Northern Watchman

From the N. Y. Observer.

EMANCIPATION IN THE WEST INDIES.

Our files of West India papers have at length arrived, bringing the intelligence at full length, of the termination of the apprenticeship, and of the complete emancipation of the slaves in the British Islands. The most important documents will be found on our last page. If, on farther search, we find anything more of much importance, we will give it. The Great Western, too, brought the news which is briefly given under our "Foreign" head, that complete emancipation is to take place at the same time in the crown colonies.— Slavery will therefore cease throughout the British empire, except in some parts of the East Indies, where something analogous to "state rights" impedes the action of the "general government." Plans for gradual emancipation are under consideration, even there, and probably will be carried into effect before many years.

So the work goes on; and every step that is taken towards the universal freedom, morality, piety, and happiness of the human race—every step towards the universal dominion of "righteousness, and peace, and joy," which are the millennium, renders the next step easier and more certain. There will be more or less trouble in Jamaica, and perhaps in some of the crown colonies, for neither masters nor servants are civilized enough to live together without some trouble; grossly exaggerated accounts will be published by each party of the misconduct of the other; but nothing fearful, we think, will occur; nothing which will shew that slavery ought to have been preserved.

Our Southern statesmen, if not kept too constantly irritated to look on calmly, will watch the result, and learn wisdom; and profiting by the mistakes of others, will ere long, strike out a system of emancipation, much better devised than that which has been adopted in the British Colonies. It is of no use to think of driving them;-
for they will not be driven to give up Slavery any more than we at the north would be driven to have it among us. Nor will any thing be gained by jogging them so often and so rudely, that they cannot get a fair and steady view of what is passing before their eyes. The great noiseless, steady and irresistible movements of Providence which go on like the planets in their orbits, will in time, bring the minds of men where they should be.