The following letter, written by Daniel O'Connell, the Irish political agitator, to Joseph Sturge, the renowned Quaker philanthropist, and made public through the pages of The British Emancipator, 81 holds for the student of frontier history and the specialist in colonization a considerable significance; for it not only reflects some of the interest felt by the British people in the Texas of eighty-five years ago and the concern that the negro everywhere, free or unfree, was to British humanitarians, but it likewise indicates how, had things turned out just a little differently, there might have been more remarkable analogies than there actually are, historically, between the westward movement in United States history and modern British colonization in Australasia.
It was when the humanitarian movement, of national consciousness manifestations the most unique, was at its height in the United Kingdom and when philanthropic organizations with common membership and, not infrequently, interlocking directorates were multiplying at an almost furious rate, that Edward Gibbon Wakefield's great scheme of systematic colonization was projected. The scheme itself was hardly what one would call philanthropic, although it had suggestively philanthropic features; but philanthropists seized upon it, hoping to find in it a means to their own great end, the welfare of the feeble races of mankind. And it must have been in circumstances like these that Daniel O'Connell, who had identified himself with several of the humane organizations and, in particular, with the Aborigines Protection Society and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, resorted to the Wakefield plan and the Mexican opening as a way out of the difficulty, realized to be very serious, in disposing of free persons of color.
[O'Connell] to Joseph Sturge, Esq.
My respected friend,
—I know you too well to think it necessary to ask your permission to address you thus publicly on a subject of the deepest interest to the cause of humanity. To come to the matter at once, I here insert a notice of two motions which I intend to bring before the House of Commons at the earliest period of the ensuing session:—
"1. That it is the opinion of this House, that her Majesty's ministers ought not to advise her Majesty to recognize the independence, as a state, of the persons located on part of the territories of the republic of Mexico, with which republic we are in alliance, and who have called themselves the State of Texas, unless with the assent of the said republic of Mexico; and also, unless such alleged State of Texas shall make the abolition of negro slavery a fundamental law, and also consent that the slave-trade shall be deemed and treated as piracy.
"2. That an address be presented to her Majesty, humbly praying that she may be pleased to give directions to her ministers to endeavour to make such an arrangement with the Government of Mexico, as would place at their disposal such a portion of the unoccupied territory of that republic, on or near its northern boundary, as should be sufficient for the purpose of establishing an asylum or free state of persons of colour, her Majesty's subjects, who may be desirous to emigrate to and establish such free state."
In order to succeed, it will be necessary that I should obtain as much of the support of the opponents of negro slavery as possible. The public attention must be roused upon these subjects; for it is clear that we shall have thrown away, in pure waste, much labour, great exertions, and twenty millions of the public money, unless adequate measures are taken by this country to prevent the formation of new slave states, and at the same time, to prevent the incalculable quantity of human misery, and the terrific slaughter of human beings, which must ensue from our permitting any other slave state to raise its head from the earth. Look to Texas. The gang of land pirates who have settled themselves on the Mexican territory actually make negro slavery the basis of their association, and propose to take away from their intended legislature the power of abolishing domestic slavery. This is in itself sufficiently horrible; but it is infinitely more atrocious in its necessary consequences. For if we permit the Texians to succeed in their odious scheme, there is room for forming, and in the United States there is abundant disposition to form, three or four more slave states in the unoccupied lands between the peopled part of Mexico and the line of territory which the United States claim for themselves.
Reflect, my esteemed friend,—do reflect, in the presence of the God of humanity—upon the horrors, the crimes, the atrocities, which must be perpetrated by the creation of these new slaveholding states. Reflect on the quantity of sin and guilt of every kind that must be perpetrated, upon one hand by the slave-breeders of Virginia and the other slave-breeding states of the North American Union, and upon the other hand, only think of the indescribable scenes of cruelty that must be perpetrated in Africa, and in the carrying home of new slaves for the purposes of the Texians, and the other white monsters of those intended new states.
