These men were naturally persecuted by the planters; and
in 1824 the death in prison of the missionary John Smith,
' the Demerara martyr,' thoroughly roused the Noncon-
formist conscience at home. The more resolute supporters
of the movement began to see that the slave-holding
interest was determined to resist all efforts to restrict their
powers or to educate the slave for freedom; and the sin of
tolerating any continuance of the evil was more and more
realised. Unfortunately, however, Buxton and the leading
Abolitionists, who in 1827 formed the Anti-slavery Society
on the ruins of the effete 'African Institution,' were too
cautious to raise the standard of total and immediate
emancipation. 1 The necessity of this was indeed increas-
ingly recognised by many of the rank and file; but such
was the fear of giving colour to the charge that the Aboli-
tionists, by making definite promises to the slaves, were
inciting them to rise in armed revolt against their masters,
that few of the leaders had the courage to go beyond
gradual emancipation. One of these few was, however,
Joseph Sturge.
Bristol was one of the chief centres from which the
eighteenth-century slave-traders conducted their inhuman
1 The first public advocacy of this plan was due, as Joseph Sturge
was fond of recalling, to a pamphlet published in 1824 by Elizabeth
Heyrick, a Leicester Friend; just as it was another Quakeress, Anne
Knight of Chelmsford, who issued in 1847 one of the very first
pleas for Woman Suffrage.
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 35
operations. The boy Joseph must have been told of this.
He may have seen the fetters used for the negro victims;
he must have noticed the fields of neighbouring farms sown
with horse-beans, to be sold to the Bristol dealers as food
for the stolen slaves during their Atlantic voyage. He was
old enough to rejoice over the abolition by law of the
horrible traffic, and thereafter he must have entered
warmly into the many expressions of protest against
slavery itself which were heard in the gatherings of the
Quaker body. It was shortly after his arrival in Birming-
ham, in 1823 (the year when Wilberforce presented to
Parliament a petition from the Quakers against the
iniquity), that he first began to work for the greatest
interest of his life. About this time, as we have seen, he
came under the influence of James Cropper, and for some
years his chief work lay in assisting this travelling mission-
ary of the cause, organising meetings in various towns,
chiefly in the Midlands. In 1826 he became secretary of
the newly-formed Birmingham Anti-slavery Society.
Sturge's mind was not one of the subtle and diplomatic
sort, that foresees difficulties and tries to overcome them
by wire-pulling and by concessions. His strength lay
rather in his simple, direct outlook, and in the intense
moral conviction, resting on his Christian faith, that drove
him on in unwearied efforts. Those who disagreed with
him often thought him obstinate, extreme, and unpractical,
but more than once the issue proved him right; and, in
any case, his moral and intellectual constitution demanded
a single, clear-cut issue, shorn of compromise or bargaining.
It was inevitable therefore that he should attach himself
to the ' total and immediate ' wing of the Abolitionists.
His first task was to convert his own Society to this atti-
tude. Some notes of a long address given at their Yearly
Meeting of 1830 well reveal his point of view. He shows the
merciless determination of the planters to prevent the
efforts to prepare the slave gradually for freedom ; yet he
puts in a word for the planters, demoralised by their posi-
tion, for, ' viewing them with the eye of a Christian and as
36 JOSEPH STURGE
accountable beings, they are far more to be pitied than the
victims of their oppression.' He urges the prudence and
justice of immediate emancipation, backing it up with the
following consideration upon which he himself acted with
a rare degree of consistency.
' When the Christian is convinced that the principle upon
which he acts is correct, I believe it does not become him to
examine too closely his probability of success, but rather to
act in the assurance that, if he faithfully does his part, as much
success will attend his efforts as is consistent with the will of
that Divine Leader under whose Jmnner he is enlisted.'
Meanwhile the division of opinion in the ranks of the
Anti-slavery Society was coming to a head. In 1831 a
number of the more vigorous spirits, ' Young England
Abolitionists ' as they were called including Sturge,
Cropper, and George Stephen, broke away and formed
' The Agency Committee ' to advocate immediate eman-
cipation by novel methods of popular agitation. 1 The
result was the first instance in England of a crusade of
political education; and it proved extraordinarily effective.
