SPEECH.

MR. SPEAKER,-I .confess, that in bringing before this House the question on which I now rise to address you, I feel not a little disheartened by the very intense interest excited in the country, and the contrast presented to those feelings by the coldness which prevails within these walls. I cannot conceal from myself, that, even in quarters where one would least have expected it, a considerable degree of disinclination exists to enter into the discussion, or candidly to examine the details of the subject. Many persons who have, upon all other occasions, been remarkable for their manly hostility to acts of official oppression, who have been alive to every violation of the rights of the subject, and who have uniformly and most honourably viewed with peculiar jealousy every infraction of the law, strange to say, on the question of Mr. Smith's treatment, evince a backwardness to discuss, or even listen to it. Nay, they would fain fasten upon any excuse to get rid of the subject. What signifies inquiring, say they, into a transaction which has occurred in a remote portion of the world? As if distance or climate made any difference in an outrage upon law or justice. One would rather have expected that the very idea of that distance-the circumstance of the event having taken place beyond the immediate scope of our laws, and out of the view of the people of this country-in possessions where none of the inhabitants have representatives in this House, and the bulk of them have no representatives at all, -one might have thought, I say, that, in place of forming a ground of objection, their remote and unprotected situation would have strengthened the claims of the oppressed to the interposition of the British Legislature. Then, says another, too indolent to inquire, slow to hear, but prompt enough to decide, " It is true there have been a great number of petitions presented on the subject; but then every body knows how those petitions are procured, by what descriptions of persons they are signed, and what are the motives which influence a few misguided, enthusiastic men, in preparing them, and the great crowd in signing them. And, after all, it is merely about a poor missionary!" I have now to learn, for the first time, that the weakness of the suffererhis unprotected situation-his being left single and alone to contend against power exercised with violence, constitutes a reason for this House shutting its ears against all complaints of such proceedings, and refusing to investigate the treatment of the injured individual. But it is not enough that he was a missionary; to make the subject still more unpalatable, -for I will come to the point, and at once use the hateful word, he must needs also be a Methodist. I hasten to this objection, with a view at once to dispose of it. Suppose Mr. Smith had been a Methodist -what then? Does his connection with that class of religious people, because, on some points essential in their conscientious belief, they are separated from the National Church, alter or lessen his claims to the protection of the law? Are British subjects to be treated more or less favourably in courts of law-are they to have a larger or a smaller share in the security of life and limb, in the justice dealt out by the Governmentaccording to the religious opinions which they may happen to hold? Had he belonged to the society of the Methodists, and been employed by the members of that communion, I should have thought no worse of him or his mission, and felt nothing the less strongly for his wrongs. But it does so happen, that neither the one nor the other of these assumptions is true; neither the Missionary Society, nor their servants, are of the Methodist persuasion. The Society is composed indifferently of Churchmen and Dissenters: Mr. Smith is, or, as I unhappily must now say, was, a minister-a faithful and pious ministerof the Independents, that body much to be respected indeed for their numbers, but far more to be held in lasting veneration for the unshaken fortitude with which in all times, they have maintained their attachment to civil and religious liberty, and, holding fast by their own principles, have carried to its uttermost pitch the great doctrine of absolute toleration ;-men to whose ancestors this country will ever acknowledge a boundless debt of gratitude, as long as freedom is prized among us: for they, I fearlessly proclaim itthey, with whatever ridicule some may visit their excesses, or with whatever blame others-they, with the zeal of martyrs, the purity of the early Christians, the skill and the courage of the most renowned warriors, gloriously suffered, and fought, and conquered for England the free constitution which she now enjoys! True to the generous principles in Church and State which won those immortal triumphs, their descendants still are seen clothed with the same amiable peculiarity of standing forward among all religious denominations, pre-eminent in toleration; so that although, in the progress of knowledge, other classes of Dissenters may be approaching fast to overtake them, they still are foremost in this proud distinction. All, then, I ask of those who feel indisposed to this discussion is, that they will not allow their prepossessions, or I would rather say their indolence (for, disguise it as they will, indolence is at the bottom of this indisposition), to prevent them from entering calmly and fully into the discussion of the question. It is impossible that they can overlook the unexampled solicitude which it has excited in every class of the people out of doors. That consideration should naturally induce the House of Commons to lend its ear to the inquiry, which, however, is fully entitled, on its own merits, to command undivided attention.

It will be my duty to examine the charge preferred against the late Mr. Smith, and the whole of the proceedings founded on that charge. And in so doing, I have no hesitation in saying, that from the beginning of those proceedings to their fatal termination, there has been committed more of illegality, more of the violation of justice-violation of justice, in substance as well as form-than, in the whole history of modern times, I venture to assert, was ever before witnessed in any inquiry that could be called a judicial proceeding. I have tried the experiment upon every person with whom I have had an opportunity of conversing on the subject of these proceedings at Demerara, as well members of the profession to which I have the honour of belonging, as others acquainted with the state of affairs in our Colonies, and I have never met with one who did not declare to me, that the more the question was looked into, the greater attention was given to its details, the more fully the whole mass was sifted the more complete was his assent to the conviction that there was never exhibited a greater breach of the law, a