proposed September 23, 1857.* It is curious to see how so prudent a government, enlightened by the experience of other nations, designs to resolve this great question.

The following are the bases of the bill of 1857 :

1. Emancipation shall be immediate; it being recognized that delays cause universal disturbance without securing any preparation.

2. The masters of slaves shall be indemnified. of indemnity shall not be uniform.

The rate

At Surinam, the slaves are valued, male or female,

Woodland

Cotton and rice

and even

Domestics, according to age, at from 50 to 500,

In the West Indies, slaves are estimated, male or female, according to the age, at from 50 to 500 florins; from 50 to 405 florins in the little island of Saba.

3. The slaves shall engage to labor for twelve months at least for their former master, or for another whom they shall choose. Those who cannot or will not contract such engagements shall be grouped, to the number of 1,500 at most, in country districts, under the direction of officers of the government, on lands purchased or expropriated for the purpose.

Every member of a district, aged from 20 to 60 years, owes to the district 5 days' labor per week, of 9 hours per day.

Domestic slaves are grouped in societies or guilds, under the direction of officers of the government, having their seat at Paramaribo. They owe to the guild an analogous task, according to their occupation.

* We owe all of these details to the kindness of M. de Frezals, Secretary of the French Legation in Holland, and to an excellent note prepared by M. Lux, one of the most distinguished and honorable citizens of The Hague.

4. Slaves shall take a family name, choose a residence, and make good their claims to it.

5. Children born after the enactment of the law shall be free, but shall remain under the authority of their parents or guardians until the age of twelve.

6. All freed slaves shall contribute to the creation of a fund designed to reimburse the state for the cost of their emancipation.

7. Numerous regulations are prepared besides in detail.

The commission had proposed to expropriate the plantations and slaves at once, for the reason that the soil without the slaves had no value. More generous, the government leaves to the planters the land and buildings, and promises them an indemnity amounting,

The receipts of the districts and guilds are estimated at 3,000,000 florins, and their expenditures at 1,288,475 florins. There will be, therefore, an annual surplus of 1,711,525 florins, serving to reimburse the state.

These bills, presented in the Second Chamber of the States-General, September 24, 1857, were withdrawn, studied, modified, and transformed into a second bill, introduced. October 25, 1858. It was thought hard to impose the obligation on the slave to spend long years in paying for his freedom, and thus to remain indefinitely the slave of a debt: the new bill confined itself to subjecting him to a capitation tax, and a right of requisition for the public works. It was judged dangerous to grant an indemnity in ready money, which, as soon as paid, would fall into the hands of the creditors, go out of the colonies, and afford no support to labor; the foundation of a bank at Paramaribo, and the

payment of a part of the indemnity in its stock, provides for this danger. The right is accorded to the planters to choose between indemnity and a total expropriation, which would render the state the owner of their plantations, reserving the right of farming them at a reasonable price. The most minute measures are taken that the slave may be set free with his clothing, tools, and all that is reputed to belong to him; but at the same time the strictest provisions are made that freedom may not exempt the negro from labor; he must be engaged for twelve months at least; he is punished for vagrancy or for simple idleness; he is still a slave, but a slave who is free to choose his master and residence; he has all liberties except that of not working.

After discussions, amendments, and three years' delay, this bill, though so prudent, has not yet been adopted, despite solemn promises which, after having appeased public sentiment, end by wearying it.

It happens in the Dutch Colonies as it happened in France. The lively agitation by the press, books, and petitions, which was manifested especially from 1840 to 1844, has been followed by silence. Then it is from the colonies themselves that the demand for emancipation has come. Since the French emancipation, preceded by the English emancipation, it is said that Surinam, lying between Demerara and Cayenne, will soon lose all its slaves by insurrection or desertion; and, uneasy about a property thus threatened, the colonists wish at least to assure themselves of the indemnity.

Bills have been heaped upon bills, promises have been added to promises; but it is perceived that the poor negroes remain tranquil; as their faults serve to justify slavery, their virtues serve to retard enfranchisement. The indemnity has been computed, and seems meagre to the slave*Condition of the Colonial Question, by M. Ackersdyck. Utrecht, 1861. T. de Bruyn.

holders, heavy to the financiers. Public treasuries do not readily open to acts of virtue that cost dear. It is true that uncertainty will do the colonists more harm than emancipation would do them; but the point is not to wait for the blacks to revolt or the whites to repent, but for the government to resolve the question. The king who has promised to do so will not delay, let us hope, to add this lustre to the honor of his reign and the glory of Holland. Rich, commercial, free, and Christian, this noble nation sees its wealth and commerce, its liberty and religion, polluted by servitude.

Many of the palaces of the Heerengracht or the Keizersgracht have been paid for by the labor of negroes. France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and the regency of Tunis, have no more slaves; Holland is the only nation of Europe, save Turkey and Spain, which still possesses them. Public opinion is decided, the experiment has been made, the law is prepared, the government is pledged, the colony is resigned, it waits, it postpones, it hesitates.

In his generous work, M. Van Hoëvell* reminds us of the great fête which took place in the new Church at Amsterdam, May 12, 1849, on the occasion of the advent of William III. Around an escutcheon whose allegories recalled the glory and fortune of Holland, shone the beautiful device, JUSTITIA, PIETAS, FIDES, but an unknown hand had been tempted to write beneath the word SURINAM! Upon this Dutch soil, where rigorous slavery endures, the device is false and the escutcheon sullied.

* Slaven en vrijen, Tweede Deel, p. 246; also, Eerste Deel, pp. 1-3.

10*

BOOK SIXTH.

THE SLAVE-TRADE.-IMMIGRATION.-AFRICA.

I.

THE SLAVE-TRADE.

JOHN WESLEY calls slavery the sum of all villanies. Canning defines a negro slave-ship as the greatest collection of crimes in the smallest space. Sir Robert Peel says that this traffic excites more crimes than any public act ever committed by any nation, whatever may have been its contempt for human and divine laws. I think that the history of the traffic in slaves and the abolition of the slave-trade may also be called the summing up of the shame and the greatness of the human race.

I. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the age of Louis XIV. and Voltaire, on the eve of the French Revolution, and also on its morrow, all Europe abandoned itself openly to the negro slave-trade. A few men de

plored, and, be it said to the honor of the Catholic faith, the Church did not cease to protest against it.* But kings signed treaties, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to or

* After Robertson (History of America, Book III.), all writers have repeated, and the learned Memoir of M. Charles Giraud reaffirms (Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des sciences morales, April, 1861, p. 178), that the slave-trade is due to Las Casas, whose inconsistent charity led him, in order to relieve the Indians whom he defended so energetically, to propose to enslave the Africans. But Doehlinger (Hist. Eccl., Tom. III. Sect. 160, p. 397) demonstrates that this imputation is calumnious, as we have already established. Results of Emancipation, Religion in the Colonies, p. 255.