Reception of George Thompson in Great Britain (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: happen that the planter, for the base purpose of getting this additional labor, might have made him drunk for the purpose. (Shaine, shame.) By this base system of giving to the pla'nter the fruits of the delinquencies of the negroes, every inducement was held out to the vilest schemes, to entrap them into the commission of what was termed an offence.. Again, if the negro used what was termed insolence, or expressed what might perhaps amount to no more than a genteel expression of dissatisfaction, he was subject to twenty-nine lashes. (Shame.) Again, if one of them took a sugar-cane, he was liable to 250 stripes, or three months' imprisonment, and as a wind-up to this infamous system, if one of them was found carrying a knife in his pocket without the permission of his master, he was subject to thirty-nine lashes. These were some of the laws under the new system, and he would now put it to the meeting'to say whether or not the people of England had not been completely humbugged out of the money which they had paid. (Applause.) Notwithstanding, however, all this, gentlemen had talked of moderation. He was free to admit, because he believed it to be the fact, that the Chairman and Mr. Scholefield, who had talked of moderation, were influenced by a desire to conciliate all parties; but he unhesitatingly said, that it'those gentlemen said what they really thought upon the subject, they would not have talked of moderation. It was impossible for any man acquainted with the history of negro slavery,?who knew that a sacrifice of twenty millions had been paid to get rid of it,?and who, after all, saw the system carried on with refined crueltv, to speak or think with moderation upon the subject. In conclusion he would say, Why did not the Government at once exer- cisa their power, and put...