so long as the evidence of a Negro is not valid against a white man.  If a white master only take care, that no other white man sees him commit an atrocity of the kind mentioned, he is safe from the cognizance of the law.  He may commit such atrocity in the sight of a thousand black spectators, and no harm will happen to him from it.  In fact, the slaves in our Islands have no more real protection or redress from law, than when the Abolitionists first took up the question of the slave trade.  It is evident therefore, that the latter have still one-half of their work to perform, and that it is their duty to perform it.  If they were ever influenced by any good motives, whether of humanity, justice, or religion, to undertake the cause of the Negroes, they must even now be influenced by the same motives to continue it.  If any of those disorders still exist, which it was their intention to cure, they cannot (if these are curable) retire from the course and say—­there is now no further need of our interference.

The first step then to be taken by the Abolitionists is to attempt to introduce an entire new code of laws into our colonies.  The treatment of the Negroes there must no longer be made to depend upon the presumed effects of the abolition of the slave trade.  Indeed there were persons well acquainted with Colonial concerns, who called the abolition but a half measure at the time when it was first publicly talked of.  They were sure, that it would never of itself answer the end proposed.  Mr. Steele also confessed in his letter to Dr. Dickson[1] (of both of whom more by and by), that “the abolition of the stave trade would be useless, unless at the same time the infamous laws, which he had pointed out, were repealed.”  Neither must the treatment of the Negroes be made to depend upon what may be called contingent humanity.  We now leave in this country neither the horse, nor the ass, nor oxen, nor sheep, to the contingent humanity even of British bosoms;—­and shall we leave those, whom we have proved to be men, to the contingent humanity of a slave colony, where the eye is familiarized with cruel sights, and where we have seen a constant exposure to oppression without the possibility of redress?  No.  The treatment of the Negroes must be made to depend upon law; and unless this be done, we shall look in vain for any real amelioration of their condition.  In the first place, all those old laws, which are repugnant to humanity and justice, must be done away.  There must also be new laws, positive, certain, easy of execution, binding upon all, by means of which the Negroes in our islands shall have speedy and substantial redress in real cases of ill-usage, whether by starvation, over-work, or acts of personal violence, or otherwise.  There must be new laws again more akin to the principle of reward than of punishment, of privilege than of privation, and which shall, have a tendency to raise or elevate their condition, so as to fit them by degrees to sustain the rank of free men.