Of what avail is the generous and noble humanity of the British people? It is in vain, and worse than in vain, that so many years of toil, of literary exertion, of dauntless opposition to interested tyranny, and of persevering maintenance of the cause of humanity—it is, I say, in vain, and worse than in vain, that all these efforts have been made to rescue human nature from the blood-guiltiness of negro slavery. All these exertions, and our twenty millions, are thrown away to the idle winds! Fowell Buxton, the first and greatest of living opponents to slavery, has demonstrated that the slave trade has augmented enormously in amount, and still more frightfully in the cruelty and slaughter it produces; and that this augmentation has taken place in consequence of the emancipation of the slaves of the British colonies. This is the result of all pains and all our money! We gave twenty millions as the purchase money of humanity; and the result is— a greater accumulation of still more atrocious cruelty.
My esteemed friend, if we stop where we are, Great Britain will be the laughing-stock of the world. Twenty millions to purchase liberty and humanity is a cheap bargain; but, twenty millions of sterling money to purchase cruelty, barbarity, and human blood, is the worst speculation that ever was made since the sun first shone upon the earth!
Be up, then, and stirring. Call together the friends of humanity. Assemble the apostles of benevolence. Let the English people doom to impeachment any minister that shall dare to recognize Texas or any other slave-holding state.
Such a ministry would actually be participators in all the guilt of the perpetrators of the increased slave trade, both internal and foreign.
But let us not confine our efforts to mere threatenings, or to the expression of sentiments, however decided or animated. Let us counteract the machinations of the enemies of humanity.
My plan is this—to follow the example set by the Australian and New Zealand Societies; get together a number of the friends of humanity, who will come forward and subscribe a sufficient capital to form, upon the New Zealand plan, a society sufficiently extensive to constitute a new colony, or state, either subject directly to the British crown, or, at all events, under the protection of the British flag; so as to obtain a rallying point for all free persons of colour, who may choose to give their labour for such wages as may enable them to become purchasers of the soil.
For the present I need not enter into details; the plan of the South Australian and New Zealand Societies will enable you, and the other friends of humanity, to work out my system into practical effect. With this view, a communication should be had, as speedily as possible, with the Mexican Government. It is so entirely the interest of the Mexicans to form a colony of free persons of colour between them and the North Americans, that I should presume they will very readily enter into our plan. This colony should be, as much as possible, interposed between the Texians and the sea. It would be a place of refuge for the free men of colour of the United States, who are naturally enough disgusted with the paltry injustice of being called "free," while they are deprived of all the practical rights of freemen. In short, I think it will strike your mind, as it does mine, that thousands upon thousands of advantages would be derived from the existence of such a colony as I contemplate. But no time should be lost in laying the foundation of a society to form that colony. If requisite, an intelligent agent should be sent at once to Mexico. I have formed a very high opinion of Santa Anna, and I think he would at once see the great advantages to the Mexican republic of having an establishment of free men of colour intervening, as it were, between Mexico and the United States. At all events, even should Santa Anna not be in power, it is impossible that any government in Mexico should be blind to the multitudinous advantages which a wise colonization of free men of colour would necessarily confer upon the Mexican States.
Allow me, then, my excellent friend, to conjure you to reflect deeply upon the suggestions that I thus make. Should you see the subject in the same point of view that I do, I know you will at once begin to act. You have already been a benefactor to the human race; and if you succeed in preventing new slavery states— and, above all, if you succeed in establishing, in a genial climate, a colony or state where free men of colour will be on a perfect equality with the white people—you will have formed a basis on which can be constructed the entire emancipation, all over the world, of the hitherto neglected and oppressed black population.
I have the honour to be very faithfully, your sincere friend, DANIEL O'CONNELL. 16, Pall Mall, Aug. 26, 1839.
How to cite:
Abel, Annie Heloise, PhD, "MEXICO AS A FIELD FOR SYSTEMATIC BRITISH COLONIZATION, 1839 ", Volume 030, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 63 - 67. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v030/n1/article_8.html
[Accessed Thu Dec 4 12:35:40 CST 2008]