In the face of a hostile parliament and press, meetings of
all sorts were organised, the country was flooded with
literature, paid lecturers were engaged, the services of
women were utilised. Throughout the Midland counties
Sturge was indefatigable in prosecuting the campaign.
Birmingham, largely through his efforts, became, after
London, the chief centre of the movement. We find him
supporting Anti-slavery candidates at elections held in
Bridgnorth, Gloucester, and Bristol. These were the years
when the great struggle that ended in the first Reform Act
was being fought out. To a large extent Reform and Anti-
1 The most readable and accessible authority for the movement
is Sir George Stephen's Anti-Slavery Recollections published in 1854.
It is remarkable that this book contains very few references to
Joseph Sturge. This omission is probably to be explained by the
existence of both public and personal differences of opinion between
the two men. Thus we know that Stephen would have nothing to do
with the later agitation against the apprenticeship; and the book
was published during the Crimean War, when Sturge was in great
odium owing to his pacifist activities.
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 37
slavery were advocated together; for the cause of Abolition
was felt to be hopeless in the Parliament of rotten boroughs.
When the election was held for the first reformed Parlia-
ment, the Abolitionist propaganda was redoubled. Candi-
dates throughout the country were asked whether ' they
will strenuously promote and vote for the immediate and
total abolition of British Colonial Slavery.'
The result of all this was that in 1832 there was at last
a House of Commons with a large Anti-slavery majority.
But in this, as in other respects, the new Parliament was
disappointing, and the Government showed signs of being
willing to shelve the question ; so that at the beginning of
1833 a new agitation was necessary. In this Sturge took a
leading part, visiting Irelandand Scotland to stir up opinion.
In April three hundred and forty delegates from all parts
of the country met at Exeter Hall, and presented a kind of
ultimatum to the Government. The Government became
convinced of the strength of the feeling among the
middle-class voters who supported them, and soon pro-
duced an Emancipation Bill. The measure was a com-
promise, for, though it proclaimed freedom for the negro
from August of the following year, it provided for a gift of
20,000,000 as compensation to the planters, and seriously
detracted from the value of emancipation by fixing a
period of six years from its proclamation, during which the
negro was to remain in a condition of apprenticeship that
left him very much at the mercy of the planters. These
proposals produced another unhappy division in the ranks
of the Abolitionists. Buxton and others thought it wiser
to accept what the Government offered, rather than risk
the loss of the bill. The more vigorous party, of whom by
this time Sturge seems to have been the acknowledged
head, were indignant. They considered that compensation
was due not to the master, but to the slave, as the in-
jured party; and they rightly foresaw the evils of the
apprenticeship. It was painful for Sturge at this time to
have to differ so strongly from many of his friends; yet he
did not waver. The faithful Sophia as usual backed him
38 JOSEPH STURGE
up. We find a letter in which she prays him ' not, for the
appearance of evil, to desert his high vantage ground of
uncompromising justice,' and tenderly urges him to secure
' opportunities of retirement ' for prayer, so that he may
' walk unharmed and untouched through this season of
excitement.'
The Emancipation Act was, however, passed in the form
we have indicated, and most of the Abolitionists, though
regretting the concessions, accepted them and retired from
the fray. Not so Joseph Sturge. The two years following
the passing of the 1833 Act covered the period of his court-
ship, marriage, and sudden bereavement. But within four
months of this tragic event we find him in London again
hard at work for the cause, which now largely revolved
round his leadership. In the West Indies the day fixed for
the emancipation in August, 1834, passed off with nothing
worse than dancing and prayer meetings on the part of the
negro, but, owing to the illusory provisions of the Act, his
condition was little improved. Only children under six
were free, the remainder were ' apprentices ' for at least
six years. The legal position of such an apprentice in
Jamaica was summed up as follows by a good authority:
' He is nominally subject only to gratuitous labour for his
master for forty-five hours in the week, and to certain dis-
abilities for public offices. . . . But in fact, he remains an
emancipated prisoner on the plantation to which he is attached ;
substantially liable to the same punishments and labouring
under the same incapacities as heretofore. He cannot quit the
estate, even during his own hours, without fear of punishment.
