In appealing however to facts for this purpose, we must expect no light from antiquity to guide us on our way; for history gives us no account of persons in those times similarly situated with the slaves in the British colonies at the present day.  There were no particular nations in those times, like the Africans, expressly set apart for slavery by the rest of the world, so as to have a stigma put upon them on that account, nor did a difference of the colour of the skin constitute always, as it now does, a most marked distinction between the master and the slave, so as to increase this stigma and to perpetuate antipathies between them.  Nor did the slaves of antiquity, except perhaps once in Sparta, form the whole labouring population of the land; nor did they work incessantly, like the Africans, under the whip; nor were they generally so behind their masters in cultivated intellect.  Neither does ancient history give us in the cases of manumission, which it records, any parallel, from which we might argue in the case before us.  The ancient manumissions were those of individuals only, generally of but one at a time, and only now and then; whereas the emancipation, which we contemplate in the colonies, will comprehend whole bodies of men, nay, whole populations, at a given time.  We must go therefore in quest of examples to modern times, or rather to the history of the colonial slavery itself; and if we should find any there, which appear to bear at all upon the case in question, we must be thankful for them, and, though they should not be entirely to our mind, we must not turn them away, but keep them, and reason from them as far as their analogies will warrant.

In examining a period comprehending the last forty years, I find no less than six or seven instances of the emancipation of African slaves in bodies.  The first of these cases occurred at the close of the first American war.  A number of slaves had run away from their North American masters and joined the British army.  When peace came, the British Government did not know what to do with them.  Their services were no longer wanted.  To leave them behind to fall again into the power of their masters would have been great cruelty as well as injustice; and as to taking them to England, what could have been done with them there?  It was at length determined to give them their liberty, and to disband them in Nova Scotia, and to settle them there upon grants of land as British subjects and as free men.  The Nova Scotians on learning their destination were alarmed.  They could not bear the thought of having such a number of black persons among them, and particularly as these understood the use of arms.  The Government, however, persevering in its original intention, they were conveyed to Halifax, and distributed from thence into the country.  Their number, comprehending men, women, and children, were two thousand and upwards.  To gain their