stated, in the facility of procuring sus

ABOLITIONIST.

WEST INDIAN.

Your doctrine is monstrous, nay, impious, You call the blessings of Providence a curse. Because nature pours forth her gifts with a lavish hand in the Tropics, you say it obstructs voluntary industry. What minister of religion, what moralist, will pay attention to such views?-Bishop of Bristol's Speech, March 7, 1826.

You are justifying the institution of slavery. Every Member of the Legislature expressed himself in opposition to it in the abstract, and this unanimity is decisive proof that the system in the West Indies is, in principle, quite unjustifiable. Second Report AutiSlavery Society.

of a Tropical climate, appear to be the only remedies. To expect that men, after they have satisfied all their wants, will refrain from enjoyment from some moral consideration, is about as reasonable as it would be for a Preacher to erect his pulpit at Hyde Park Corner, and hope to exhort our populace into the practice of staying at home to pray, instead of coming thither for recreation.---M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. iv.

The support of truth can never deserve censure; but the least reflection shows how superficial is your charge. Morality is never better promoted than in those difficulties, and by those stimuli, which call forth, as a matter of necessity, the full faculties of man, To labor before we can enjoy, is the very requisite to promote civilization, virtue, and happiness. It is you, in your ignorant clamour, who would arrest the progress of morality, by plunging the negro into the miseries of idleness.--M'Donnell's Considerations, c. iv.

There is no one among those whom you oppose, who has not declared, that, abstractedly speaking, freedom is far preferable to slavery. But, if the question turn on the causes of industry, we assert broadly and unequivocally, that cultivation cannot be carried on in the West Indies without COERCION. Pursue your fallacious project of establishing a free peasantry, and you bring upon the white capitalist inevitable ruin, and upon the Mother Coun

ABOLITIONIST.

By coercion, you mean, doubtless, a system of slavery. You wish the lash always to hang in terror over the black, to impel him to work, not for his own, but for your exclusive emolument. If man be created a free agent, the forcing him to act contrary to his will can never be justified.-Mr. Fowell Buxton, 15th May, 1823. ---Anli-Slavery Reports, passim.

Laboring men in this country may work or not work, as they please, and, therefore, it is untrue to say that they are coerced.--Wilberforce's Appeal.

A man in this country elevates his wants according to his earnings. He works sedulously, that he may attain enjoyment; but you debar the negro from this powerful incentive. In doling him out one definite supply of what you ludicrously term comforts, you treat him as a machine insusceptible of

WEST INDIAN.

try the irretrievable loss of her Colonies.---Major Moody's Second Report.---M'Donnell, chap. iv.

We ground our principle on the firm basis, that industry must be the precursor to civilization. "The "impending lash," on which you love to expatiate, is merely a figure of rhetoric; for, as in many of our regiments, the utmost discipline may be preserved without severity, so on plantations healthful industry can be conducted without rigour. When you object so forcibly to the term coercion, we must tell you, that in every nation men are coerced to labor. In the West Indies, this is effected by the control of a master-in England, by the dread of starvation! Which is the hardest taskmaster ?--- M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. iv.

xi. xii.

If a laboring man do not work, he and his family must starve; and, therefore, it is perfectly puerile to maintain that he has an option. He is absolutely forced to action by the most powerful constraint in existence. Besides, a laboring man not working, is liable to be sent to the workhouse, and is legally punishable as a vagrant or vagabond.--- M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. iv.

Nothing upholds our position so strongly as the examination of facts relating to your argument just stated.---Men work to satisfy those wants which are habitual to them---nothing beyond. When the remuneration given to our operatives was very high, they worked only three days in the

WEST INDIAN.

week, because in that time they could earn sufficient to satisfy their habitual wants. The highlanders of Scotland not long since wandered about their bills in idleness---so soon as an altered system of farming commenced, and the dread of starving began to operate, they betook themselves to industry. In the South of France the same principle is exemplified. An entire year's labor would do more than satisfy the wants of the peasantry, and the superabundant time is, consequently, devoted to holidays.-M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. iv.

If black men acquire the means by their own industry, we wish to interpose no obstacle. But you consider not the impracticability of the consummation you covet. You overlook the time required for civilization. If century has succeeded century, and neither aboriginal Indian nor African negro have made progress in industry, it is surely proof unanswerable that the love of ease predominates over the disposition to pursuits of irksome labor.--Major Moody's Second Report, p. 42. et seq. 49.

When America was discovered, rigorous slavery existed in both Mexico and Peru. If, in the two most advanced States, the institution existed, your argument meets a signal defeat.---Robertson's America, iii., 166, 212.

Such ideas are superficial. Civilization, such as you contemplate, can only spring from the amalgamation of the two races. Now, who for a moment could