He cannot complain to the magistrate or remonstrate with
the master without risk of flogging for " insolence " or " un-
justifiable " absence. The whip follows him at every step,
imprisonment and hard labour wait him at every turn. His
home is converted into a prison, and the plantation into a
prison yard; and, as if to prevent the possibility of his for-
getting the custody in which his apprenticeship places him,
penal gangs patrol the estate, and bilboes l are constructed in
every village. Notwithstanding the reiterated provisions of
1 A kind of stocks.
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 39
the Colonial Acts, affecting to guarantee to him the undis-
turbed enjoyment of the time emphatically called his own,
the machinery of those Acts is so contrived that he may, if
he has once absented himself without permission, be legally
worked for forty-two hours, in uninterrupted succession, and
then dismissed with a flogging, if he ventures to complain.'
The law was bad enough, but the situation was greatly
aggravated by the partiality of the magistrate and by the
careless brutality of many of the planters, who wished to
retain their power over the negro, and moreover, now that
they were losing him as ' property,' were ready to break
down his health and strength by excessive tasks and
punishments. There was besides a grave risk, suggested by
certain provisions in the Act itself, that the period of
apprenticeship would be employed by the colonists in
forging a more permanent system of coercion, which would
retain the rising generation of negroes in a servile condi-
tion. This was threatened by the revival of obsolete laws,
intended to fix degradation on free men of colour, and by
such new devices as vagrancy laws, wages acts, laws to
compel the apprenticeship of children, or to confine the
negro to particular localities.
The knowledge of all this convinced Sturge and his
friends that they must rally their forces to press for the
immediate and complete abolition of the apprenticeship.
The planters had received their twenty millions paid by
the nation for the redemption of the slave, but they had
not released their hold upon him. This was felt by thou-
sands of Englishmen as ' a practical and deliberate fraud ' ;
and the indignation at having been defrauded was added
to that burning sense of the national sin of slavery, which
had been the motive power of the movement among the
religious public. Their allies in Parliament, including
Fowell Buxton himself, were unfortunately persuaded to
leave it to the Government to improve the situation. But
in the country during 1835 and 1836 the agitation was
renewed. The difficulty, at this time, was to secure from
the West Indies sufficient first-hand evidence to persuade
40 JOSEPH STURGE
the thinking public that emancipation had been a fraud
and that widespread cruelty was still practised upon the
negroes. So dangerous was it for the missionaries and
others to brave the anger of the planters by exposing their
methods, that there was little available testimony that
could be used, except under the shelter of anonymity. To
supply this need, it was felt that some one must go from
England to bring home a trustworthy report. It was no
enviable excursion, thus to provoke the animosity of the
slave-holders. An English officer had written some time
before from the Indies, saying that if Buxton or his friends
' arrived in any island and ventured to move out unsur-
rounded by a guard of those grateful beings who, night
and day, implore blessings upon them, they would inevit-
ably be torn to pieces by the Europeans.' Undeterred,
however, by this inviting prospect and by the discomforts
of a voyage before the days of ocean steamers, Joseph Sturge
decided to go himself. He made his arrangements, selected
as his companion his friend Thomas Harvey, a contempo-
rary and schoolfellow of John Bright 's, and, with two other
enterprising Quakers, set sail on board the Skylark mail
packet for Barbadoes in November, 1836.
Sturge and Harvey began by investigating the condition
of Antigua, which had been almost the only colony to
reject the apprenticeship and to grant complete emanci-
pation in 1834, to the manifest improvement of its in-
dustry. From there they returned, by way of Montserrat,
the French slave island of Martinique, and other small
islands, to Barbadoes. It was in the last-named colony
and during three months of strenuous labour in Jamaica
that the most conclusive evidence was obtained. In April
Sturge embarked for home, sailing by way of New York.
The results of this tour were soon afterwards published
in a volume called The West Indies in 1837, which was
edited, and to a large extent written, by Thomas Harvey.
