CAPTAIN HODGSON's TRUTHS FROM TRH WEST INDIES.

THE author of this volume was for several years stationed with his regiment in some of our \Vest Liam Islands; and he has given the results of his experience to the public, in the shape of sketches of the character and conduct of the White society, espe- cially as regards its treatn-ent of the Iracks. His motive for doing this, is not, he says, to revive past animosities, but to guard the friends of Negro freedom from supposing that because slavery is abolislud :heir task is done. On the contrary, he infers

from the power, language, feelings, and behaviour of the Planters, that, if they to not clo-ely watched, they will establish a system of Letual slavery, ahno- I as bad as that which has been ubolished.

eut hot. opens his vo:ume with a passine sketch of Madeira; mai tbeiete proceeding to the West Indies, uictures the Church, tlie Bench, the Bar, at,d the members of the Colonial beau monde, with their constituent qualities, as well as the Planters and tier Negrecs: interspersieg his general groupes with portraits of some public functionary, and an account of the manner in winch an insurrection was eteleavoured to be stimulated in Trinidad on Apprenticeship emning into operation, by the Planters and their ti 01, Sir G. F. Hue.. the palic d; thither, whom the Tories ap- pointed to the Cub o, and the Whigs promoted. In fulfilling this task, Captain Beeesex displays an amieble but somewhat lackedaisical dispreition lively amid agreeable powers of sketch- ing, thouteh his it ins seem none of the eorrectest, and his style is richer feeble ; while he exhibits a taste for adorning nature by his own inventiime. Ills feeling against the Planters appears very

strong ; dispteing the accuracy of his statements, we suspect flee 'tten addeces friths idual exceptions as if they

were toler,ite, lair samples from which the whole is to be judged, or applies to e no :be. world the conventional opinions of military or fashionable as if they were standards of universal appli- cation. Thie is I art of h:s account of the West Indian " store- keepers."

" A very exe etlytita is held by the tradesmen of the different islands, or, as ebould more gee et iv nein them, the etortheepers ; ffir it would be an affiont a the deepeet ik te designate their sieve by other than the epithet of store. Many of these eete'et possese sugar-estates; haveheavy mortgages on most of the propel tie • ; are elareemmers, and coesequently, in every sense of the word, planters tie we :Is ttadesmen. These are, indeed, men of might ; all the ready money ef !he colonies is in their possession ; and one word from them would imprison leaf *ht. settlements. They and their clerks constitute chiefly the exquieites Weet Indies ; for them sigh the love-sick Creolee, for them !II:U.(211M tile match. making mammas. They are the stewards of every ball, the setters of every fashion, " the observed of all observers." A stranger, unaware of the impel tance of these characters, is not a little surprised on en- teting for the tiret time one of the stores, and purchasing an article at a tithe of the stun oiigimttllv demended, to receive an invitation to dinner, in terms pro. tecting and condeletending, from the not very cleanly nor particularly holiest personege behind the counter. Unhappy man, if he exhibit astonishment or fail to aeknow Wee with gratitude the attention ! A cartel would be the inevi• table result ; fin- these geutry me mighty punctilious in points of honour ; and, notwithetanding their surcharges omit uncembnees of appearance, the shopmen standing behind the counter ale nobles of the land, perhaps bearing the high. souuding rank of the Honourable Charles Sugar-Cane, Member of his alajeray's Council ; or Lieutenant-Gcneral Molasaes, Commandant of the Royal Planta- tion Husears.

" So it is : in the shops uf the West Indies are to be found more Honourables than ever attended a levee at $t. James's; and few garrison town, in England could array so many officers as are occasionally to be seen tippling in the rum- shops of Betbadoes and lidded."

Without inquiring how much of this may be coloured or carica- tured, let us note a deeper truth than our superficial observer sees. Actions not bearing upon the universal laws of morality, are num- bered amongst what theologians call "things indifferent," and derive their value from the opinion entertained of them by any particular society. In England, the greatest social crime is poverty, especially half-covered by bad clothes ; in the West In- dies, the greatest enormity is a black skin : and if it be said that abject poverty argues either misconduct, or vulgarity and sordid Pleas, we apprehend that slaves, or slave-descended persons in the condition of sociel outcasts, are not, as a body, distinguished for much of spirit or refinement. Again, there is no inherent virtue in any particular action—no inherent difference, requiring respect, between lounging through a street, or a barrack-yard, and up and down a stoic; gazing from a club-window, and a shop-door; deal- ing cards and taking up the money, and handing a person a commodity he wants and pecketing the price. The same may even he said of want of cleanliness, if necessarily in- curred : the dirt, for example, of a squire mired from shooting or the chase, or of an Aker grimed by gunpowder or dust, is not in- herently superior to that of a man whose business leads him to handle.molusses or sugar. But in England, a sense of ridicule, springing from social usage, is attached to men who display any approach to aristocratic manners when " in their business," especially if it be of a sordid kind, or involve retail dealing. Where the circumstances of society are such that the gentry of the land stand behind a counter, there is nothing very extraordinary in their giving themselves those kind of patronizing airs, which many of the genus elsewhere display. We are not setting up the West Indians as models of behaviour. Men engaged in a pursuit of any kind, whether a trade, a profession, or a science, must want that unconscious and easy finish of manner which is acquired by those who are bred to nothing else. We can also readily believe, that the coarseness of thinking and feeling, inseparable from a slave popula- tion, should react upon manners: we can easily suppose too, that the narrowness of colonial ideas, springing from a paucity of objects, should show itself in a silly love of empty titles and fine uniforms. All we say is, that Captain HormsoN neglects the essential, to fasten upon the formal-- like the eciolist who held AUGUSTUS lightly for not wearing a shirt.

