and remained bound in the same painful way while I remained a spectator.

But the first proceeding of the bench changed the sensation of pity in my breast into honest indignation. It was the production and reading by the chairman of a letter received by him from a gentleman, who was owner of two of the prisoners, and who had been written to with an inquiry, whether he would choose to employ a lawyer in the defence of his slaves; and the answer was, that he declined to do so, adding as his reason, "God forbid that he should wish in such a case to screen the guilty from punishment.” To the best of my recollection, these were the very words: I am sure such was the exact import of the letter.

'I turned with a look of astonishment to my conductor; but before I could whisper my feelings, they were diverted from the master to the bench; for to my astonishment the chairman applauded the letter, as 'honorable to the writer ; and the other magistrates concurred in his eulogy.

Strangely misplaced though I felt it to be, and shocked though I was at such a cruel prejudication of the unfortunate prisoners by their natural protector, I supposed that the commendation rested on his disinterestedness, in being willing to sacrifice his property in their bodies, without opposition to the demands of public justice; for I did not then know of the laws noticed in my first volume, pp. 322 to 328, which entitle a master, on the conviction and execution of his slave, to be paid for his loss of property out of the public purse. The lawyers' fees in consequence would have been a profitless ex

pense.

'Not only was there no written charge, but, no opening of the case, on the part of the prosecution. The prisoners had to learn it, as I did, only from the evidence adduced; the uncontroverted part of which was briefly as follows.

'The deceased had been visiting a certain estate in his usual routine as its medical attendant; and after seeing the patients, mounted his horse, to return to his residence in town. A negro of the estate the same morning brought in the horse with the saddle and bridle on, saying that he had found it grazing in one of the cane pieces; and the manager thereupon ordered it to be put into the stable; but did not send till the next day to give information of the occurrence at the doctor's house; supposing, as he alleged, that the horse by some accident had got away from him, and would be sent for. The deceased, however, never returned to his home; and, an alarm naturally arising, he was inquired for at the estates he had

VOL. XI. N. S.

VOL. VI. NO. I.

15

visited; and after consequent searches, the body was found in a cane piece not far from the house he had last visited, with contusions on the head, such as a fall from his horse could not have occasioned, and which were the apparent cause of his death.

'So far there was nothing to affect either of the prisoners; except that one of them, a very old negro, was the man who brought in the horse; and though this was regarded as a leading circumstance of suspicion against him, it seemed to me of a directly opposite tendency.

'But a negro girl, or wench, as she was called in the ordinary style of the slave colonies, a deformed creature, apparently about fifteen years old, was next called, as the only witness who could bring the offence home, by positive testimony, to the prisoners.

'Before she was examined, she was addressed by the chairman in a way that carried my surprise and indignation to the utmost pitch. She was admonished in the most alarming terms, to beware not to conceal any thing that made against the prisoners; and told that if she did, she would involve herself in their crime, and its punishment. No caution whatever was given as to any sin or danger on the opposite side. Every word implied a premature conviction in the mind of the court, that the prisoners were certainly guilty, and that she would be probably disbelieved and punished if she said any thing tending to acquit them. Terror was strongly depicted in her countenance during this address; and I felt at the moment that had I been a juryman to try the prisoners on her evidence, after such an exhortation, nothing she might testify against them would weigh a feather in my verdict.

'As the negro dialect was new to me, I should not have been able clearly to understand her testimony in many parts of it, without the assistance of my companion, who kindly whispered the interpretations that I asked for; but her story in substance was, that the deceased rode up to the negro houses of a plantation she belonged to, for shelter against a shower of rain; that he alighted, and gave his horse to one of the prisoners to hold; and that thereupon he and the other three, the only persons present except herself, fell upon him with sticks, knocked him down, and beat him to death; and afterwards carried his body to the cane piece in which it was found.

'No provocation, or other motive, was assigned by her, and her evidence, independently of the terror that had been impressed upon her, would have appeared to me, from its matter,

and the manner in which it was given, wholly unworthy of credit. The countenances and gesticulations of all the unfortunate men during her examination, impressed me with a strong persuasion of their innocence. Never were the workings of nature more clearly imitated by the most expert actor on any stage, if her whole narrative did not fill them with astonishment; and excite in them all the indignation that belongs to injured innocence. I expressed that feeling strongly to my conductor; and he dissented only by observing that negroes in general were masters of dissimulation; or something to that effect.

*

*

*

Here I must cease to narrate the case from my own direct knowledge. But the sequel was well supplied to me by evidence beyond suspicion. The same day I heard of what further passed on the trial, from persons who had staid in court to the end of it. No further evidence had fortified that of the negro wench in any material point. On the strength of her testimony alone, the magistrates had convicted all the prisoners of murder.' Preface, Vol. 11. pp. xix xxiv.