The book is a faithful record, that attracted much atten-
tion at the time, of what the travellers saw and heard. It
is unnecessary here to summarise it in any detail. It
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 41
suffices to say that the fears and suspicions in regard to the
cruelty of the apprenticeship were fully confirmed. On
many estates the overseers of the slavery days continued
their brutal oppression of the negro. The provisions of
the Act as regards lodging and treatment were not ob-
served. Tens of thousands of apprentices were punished
with the lash, the treadmill, or the chain gang. Women
and old men were put on the treadmill for offences such
as ' linen badly washed, and impertinence.' Magistrates
conspired with the planters to coerce the negro, and one
of the few exceptions was dismissed from the bench because
he had, according to the official report, ' administered the
abolition law in the spirit of the English Abolition Act ' !
All this, and a great deal of other evidence of cruel injustice
was contained in the book. Only one colonist made a
serious attempt to deny the allegations ; and it is remark-
able that he gave his negroes their freedom shortly after
the two friends published a reply to his protestations.
The West Indies volume is a disappointing one to the
biographer, for, with a characteristic suppression of self,
its authors included in it scarcely any record of their own
thoughts or feelings. This omission made it, however, more
valuable at the time, as evidence that was presumably trust-
worthy. The facts that were indispensable to open the eyes
of the public had been obtained, while the emotional touch
was secured by the presence and narrative of a negro, James
Williams, whom Sturge had brought home with him, after
redeeming him from dreadful misery. The voyage bore its
desired fruit; within fifteen months of its conclusion the
apprentices were free. These breathless months formed
the most glorious epoch of Sturge's life, when he became
something of a hero in the eyes of thousands. And his
qualifications for conducting the agitation were undoubted.
True, he was far from being a brilliant orator, but he was
a sound and ready speaker, who won confidence by his
guileless sincerity and earnestness of manner. He had a
deeply rooted trust in the popular instinct, assuming that
it was sufficiently well informed ; and his robust constitution
42 JOSEPH STURGE
took away the nervous fear of popular methods of
propaganda, which obsesses so many equally religious
minds.
It was found necessary to form a new organisation for
the purpose in hand, and the ' Central Negro Emancipa-
tion Committee ' sent out its agents and appeals through-
out the country. Scarcely any of the old Abolitionist
leaders, with the exception of Sturge and of George Thomp-
son, the ablest of the ' Agency Committee ' lecturers, could
be persuaded to move. But the zeal of the younger men
made up for their inexperience. Starting from Birmingham,
the Dissenters and their allies were roused by meetings
in all parts of the kingdom. The Times might scorn-
fully speak of them as ' the dupes of certain commission-
travellers in the grievance line, your Sturges and your
Thompsons/ but even an apathetic Parliament was moved
by the black-coated delegates to Exeter Hall. Sturge was
examined for seven days by a House of Commons Com-
mittee, of whom the young Gladstone was one; for the
future champion of liberty began his career as the son of a
wealthy slave-holder, and made his first great parliamentary
speech by an oration against the abolition of the appren-
ticeship. The brilliant but erratic Lord Brougham decided
to support the Abolitionists and moved a resolution in the
House of Lords that the apprenticeship should cease on
August i, 1838, instead of on the corresponding date in
1840, as contemplated by the statute of 1833. The House
of Commons was stirred by the eloquence of the great Irish
politician, Daniel O'Connell, a consistent friend of the
negro; and, in spite of the determined opposition of the
Government, 215 members in a House of 484 supported a
similar motion to that moved in the Upper House. This
moral victory was won in March, 1838. Its fame was eclipsed
by the carrying of a later abolition motion in May by a
majority of three in a thin House; but the earlier vote
proved decisive in securing the triumph of the object in
view. For the Government, though obstinately refusing
to shorten the apprenticeship by statute, were moved by
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 43
the evidence of popular feeling to proceed with a bill for
the further protection of the apprentices, which, among
other provisions, took away the right of the colonists to
flog them. Outside Parliament, the clamour was rising to
a pitch which the West India interest did not think it
prudent to defy any longer. In private despatches even
the Government recommended the colonial legislatures to
give way and release the apprentices. And so it fell out
that, within a few weeks, Acts were passed in the various
islands giving complete liberty to the slaves on the very
day fixed by the Abolitionists. Jamaica was the last to
give way, and she did so admittedly on the ground that
apprentices were not worth having, if the means to compel
them to work, namely the lash, were to be taken out of
the masters' hands by the new Government bill.
