The word, however, had gone forth all over England, that the _Slave
should be free_. It had not only pervaded Europe, it had reached
America; and the West Indians at length perceived that they could no
longer resist the voice of the British people, when it spoke the accents
of humanity and of justice. The slaves would have met the dawn of the
first of August,--the day which all the motions in Parliament and all
the prayers of the petitions had fixed,--with perfect quiet, but with a
resolute determination to do no work. The peace would not have been
broken, but no more would a clod have been turned after that appointed
sun had risen. A handful of whites surrounded by myriads of
negroes,--now substantially free, and free without a blow,--must have
been overwhelmed in an hour after sunrise on that day, had they
resisted. The Colonial Legislatures, therefore, _now_ listened to the
voice of reason, and they, one after another, emancipated their slaves.
The first of August saw not a bondsman, under whatever appellation, in
any part of the Western Sea which owns the British rule.
The Mauritius, however, still held out, and on the Mauritius the hand of
the Imperial Parliament must and will be laid, to enforce mercy and
justice on those to whom mercy and justice have so long called aloud in
vain.
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