The correctness of the following descriptions we cannot answer for, but they exhibit more discrimination; for the author notes, that apart from slavery the natural character is untouched.

0 I have listened with horror and astonishment to the rancorous sentiments is-ling from female lips whenever in society the discourse happened to turn neon the Negroes. Ladies, who in England would have almost .ffiieted at the bare ides of treading even 'pen a spider, will, after a very few months' Tete'. 'knee in the colonies, converse in an unconcerned tone on the number of

lashes which had been inflicted during the morning on their own or their hus-

bands' ,,laves. I piirtieulady remember entering rather suddenly a room with- out beine announced, and there I beheld a Negl'eS3 on her knees before her

young ndetress, beseeching, with agonizing elequenee, that the flogging to

which she had been ordered might be remitted. I heard her remind the lois- tries, tied the saute breast had given them suck, that their infancy had been p esed together, that they had married at the eame time, at the same time be- muthers, and thatIrom her milk the children of both had received sus- teetture. The nitoy was a call, stern refusal of pardon. I even yet feel the chill which crept through my balm, when tie poor woman, perceiving my presence, dashed herself at my feet and, convuleingly clasping me, implored my inediation. I was successful : but, to rise to the highest honours of my pi ofessien, I would not supplicate a mortal as I supplicated on this occasion. " I have seen young and lovely women turn hum chanting the most sentimental soleis, to issue directions for the immediate whipping of a slave who bad mis- laid a piece of music ; and then revert to their warbling, unmoved by the cries of the victim undergoing the punishment in the yard. " I have likewise seen Negro servants appear with their shoulders all scarred and festered finin the recent !eel], and been iiepingly told by the respective mis-

tresses (mild and gentle beings, too, strange ae it may seem, where the odious " Blacks" were not concerned,) that these records of English female humanity had been imprinted on the " worthless" creatures for being absent when they were required to fan away mosquitoes. " I have known of ladies, and those, too, of rank and reputation in the society of the !dace, who were in the habit of often with their own hands inflicting eel pond punishment on their slaves ; and in one instance, in the island of Trinidad, the fair executioner performed the op, ration with such deterniined vigour and severits, as to render it incumbent on Government to bring the cir- cumstance before the judicial authorities."

The legal profession is thus described-

" Almost every island is graced with its First Judge and its Second Judge, its Attorney-Gene:al and its Solicitor-General, with barristers and attornies to repletion. Government have extreme difficulty in inducing gentlemen of any talent or reputation at the English bar to accept even the highest professional appointments in the Il'est Indies; as, independently of the noxious eliniate, and still more noxious society to which they would be exposed, the different salaries have been reduced to so miserable a pittance, that tie holders, so far from being enabled to lay up a trifle for the winter of life, would find it barely possible to exist with common respectability. Thus the individuals filling important legal offiees, are too often personally connected with the colonies, by possessing there- in sugar-plautations; which consideration alone has led them to take the situa- tions; or they are of so ruined a fortune, perhaps reputation, as to render an ab,ence from their country desirable. In either case, it may be doubted whether they are exactly the characters to mete out justice, " without pertiality, favour, or affection." But the evil stops not here. In their train follow a band of satellites, whom it would indeed be impossible to paint to the life. They re- semble that class of persons quaintly designated in England beegeettornies; and as their briefs come wholly from time planters, who have likewise the power of distributing, what is even more esteemed, martial rank, they ate prepared to find good law for every act of villany and oppression. Against these odds, what can avail the voice of the poor Negro, crying for redress? " From these people good breeding or refinement cannot be looked for ; rude and boisterous contradictions must be expected and pardoned : but notwith- standing my being thug prepared, I confess I could not witness without amaze- ment the extraordinary scenes occasionally exhibited in their courts of justice scenesto which, in comparison, those at our OW13 3liddlesex Sessions, or even those at the Recorder's Court at Cork, shine replentlent with dignity. The lie is frequently given from the Bench to the Bar, and of course retorted from the Bar to the Bench: the Secretary for the Colonies has frequent appeals from the mutual tecriminatore, and the Governor-General of the Islands is oc- sionally called upon to suspend a Judge. " All, therefore, is anarchy, violence, and vulgarity, in the higher courts, and increased anarchy, violence, and vulgarity, in the minor. Sometimes one magistrate orders the constables to conduct a brother magistrate to the gaol; while he that is thus sentenced seizes the constable by the throat, and defies his enemy to fulfil the threat. All this in the presence of numerous gangs of slaves, whom the party to which these well-conducted gentlemen belting represent as inaccessible to reason, and to whom subordination or obedience to the laws cannot be taught."