'I left Barbadoes immediately after the trial, but heard soon after the sequel of the tragedy, from several gentlemen who came from that Island to St. Christopher. The court applied to the Governor, a planter of the Island, and one who afterwards gave a very favorable account of the general humanity of his brethren, before the privy council, for an exemplary death; and he ordered that the four convicts should be burnt alive.

'But what perhaps will be thought the most singular part of the case, remains to be told.

'The owner of two of the slaves, the same I believe who so laudably refused to employ a lawyer for them, on hearing of the evidence on which they had been convicted, in respect of time and place, was able to establish a clear alibi in their favor, to the satisfaction of the magistrates who had tried them; in consequence of which they were pardoned. But however incredible it may appear, the two other unfortunate men, convicted on the very same evidence, nevertheless underwent the cruel fate to which they were sentenced. They were literally burnt alive at Bridgetown.' · Pp. xxv, xxvi.

'Such was the case which gave me my first right views of .negro slavery in the sugar colonies, almost as soon as I reached their shores.'

p. xxvii.

'The case I have mentioned was every way calculated to rescue me at the outset from delusion. As a lawyer, I could not but be deeply impressed with the shocking contrast it pre

sented to the impartial and humane administration of British justice, and its reversal of every principle that I had been taught to reverence, by writers on general jurisprudence. And how much were my indignant feelings augmented, when I learned, from an inquiry which it suggested, that white men in the same island were not only exempt from all such barbarous departures from the laws of England; but for the wilful murder of a slave, were liable only to a fine of fifteen pounds.' - p. xxviii.

In consequence of the impression produced by this trial, Mr. Stephen formed a resolution never to own a slave; and during a residence of eleven years at St. Christopher, he, with some inconvenience to himself, strictly adhered to this resolution. During his continuance there, he practised law. In answer to a charge which had been brought against him, by the advocates of slavery, of having been himself the owner of slaves, he says,

'I will be obliged to any reader, ignorant of my history and character, who will take the trouble to inquire of some of the respectable merchants or proprietors now in England, connected with the Leeward Islands, whether I ever held such property; and whether I was not, on the contrary, remarkable for the singularity of carrying my dislike to slavery so far as to have no domestics but hired servants, during the whole of my long residence in St. Christopher. Such was the well known fact. During the chief part of the time I had a family there, which required a pretty numerous domestic establishment, and it was a great breach of economy not to buy my servants; but I was served only by free persons of color, or, when I could not find such of a suitable character, by slaves let out to hire by their owners.

'Nor did I expose the latter to the disadvantages mentioned in this work as belonging to their situation in general. From the first it was my resolution, that such of them as served me long and faithfully, should not remain in slavery; and I acted up to that purpose. I obtained their manumissions, either by paying the whole value, or adding to what they had themselves saved for the purpose, or vindicating by law a right to freedom, which had, in one instance, been unjustly withheld. Not one of them who had served me for any considerable time without misbehavior was left in slavery; except in one instance, which may serve to show the hardships of that state in general. I repeatedly offered to purchase his freedom at his full value; but the owner

would not consent. At length he came from a distant island, at which he resided, to take the man away. To save the poor fellow, not only from slavery, but exile, I intreated the owner to accept his value, to be ascertained by any person of his own nomination, and when this was refused, to name his own price; but he was inexorable; and for no juster reason, but that he knew the man's integrity, and other valuable qualities, and therefore wanted him for his own domestic use. The slave's merits, therefore, and his fitness to make a right use of his freedom, formed, as too frequently happens, the bar to his attainment of it; and his reward was a perpetual exile from the connexions and the island which long settlement in it had endeared to him. In a Spanish or Portuguese colony, he might have compelled the master to enfranchise him by a judicial appraisement.' - Preface, Vol. 1. pp. liv, lv.

After his return to England, it appears that his zeal for the abolition first of the slave-trade, and afterwards of slavery, was in some degree prejudicial to his private interest.

'Let me not be understood, however, as disclaiming all obligations to my West Indian clients and friends. To such of them as are living, and to many more, alas! whom I shall see no more till all human contentions are ended, I owe what is better than wealth, great personal kindness, and long continued attachment. Their obliging preference followed me into practice here; and gave me, as a chamber counsel, and a practitioner at the Cockpit, advantages which, in my then circumstances, were of great importance, and were rapidly increasing, till, by taking a public part in the abolition controversy, I willingly renounced them. The greatest of the sacrifices that I have made to the cause I still feebly support, though they have been neither few nor small, was to encounter their displeasure; or rather, as I do many of them the justice to believe, an estrangement from me, which the irresistible impulse of an esprit de corps compelled them to, against their real feelings. They knew my sincerity; and could not in their hearts condemn me for maintaining in England, views and principles which I had always avowed and acted upon, often at no small personal risk, while resident among them.' Preface, Vol. 1. pp. lvi, lvii.

In 1802 he published a work, which we have never seen, entitled the Crisis of the Sugar Colonies,' intended to promote the abolition of the slave-trade. Since that time, he has always been forward and active in all the efforts