On Wednesday afternoon I found Downing Street thronged with rival deputations of West Indians and Quakers, which had both been with Melbourne. Out of Brougham's flaming speeches on Anti-slavery a tempest has arisen, which threatens the West Indians with sudden and unforeseen ruin in the shape of immediate emancipation.[20] It is always easy to get up anti-slavery petitions and to excite a benevolent indignation against slavery in any shape, and Brougham has laid hold of this easy mode of inflaming the public mind in his usual daring, unscrupulous, reckless style, pouring forth a flood of eloquent falsehoods and misrepresentations which he knows will be much more effective than any plain matter-of- fact statements that can be urged on the other side. The West Indians had no notion they were in any danger, and were reposing under the shade of Government protection and in undoubting reliance upon the inviolability of the great arrangement, when they find themselves overtaken all at once with the new question of immediate emancipation which has sprung up into instantaneous life and strength. Their terror is accordingly great. They went to Melbourne, who said he agreed with them, and that the Government was determined to support them, and so they might tell their people, but that he could not promise them to make it so much a Government question as to resign if they were beat upon it. The leaders of the Opposition equally took their part, but the question is whether the tails will not beat the heads. I never remember before to have seen any question on which so much uncertainty prevailed as to individual votes. More than one half the members of the House doubted, and probably are at this moment doubting, how they shall vote. The petitions are innumerable, and men are disposed to gratify their constituents by voting as they please on this question, not caring a fig either for the slaves or the West Indians, and reconciling it to their consciences to despoil the latter by assuming that they were overpaid with the twenty millions they got by the Emancipation Act. [20] [Sir George Strickland moved, on the 30th of March, a resolution in favour of the termination of negro apprenticeship as established by the Emancipation Act of 1834, on the 1st of August of the current year. The motion was defeated by 269 to 205.] April 2nd, 1838 {p.085} [Page Head: BIRTHDAY REFLEXIONS.]