So at last the victory was won; and 800,000 human
beings were freed from degrading slavery. And Joseph
Sturge's heart was filled with humble thankfulness for
having been an instrument in bringing about this great
reform. If this one act of helping to shorten the apprentice-
ship by two years had been the solitary achievement of
his life, he would not have lived in vain. Among the many
congratulations which he received during the days im-
mediately preceding the date of emancipation, two are
selected as showing how more famous men than he
regarded his share in the triumph.
From his standpoint as an Irish Catholic the great
O'Connell wrote to him as follows:
' What ineffable delight it must afford you, my esteemed
friend, to reflect that your exertions have created a flame
before which the chains of two years' slavery of half a million,
at the lowest calculation, of your fellow-men have melted
away ! But for your exertions the two years more of appren-
ticeship would certainly be inflicted; and every hour of
these two years would become more and more aggravated in
cruelty. If youjiad remained at home, it is perfectly clear
clear beyond any doubt that these two years would have
continued without remission. This is, indeed, a proud thought
for you, and, in spite of any shrinking from praise, all good
44 JOSEPH STURGE
men on earth will thank you; and may our gracious God
reward you with eternal happiness, is my fervent prayer.'
Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, who had already generously
admitted that his view on the apprenticeship question
had been mistaken, sent Sturge the following expression
of thanks :
' All other feelings are absorbed in the sincere and deep
satisfaction arising from the knowledge that in thirty-two
hours from this time those chains that have been so weighty
upon me for fifteen years, as upon the bodies of those who
have borne them, are so soon to be broken. I bless God, that
He who has always raised up agents such as the crisis required,
sent you to the West Indies. I bless God, that during the
apprenticeship not one act of violence against the person of a
white man has, I believe, been perpetrated by a negro; and I
cannot but express my grateful exultation that those whom
the colonial law so recently reckoned " as brute beasts," the
fee-simple absolute whereof resided in their owners, will so
soon after the expiration of another day be clothed with the
full rights of man, and stand on a level with those who once
would have thought it an insult to humanity, and almost an
impiety to God, if any one had presumed to suppose that
their " chattels " and themselves were equals. . . .'
And the testimony of Lord Brougham to Joseph Sturge 's
achievements, as it came to his first biographer through
the pen of Cobden, is humorous and striking enough to be
worth quoting, although its final phrase at least is an
exaggeration of the truth. 1
' I remember a very graphic description which Lord
Brougham gave me, in a conversation at his house in Grafton
Street, of Sturge's conduct in the matter of the apprenticeship
system, which he adduced as an illustration of our friend's
indomitable energy. He told me of Sturge coming to him to
arraign the conduct of the masters in the West Indies for
oppressing their apprentices; how he (Brougham) laughed at
1 As regards this anecdote, Cobden wrote in a later letter to
H. Richard that he could swear to the main incidents, and that he
remembered well how Brougham brandished a poker, as he repeated
the last words quoted below.
EMANCIPATION IN WEST INDIES 45
him, deriding him in this fashion for proposing to abolish the
apprenticeship: " Why, Joseph Sturge, how can you be such
an old woman as to dream that you can revive the Anti-
slavery agitation to put an end to the apprenticeship ? " how
the quiet Quaker met him with this reply: " Lord Brougham,
if when Lord Chancellor thou hadst a ward in chancery who
was apprenticed, and his master was violating the terms of
indenture, what wouldst thou do?" how he felt this as a
home thrust, and replied, " Why, I should require good proof
of the fact, Joseph Sturge, before I did anything ": how our
friend rejoined, " Then I must supply thee with the proof ":
how he packed his portmanteau and quietly embarked for the
West Indies, made a tour of the islands, collected the necessary
evidence of the oppression that was being practised on the
negro apprentices by their masters, the planters: how he
returned to England, and commenced an agitation throughout
the country to abolish the apprenticeship, to accomplish which