Of the state of morals in the West Indies, Captain Iloncsom draws a deplorable picture. As the abolition of slavery, let it be defeated how it may, will at least put an end to the most revolting parts of this subject, it seemed scarcely needful to recur to it. A far more important point is, the future conduct of the Planters, and the future condition of the Islands.

According to Captain HODGiON, the grand aim of the Plant- ers will be to establish a sort of serfdurn, oz local praelial sla- very, by means of police and vagrant laws. It requires no parti- cular knowledge to see, that a party doinivant in every sense— in the Legislature, in the Executive, in wealth, in society, and in educatiou—could by stringent enactmeats, vigorously executed, effect this purpose. A law forbidding locations upon waste land, and restraining every man from lealtang his awn district withoLt

the permission of the authorites, (that is, of the Planters,) if its violation was enforced by severe enactments and unflinchingly carried into effect, would place the majority of the Blacks at the disposal of the Whites. Couple this with the poverty

and ignorance of the Negroes—the practice of agreements of the nature of apprenticeship indentures for plantation labour—

together with the power of Magisterial (that is, Planter) punish- ment for their violation ; and it is very easy to conceive a state of bondage, not exactly like Tropical slavery or European serfdom, but, as far as the free agency of the slave is concerned, quite as bad as either. Of the disposition of the Planters to care for themselves no one entertains a doubt. They proved it during their long contests with the Abolitionists ; they proved it by the manner in which they tried to nullify the Apprenticeship ; their adroit bamboozle-

ment of Lord GLENELO in procuring permission to import " Hill Coolies" is further evidence ; and Captain HonGsos furnishes a

still stronger case in point, which also shows how even European subjects, by blood if not by birth, may be kidnapped and held for some time in a state of bondage. When the Abolition Act was finally passed and about to be carried into effect, the Planters imported numbers of Portuguese peasantry. They were en- gaged at Madeira and Fayal, under false and exaggerated re- pesentations, to indenture themselves as apprentices for seven years to labour in the Wcst Indian Islands. They were trans- ported in vessels secretly despatched, and fitted up for the purpose, and which landed their cargoes before reporting themselves at the Customhouse. Ignorant of the language, customs, and laws of the Colonies, they were perfectly helpless ; and were on their arrival immediately sold to the highest bidders ; carried off to different plantations ; set to work with the Negroes ; flogged worse than they—it would appear, because, not being slave apprentices, they had none of the advantages the law provided for the Blacks ; over-worked, and imprisoned when they tried to escape. What the mortality might hove been in other colonies, our author is unable to tell ; in Trinidad two-thirds perished within two years. Truly the Hill Coolies have had a lucky escape from the tender mercies of the Colonial Secretary. Of the future prospects of these Colonies it is very difficult to speak. If the Planters are left to themselves, or nominally re-

strained by some juste milieu system, they will probably succeed

in establishing a form of servitude, better no doubt than the old slavery, but not to the extent of twenty millions sterling. If the Planters be tightly reined in, and freedom of locomotion with a facility of location be granted to the Negroes, cultivation will lan- guish, or be partially discontinued. Looked at in any way, the

Abolition Act appears a failure. When noticing the Life of Via- garoitcz, we intimated doubts as to whether his efforts had really benefited the African race, speaking of the Negroes out of

as well as in our Colonies. As matters may eventually turn out, it seems questionable whether much real benefit will have accrued even to the slaves in British possessions, from the measures which he and his followers forced upon the Executive ; for they have been striving against the nature of things. Leaving prudence, experience, and historical deductions behind them, they have en-

deavoured to do in the Colonies, per :cilium, what with the advan- tages of language, colour, race, and religion, took many centuries

to accomplish in Europe—to fit the slave for civilized freedom. Admitting fully the innate difficulties of the subject, and the difficulties of dealing with the tempers both of Planters and Abolitionists, we suspect that a law of annexation to the land, (or at least a law forbidding the separation of husband, wife, and child- ren,) authorizing manumission at a maximum price, together with general regulations for the wellbeing of the slaves, would have

been more certain and successful in its operation than Lord STAN- LEY'S measure. At present, there is nothing certain but the loss of twenty millions.