But to quit this view of the subject, it is the effect, in another direction, of this inadequate protection of the laws, to which I wish to point your particular attention. I wish you to observe the proofs which it affords of the low estimate of the Negro race; as well as the tendency which it must have to keep them in their present abject and depressed condition. But here, instead of quoting passages from the statute books and judicial records of the several islands, which might be objected to, as an unfair test of the opinions and feelings of the present generation, I will extract from a set of papers, laid not long ago before the House of Commons by Government, the account, given from the most respectable authority, of some transactions which have recently taken place, and which shew the degraded state of the Negro race in, excepting Jamaica, the largest and oldest settled of all our West Indian colonies. [Sidenote: Late incidents in Barbadoes.] The Governor of Barbadoes, Lord Seaforth himself, I understand, an old West Indian proprietor, in consonance with the wishes of many respectable inhabitants, endeavoured lately, from the most honourable motives, to procure the repeal of a law which had long been the disgrace of the Barbadoes statute book, and for the rescinding of which an effort had been in vain made a few years before; a law, by which the wilful murder of a Slave was punishable only by a fine of £.15. currency, or about £.11. 4_s_. sterling[33]. His Lordship therefore sent a message in the common form to the House of Assembly, recommending that an act should be passed to make the murder of a Slave a capital felony. There seems every reason to believe that the Council, or Colonial House of Lords, would gladly have assented to the proposition. But, strange as it may appear to those who are unacquainted with the West Indian prejudices, notwithstanding the time and manner in which the proposition was brought forward, the House of Assembly absolutely refused to make the alteration. But if the bare statement of this fact must shock every liberal mind, how much will the shock be increased, when it is known under what circumstances it was that this refusal took place.