Meanwhile, in the spring of 1838, the question of Immediate Emancipation was agitated throughout the country.  The Government proved hostile.  Immense meetings were held at Exeter Hall, which were attended by many members of Parliament, over which Lord Brougham presided.  Among others who were present and bore a distinguished part, were certain representatives of Ireland who promised their strenuous support.  It is a painful duty to add, that their fellow-members from Ireland did not, on this great occasion, follow their good example; for eleven only of those, on whose votes reliance had been placed, opposed the Government, while no less than twenty-seven gave them support.

The question was rejected by the House of Lords, when brought forward by Lord Brougham; but in spite of the efforts of the Government; the defalcation of the Irish, of a still greater proportion of the Scotch representatives, two hundred and seventeen members of the House of Commons voted for Immediate Abolition, out of four hundred and eighty-nine who were present on the occasion.  A second effort in the same session placed Ministers in a minority; but they immediately gave notice, they should strenuously oppose any attempt to carry into practical effect this decision of the House; and in this determination they were supported by a majority on a third division.

The word, however, had gone forth all over England, that the Slave should be free.  It had not only pervaded Europe, it had reached America; and the West Indians at length perceived that they could no longer resist the voice of the British people, when it spoke the accents of humanity and of justice.  The slaves would have met the dawn of the first of August,—­the day which all the motions in Parliament and all the prayers of the petitions had fixed,—­with perfect quiet, but with a resolute determination to do no work.  The peace would not have been broken, but no more would a clod have been turned after that appointed sun had risen.  A handful of whites surrounded by myriads of negroes,—­now substantially free, and free without a blow,—­must have been overwhelmed in an hour after sunrise on that day, had they resisted.  The Colonial Legislatures, therefore, now listened to the voice of reason, and they, one after another, emancipated their slaves.  The first of August saw not a bondsman, under whatever appellation, in any part of the Western Sea which owns the British rule.

The Mauritius, however, still held out, and on the Mauritius the hand of the Imperial Parliament must and will be laid, to enforce mercy and justice on those to whom mercy and justice have so long called aloud in vain.  In truth, if the case for instant emancipation was strong everywhere, it was in no quarter half so strong as in the Mauritius; and the distribution of the grant by Parliament to this Colony was the most unjustifiable, and even incomprehensible.  For, elsewhere, there existed at least a title to the slave,