the bare statement of the above facts, facts, let it be remembered, resting on West Indian testimony, should amount (as it will appear to do to all who have not been accustomed to breathe the moral atmosphere of our Slave colonies) to a charge of “injustice and inhumanity,” of “oppression,” and “unfeeling rigour,” against the West Indian system, then surely the bold and unqualified assertion that such a charge has been “_refuted by irrefragable testimony_,” has no foundation on which to stand. The reporters have incidentally introduced into their Report a comparison between the state of the Negro Slaves and that of “the oppressed peasantry” of Bengal. After giving an exaggerated representation of the wretchedness of the latter, they add, “such is the situation of twenty millions of free subjects of the British empire in India, whilst its legislature is hunting for _imaginary misery_[20] in the West Indian colonies, where the lot of the labourer is a thousand times more fortunate.” P. 18. I would here ask the framers of this Report a few questions, which may serve to throw light on the comparison, which they have instituted. Do they not know that the Bengal peasant is not dragged from his own country by force or fraud, loaded with fetters, chained to the deck, or stifled in the hold of a Slave-ship; bartered as a mere implement of agriculture; separated at the pleasure of another from his wife and children; worked under the lash without the liberty even of pausing in his toil, but at the bidding of the driver; and liable to be punished to any extent, and with any circumstances of cruelty, which the caprice of his master may direct? Do they not know that the Bengal peasant is not punishable by any other sentence than that of the law, after a regular trial and conviction; that his person and property are as fully secured to him as those of the Governor General of India; and that he is the sole judge both of the labour and of the food which suit him? There is only one answer which can be returned to these questions; and that answer will prove it to be no better than absolute mockery in the Assembly of Jamaica thus to compare the condition of the Bengal peasant with that of the Negro Slave.