This last incident brings us to another feature of those times, the actual insurrections which took place among the slaves.  Passing by the lesser excitements of Barbadoes and Demerara, we come to the great rising in Jamaica in 1832.  A servile war is generally represented as displaying at every point its banners of flame, plashing its feet meanwhile in the blood of women and children.  But the great insurrection of 1832, which, as it spread, included fifty thousand negroes in its train, was in the beginning simply a refusal to work.

Fiercely discussed by the masters, emancipation began to be spoken of among the slaves.  Necessarily they must know something about it; but, in their distorted and erroneous impressions, they believed that “the Great King of England” had set them free, and the masters were wilfully withholding the boon.

There was one, a negro slave, whose dark glittering eye fascinated his fellows, and whose wondrous powers of speech drew them, despite themselves, into the conspiracy.  But he planned no murders, designed no house-burnings; to those who, under solemn pledge of secrecy, joined him, he propounded a single idea.  It was this.  If we, the negroes, who are as five to one, compared to the white men, refuse to work any more until freedom is given, we shall have it.  There will be some resistance, and a few of us will be killed; but that we must expect.  This, in substance, was the ground taken by Sharpe, who, as a slave, had always been a favorite both with his master and others.  This was the commencement of the great insurrection.  Its leader had not counted upon the excitable spirit of the slaves when once aroused.  Holding as sacred the property of his master, he believed his followers would do the same, until the light of burning barns and out-houses revealed the mischief which had begun to work.  Yet, in the sanguinary struggle which followed, it is to be remembered that the excesses which were committed, the wanton waste of life, were on the part of the white residents, who meted out vengeance with an unsparing hand,—­not on the part of the negroes.

One effect of this uprising of the slaves was, in England, to deepen the impression of the evils of the system under which they were held.  If the mere discussion of Slavery were fraught with such terrible consequences, how could safety ever consist with the thing itself?  By discussion they had but exercised their own rights as Englishmen.  Of what use to them was Magna Charta, if they must seal their lips in silence when a public abuse required to be corrected, a gigantic wrong to be righted?  Must they give up the ocean and the land to the dominion of the slave-owner and slave-trader, hushing the word of remonstrance, lest it should lead to war and bloodshed?  No; they would not do this.  The thing itself which had caused these commotions must perish.

Here was a decided gain for the friends of the slave in Parliament.  Mr. Buxton, in alluding to the fearful aspect of the times, asks the pertinent question, “How is the Government prepared to act in case of a general insurrection among the slaves?” We give the closing paragraphs of his speech at this crisis.