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Full Description
The lawyer and leading abolitionist James Stephen (1758-1832) published this two-volume work between 1824 and 1830, exposing the cruel and oppressive legal system of slavery in the British West Indies. Volume 1 explores the origin of nineteenth-century colonial slave laws, the legal status and the situation between slaves and their masters, and the policing and governance of slave populations. Volume 2 investigates the living conditions and the brutal practices involved in forcing labour, building the case for the abolition of slavery. Stephen had been the legal mastermind of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. This important work was influential in directing public opinion against slavery and helped lead towards the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. It is a key text of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and is vital for understanding the arguments and debates that led to abolition.
Contents
Volume 1: Preface; Preliminary chapter; Book I. Of the Slavery of our Colonies Considered as a Legal Institution: 1. Of the origin and authority of the colonial slave laws in general; 2. Of the persons who are subject to slavery in our colonies; 3. Of the legal nature and incidents of this condition, as they respect and constitute the relation between the slave and his master; 4. Of the legal nature and incidents of colonial slavery, as they respect its relations to persons of free condition in general, the master and his delegates excepted; 5. Of the legal nature and incidents of West India slavery, in its relations to the police and civil government of the country; 6. Of this state of slavery in respect of its commencement and dissolution; Appendices. Volume 2: Preface; Book II. Delineation of the State of Slavery in our Colonies, in its Ordinary Practical Nature and Effects: 1. Reasons for resuming this work; 2. Of agricultural labour in the torrid zone, and the pernicious effects of its excess when forcibly exacted; 3. The high probability that the amount of forced labour on sugar plantations is oppressively and destructively excessive, deduced from the natural tendency of the system, and confirmed by the decline of population among the predial slaves; 4. The actual ordinary details and general amount, in point of time, of forced labour on sugar plantations particularly stated and proved, and the cruel excess demonstrated; 5. The labour shewn to be excessive also, for the most part, in point of intensity, or the degree of actual exertion; 6. Comparison of the amount of slave labour on sugar plantations with that of agricultural labourers in England; 7. The means by which labour is enforced on sugar plantations greatly aggravates its severity, and are in their nature and effects extremely cruel and pernicious; 8. The maintenance of the plantation slaves is in a very oppressive and cruel degree parsimonious and insufficient; 9. The allowances of clothing to the field negroes by their owners is also in a shameful degree penurious and insufficient; 10. The slaves are very badly lodged; 11. The slaves are also treated with great harshness, neglect, and inhumanity when sick; 12. The whole expense of the maintenance of plantation slaves estimated and compared with the cost of free labour; 13. Concluding and practical reflections; Appendices.
