THREE:Ten years passed away from the adoption of Mr. Canning's resolution, and little or nothing was effectually done to mitigate the system, not-withstanding various subsequent recommendations of the British Government. The consolidated slave law for the Crown colonies contained in an Order in Council issued in 1830, was proposed for the chartered colonies as a model for their adoption; but it contained no provision for the education or religious instruction of the slaves. All the chartered colonies, except two, Grenada and Tobago, had legalised Sunday markets, and they allowed no other time to the negroes for marketing or cultivating their provision grounds. The evidence of slaves had been made admissible; but in most of the colonies the right was so restricted as to make it entirely useless. Except in the Crown colonies, the marriage of slaves was subject to all sorts of vexatious impediments. The provision against the separation of families was found everywhere inoperative. The right of acquiring property was so limited as to prove a mockery and a delusion. The Order in Council gave the slaves the right of redeeming themselves and their families, even against the will of their owners; but all the chartered colonies peremptorily refused any such right of self-liberation. In nearly all the colonies the master had a right by law to inflict thirty-nine lashes at one time, on any slave of any age, or of either sex, for any offence whatever, or for no offence. He could also imprison his victims in the stocks of the workhouse as long as he pleased. There was no return of punishments inflicted, and no proper record. An Order in Council had forbidden the flogging of females; but in all the chartered colonies the infamous practice had been continued in defiance of the supreme Government. The administration of justiceif the term be applicable to a system whose very essence was iniquitywas left to pursue its own course, without any effort[367] for its purification. In July, 1830, Mr. Brougham brought forward his motion, that the House should resolve, at the earliest possible period in next Session, to take into consideration the state of the West Indian colonies, in order to the mitigation and final abolition of slavery, and more especially in order to the amendment of the administration of justice. But the national mind was then so preoccupied with home subjects of agitation that the House was but thinly attended, and the motion was lost by a large majority. The Reform movement absorbed public interest for the two following years, so that nothing was done to mitigate the hard lot of the suffering negro till the question was taken up by Mr. Stanley, in 1833, in compliance with the repeated and earnest entreaties of the friends of emancipation. The abolitionists, of course, had always insisted upon immediate, unconditional emancipation. But the Ministerial plan contained two provisions altogether at variance with their views; a term of apprenticeship, which, in the first draft of the measure, was to last twelve years, and compensation to the ownersa proposition which, though advanced with hesitation, ultimately assumed the enormous amount of twenty millions sterling. On the principle of compensation there was a general agreement, because it was the State that had created the slave property, had legalised it, and imposed upon the present owners all their liabilities. It was therefore thought to be unjust to ruin them by what would be regarded as a breach of faith on the part of the legislature. The same excuse could not be made for the system of protracted apprenticeship, which would be a continuance of slavery under another name. If the price were to be paid for emancipation, the value should be received at once. This was the feeling of Lord Howick, who was then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and who resigned his office rather than be a party to the apprenticeship scheme, which he vigorously opposed in the House, as did also Mr. Buxton and Mr. O'Connell. But the principle was carried against them by an overwhelming majority. Among the most prominent and efficient advocates of the negroes during the debates were Mr. Buckingham, Dr. Lushington, Admiral Flemming, and Mr. T. B. Macaulay. The opposition to the Government resolution was not violent; it was led by Sir Robert Peel, whose most strenuous supporters were Sir Richard Vivian, Mr. Godson, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, and Mr. Hume. In the House of Lords the resolutions were accepted without a division, being supported by the Earl of Ripon, Lord Suffield, Earl Grey, and the Lord Chancellor Brougham. The speakers on the other side were the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Harewood, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Wynford.Mr. O'Connell's avowed principle of action was "moral force." He was in the constant habit of asserting that "the man who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy;" and that no political advantages, however great, should be obtained at the expense of "one drop of Christian blood." Nevertheless, the letters which he was in the habit of addressing to "the people of Ireland,"[286] and which were remarkable for their clearness, force, and emphatic tautology, had always prefixed to them, as a standing motto, Byron's couplet
FORE:From Riga Buonaparte learned that Macdonald maintained the blockade, thus keeping Courland in awe, and alarming St. Petersburg; that St. Cyr, more to the south, had compelled Wittgenstein, after a severe battle at Polotsk, to assume the defensive; and that Regnier had defeated Tormasoff at Gorodeczna, in Poland. But Tormasoff fell back on the Moldavian army, commanded by Admiral Tchitchigoff; and General Steingel was marching with the army of Finland to join Wittgenstein. These distinct successes, therefore, were but of small moment in comparison with the lowering prospects before him.
Address
FORE:Telford succeeded to Brindley, with all his boldness and skill, and with much extended experience. He executed the Ellesmere canal, which occupied a length of upwards of a hundred miles, connecting the rivers Severn, Dee, and Mersey. In the construction of this canal Telford introduced a bold, but successful, novelty. In aqueducts, instead of puddling their bottoms with clay, which was not proof against the effects of frost, he cased them with iron, and adopted the same means when he had to pass through quicksands or mere bog. Some of Telford's aqueducts were stupendous works. The Chirk aqueduct passed, at seventy feet above the river, on ten arches of forty feet span, and cost twenty thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight pounds. The aqueduct over the Dee passed at a height of one hundred and twenty-one feet above low water, and consisted of a great trough of cast-iron plates, supported on eighteen piers, and having a towing-path of cast-iron, supported on cast-iron pillars. This aqueduct took ten years in building, and cost, with its embankments, forty-seven thousand pounds. Tunnels much larger than that at Harecastle Hill were executed. That at Sapperton, on the Thames and Severn canal, executed by Mr. Whitworth, was nearly two miles and a half long, ran two hundred and fifty feet below the summit of the hill, and was large enough for boats of seventy tons burden. This was completed in 1788. These daring enterprises led to the design of a tunnel under the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury; but this was abandoned for want of capital. In 1804 a like attempt was made at Rotherhithe, but stopped from the same cause, and was not completed till 1843 by Sir Mark Isambard Brunel. Between 1758 and 1801 no fewer than sixty-five Acts of Parliament were passed for making or extending canals. At the end of that period canals extended over upwards of three thousand miles, and had cost upwards of thirteen millions sterling. In fact, the bulk of canal work was done by this time, though not some few works of great importance. The Leeds and Liverpool canal, begun in 1770, but not completed till 1816, opened up connection with a vast manufacturing district; and the Rochdale, Huddersfield, and Hull canals gave access for the Baltic traffic into the heart of Lancashire. The Paddington and Regent's Canals wonderfully promoted the intercourse between the interior and the metropolis. In the Highlands, the Caledonian Canal, connecting the[192] string of lakes between Inverness and the Atlantic, gave passage to ships of large burden. At the end of this reign the aggregate length of canals in England and Wales was two thousand one hundred and sixty miles; in Scotland, two hundred and twelve; in Ireland, two hundred and fifty; total, two thousand six hundred and twenty-two miles. The attention paid to roads and canals necessitated the same to bridges; and during this reign many new structures of this kind were erected, and much improvement attained in their formation. In 1776 a totally new kind of bridge was commenced at Coalbrook Dale, and completed in 1779; this was of cast-iron, having a single arch of one hundred feet span, and containing three hundred and seventy-eight and a half tons of metal. Telford greatly improved on this idea, by erecting an iron bridge over the Severn, at Buildwas, in 1796, having an arch of one hundred and thirty feet span.
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