After noticing one insurrection, which happened through their means, he
speaks of another in the following year, in which thirty-three
Coromantines, "most of whom had been newly imported, murdered and
wounded no less than nineteen Whites in the, space of an hour." To the
authority of Mr Long he would add the recorded opinion of a committee of
the House of Assembly of Jamaica, which was appointed to inquire into
the best means of preventing future insurrections. The committee
reported, that "the rebellion had originated, like most others, with the
Coromantines," and they proposed that a bill should he brought in for
laying a higher duty on the importation of these particular Negroes,
which should operate as a prohibition. But the danger was not confined
to the introduction of Coromantines. Mr. Long accounts for the frequent
insurrections in Jamaica from the greatness of its general importations.
"In two years and a-half," says he, "twenty-seven thousand Negroes have
been imported.--No wonder that we have rebellions!" Surely then, when
his honourable friend spoke of the calamities of St. Domingo, and of
similar dangers impending over our own islands, it ill became him to be
the person to cry out for further importations! It ill became him to
charge upon the abolitionists the crime of stirring up insurrections,
who only recommended what the legislature of Jamaica itself had laid
down in a time of danger with an avowed view to prevent them.
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