Kachay Marcano

Form 5G
June 2023
Paper 2

Question 6

Imagine you are a member of a Methodist Church and have been invited to a meeting
which seeks to establish the anti-slavery movement in Britain. Prepare a speech giving
five points why enslavement should end in the British colonies.

Salutations. May grace and peace be unto you all. It is both an honor and privilege
to stand before you today to initiate justice and freedom to our brothers and sisters in
the British Colonies. I stand here with a burdened heart to debate about the on-going
enactment of slavery in the British West Indies. As a believer of God, I may speak on
his behalf, saying that it is prejudicing and discriminatory to treat His people in this
disgusting manner.
On religious grounds, I argue that slavery is imposed by man which is against
God’s will, as well as, the enforcement and enslavement of one race by another is
violating the principle on the equality of man. Is it cruel and goes against God’s
authority to harm his people for materialistic accomplishments.
The journey across the Atlantic to the West Indies was a fatally unsanitary and
unhygienic experience for our brothers. The slave ships were heavily congested and
their cargo subjected to diseases such as fever, smallpox and dysentery. On the estates,
our brothers are being treated harshly and brutally, and our sisters are subjected to
physical and sexual punishment. The loss of human life and human dignity is
appalling as not only were our enslaved brothers humiliated and de-humanized but
the white slave owners themselves were demoralized. The brutality in the system was
evidenced as there were many suicides, runaways and rebellions. Our enslaved
brothers were treated harshly as they were badly clothed and inadequately fed and
housed. These harsh conditions given to our brothers reduced their resistance to
disease, even so, they were not granted efficient medical services.
 Our brothers and sisters in Christ are being denied their right to an education,
especially, their religious education. Our missionaries had sought to share religious
knowledge to our brothers, however our brothers were discouraged and our
missionaries even suffered persecution by slave owners.
Justice for our brothers, especially in cases involving their white owners, rarely
occurred. In a situation where judges and magistrates were slave owners themselves,
our brothers in Christ could not give evidence against the whites. Also, the
subordinate position of slaves, whether it is economic, political and social, is expressed
in repressive colonial legislation. When it came to the rights of our brothers, however,
these rights were not always similarly enshrined but were rather, in more cases, left to
custom.
In conclusion, I ask you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to come together under
the hand of God, to form an alliance to promote the abolition of slavery in the British
West Indies.