Though this consideration influenced the conduct of many West India members, still it is very erroneous to assert, that no explicit opposition was made to compulsory manumission at the very outset. It is asserted that it passed without animadversion, “_except in a speech_ of the present Lord Seaford (Mr. C. R. Ellis), made on the day on which Mr. Canning uttered his celebrated commentary on its enactments.” One would think that dissent could not well be more clearly avowed than from the lips of the Chairman of the West India body. In point of fact, sufficient opposition, consistently with the respect which was shown to government, was evinced, to prove that the measure of compulsory manumission was from first to last peculiarly condemned by the colonial interests. When Mr. Canning first made known the intentions of government on this point, Lord Seaford explicitly denied being a party to them. When Mr. Brougham brought forward his last motion on the same subject, Lord Seaford again gave his reasons for resisting the measure. To those reasons, not a syllable in refutation was offered by Mr. Canning. Besides these declarations of the chairman, every West India petition presented either to the king, to parliament, or to the Colonial office, explicitly set forth similar sentiments. The agents for the colonies, the merchants and mortgagees, early felt alarm; and in a petition from these last, presented on the 26th April, 1826, to the Lords by Lord Redesdale, and to the Commons by Mr. Baring, it was stated, “That until it shall be proved, that free negroes will work for hire, the process of compulsory emancipation cannot even be experimentally commenced, upon a West India estate, with justice to the various parties holding legal claims upon the property.” Surely nothing could be more explicit than this, to convey the opinion of the parties most deeply interested in the question. But the hardy assertion of the writer we have quoted, calls for still further explanation. This writer must know, that in every interview or communication with the Colonial office, those of the West India body, to whose opinions most weight was likely to be attached, were loud and strenuous in their entreaties for forbearance. They stated, that the government had not given sufficient examination to the case; that they were ignorant of many important local circumstances that those ought all first to be carefully and fully investigated before a measure of vital importance was enforced; and that, in short, the government were already getting into difficulties, and if they proceeded further they would get more deeply involved, and might find it unpleasant, if not impossible, to extricate themselves.