But if a new Code of Laws be indispensably necessary in our colonies in order to secure a better treatment to the slaves, to whom must we look for it? I answer, that we must not look for it to the West Indian Legislatures. For, in the first place, judging of what they are likely to do from what they have already done, or rather from what they have _not_ done, we can have no reasonable expectation from that quarter. One hundred and fifty years have passed, during which long interval their laws have been nearly stationary, or without any material improvement. In the second place, the individuals composing these Legislatures, having been used to the exercise of unlimited power, would be unwilling to part with that portion of it, which would be necessary to secure the object in view. In the third place, their prejudices against their slaves are too great to allow them to become either impartial or willing actors in the case. The term _slave_ being synonymous according to their estimation and usage with the term _brute_, they have fixed a stigma upon their Negroes, such as we, who live in Europe, could not have conceived, unless we had had irrefragable evidence upon the point. What evils has not this cruel association of terms produced? The West Indian master looks down upon his slave with disdain. He has besides a certain antipathy against him. He hates the sight of his features, and of his colour; nay, he marks with distinctive opprobrium the very blood in his veins, attaching different names and more or less infamy to those who have it in them, according to the quantity which they have of it in consequence of their pedigree, or of their greater or less degree of consanguinity with the whites. Hence the West Indian feels an unwillingness to elevate the condition of the Negro, or to do any thing for him as a human being. I have no doubt, that this prejudice has been one of the great causes why the improvement of our slave population _by law_ has been so long retarded, and that the same prejudice will continue to have a similar operation, so long as it shall continue to exist. Not that there are wanting men of humanity among our West Indian legislators. Their humanity is discernible enough when it is to be applied to the _whites_; but such is the system of slavery, and the degradation attached to this system, that their humanity seems to be lost or gone, when it is to be applied to the _blacks_. Not again that there are wanting men of sense among the same body. They are shrewd and clever enough in the affairs of life, where they maintain an intercourse with the _whites_; but in their intercourse with the _blacks_ their sense appears to be shrivelled and not of its ordinary size. Look at the laws of their own making, as far as the Negroes are concerned, and they are a collection of any thing but--wisdom.