Excerpt from The Anti-Slavery Reporter, Vol. 3: August 1, 1830 And now, after the question ofcolonial slavery has for so many years been familiar to the House, and I fear still more familiar to the country, I would fain hope that I may dispense with the irksome task of dragging you through its details, from their multiplicity so overwhelming, from their miserable nature so afflicting. But I am aware that in the thres hold of the scene, and to scare me from entering upon it, there stands the phantom of colonial independence, resisting parliamentary inter ference, fatiguing the ear with the thrice-told tale of their ignorance who see from afar off, and pointing to the fatal issue of the American war. There needs but one steady glance to brush all such spectres away. That the colonial legislatures have rights - that their privileges are to be respected - that their province is not to be lightly invaded that the parliament of the mother country is not without necessity to trench on their independence - no man more than myself is willing to allow. But when those local assemblies utterly neglect their first duties - when we see them from the circumstances of their situation prevented from acting - struggling in these trammels for an independent existence - exhausted in the effort to stand alone - and to move one step wholly unable; - when at any rate we wait for years, and perceive that they advance not by a hair's breadth, either because they cannot, or be cause they dare not, or because they will not;-then to contend that we should not interfere - that we should fail in our duty because they do not theirs - nay, that we have no right to act, because they have no power or no inclination to obey us, would be not an argument, but an abomination, a gross insult to Parliament, a mockery of our privileges for I trust that we too have some left - a shameful abandonment of our duty, and a portentous novelty in the history of parliament, the planta tions, and the country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.