The other great object of the African Institution regarded the West Indies.  The preparation of the negroes for that freedom which was their absolute right, and could only be withheld for an hour, on the ground of their not being prepared for it, and therefore being better without it, was the first thing to be accomplished.  Here the friends of the abolition, all but Mr. Stephen, suffered a great disappointment.  He alone had uniformly-foretold that the hopes held out, as it seemed very reasonably, of better treatment resulting from the stoppage of the supply of hands, were fallacious.  All else had supposed that interest might operate on men whom principle had failed to sway; that they whom no feelings of compassion for their fellow-creatures could move to do their duty, might be touched by a feeling of their own advantage, when interest coincided with duty.  The Slave-mart is now closed, it was said; surely the stock on hand will be saved by all means, and not wasted when it can no longer be replaced.  The argument was purposely rested on the low ground of regarding human beings as cattle, or even as inanimate chattels, and it was conceived that human life would be regarded of as much value as the wear and tear of beasts, of furniture, or of tools.  Hence it was expected that a better system of treatment would follow, from the law which closed the African market, and warned every planter that his stock must be spared by better treatment, and kept up by breeding, since it no longer could be, as it hitherto had been, maintained by new supplies.

Two considerations were, in these arguments, kept out of view, both of a practical nature, and both known to Mr. Stephen,—­the cultivation of the Islands by agents having wholly different interests from their masters, and the gambling spirit of trading and culture which long habit had implanted in the West Indian nature.  The comforts of the slave depended infinitely more upon the agent on the spot, than the owner generally resident in the mother country; and though the interest of the latter might lead to the saving of negro life, and care for negro comforts, the agent had no such motives to influence his conduct; besides, it was with the eyes of this agent that the planter must see, and he gave no credence to any accounts but his.  Now the consequence of cruelty is to make men at war with its objects.  No one but a most irritable person feels angry with his beast, and even the anger of such a person is of a moment’s duration.  But towards an inanimate chattel even the most irritable of sane men can feel nothing like rage.  Why?  Because in the one case there is little, in the other no conflict or resistance at all.  It is otherwise with a slave; he is human, and can disobey—­can even resist.  This feeling always rankles in his oppressor’s bosom, and makes the tyrannical superior hate, and the more oppress his slave.  The agent on the spot feels thus, and thus acts; nor can the voice of the owner