Mr. Gladstonerose and said, that although he was conscious of the presumption with which he might be chargeable in delaying for a few minutes the important business of the evening, in order to draw attention to a matter of a purely personal nature, still his only apology must be, that he himself was the cause of the interruption. The personal discussion to which he referred did not relate to himself, but to his father, one whom he was bound to love most dearly and with whom he felt it the highest honour to be connected. He found that in the debate of the preceding evening, the noble Lord the Member for Northumberland had thought fit, in the discharge of his parliamentary duties, to throw out some imputations which, if di- 410 rected towards himself (Mr. Gladstone), he should be able to show the House were without any sense or meaning, but whose relevancy or importance were easily understood, if the observations in question were taken as applied to his father. It was difficult to answer for one's feelings on such an occasion, but still he earnestly trusted that in stating the grounds of his complaint he should be able to refrain from any expressions needlessly painful or offensive to the noble Lord. The noble Lord was reported to have said he would not follow the example of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Newark in imputing low and degrading motives. With respect to matters affecting himself, and himself alone, he trusted that he had never shown himself anxious to weary the House with needless explanations; indeed it was his opinion that the public time was frequently wasted by unnecessary explanations on matters of a trifling personal nature, where the parties concerned might with perfect safety trust to the House and the country for their character and reputation. In this particular instance he was not aware of having imputed low and degrading motives, even to the proposers, much less to the supporters of this measure. He had certainly spoken in strong language, which he would not repeat, because it was not his wish to excite controversy; but he would content himself with saying, that it certainly was not his wish to impute low and degrading motives, as the noble Lord had stated. The noble Lord said, that it was impossible to forget the part which the hon. Member took in the debates of 1833. He (Mr. Gladstone) would feel himself highly flattered if any hon. Member of that House could remember the part which he had taken in the great measure for the abolition of slavery; but he would challenge the noble Lord to say, what part he meant to allude to. Did the noble Lord mean to insinuate that he had opposed the great measure of emancipation then carried through the House? Did he mean to say that he (Mr. Gladstone) had attempted to resist that measure, and when he found resistance hopeless that he had endeavoured to embarrass it? The noble Lord could say no such thing. To these statements, however, referring as they did solely to himself, he would never have ventured to call the attention of the House, had not the noble Lord thought fit to 411 allude to others. The noble Lord, addressing the House the other evening, said:—
It was impossible also to forget who was before that time the owner of the Vrieden-Hoop estate, in Demerara. It was clearly shown, that the rate of overworking and of mortality on that estate was remarkably high even for Demerara, where, unfortunately, both those evils had prevailed in an eminent degree. In three or four years an enormous quantity of sugar was produced on the estate, and the number of slaves who died was no less than eighty one, being above one-seventh of the whole number.Now, he asked the House whether that was not a charge of the very gravest description, and whether it was not one which no man ought to presume to make, unless he were prepared to verify it by proof? The charge, as he understood it, consisted in this, that there was great mortality on the estate, and that that mortality was traceable to the overproduction of sugar. That, the noble Lord said, was clearly shown; but he (Mr. Gladstone) denied that it was ever shown. It was asserted by the noble Lord, but not shown. In 1833 the noble Lord, after making a similar allegation, gave notice of a motion for a return, exhibiting the mortality which took place upon the estate in question, and nothing else. He said, he should object to its production, because there was a great deal of other evidence absolutely necessary to sustain the proposition of the noble Lord, which he proposed entirely to omit. When the motion was brought forward, Lord Spencer recommended the noble Lord to withdraw it. The noble Lord did so, and thereby abandoned his investigation; and yet the noble Lord now said that these points were clearly proved. The noble Lord had therefore stated that to be the case which was not the case, and his attempt to show which he himself abandoned. Undoubtedly there was at that period great mortality upon the estate but it was not confined to that estate, it was a mortality which existed throughout the entire colony of Demerara, and there was nothing more natural. The colony was filled with those slaves during the latter years of the slave-trade, and they all knew that it was not the course of that trade to introduce into colonies entire families, for the purpose of providing a natural succession of the population. It was the course of the slave-trade to intro- 412 duce adults who were fit for labour, and that being so, what was more natural than that that generation introduced in a mass should have dropped off in about twenty-five years after? The estate in question had only come into his father's possession four or five years before the abolition of slavery, when not less than one-fourth of the slaves were said to be incapacitated for labour; and what was more natural than that they should have dropped off within the next few years? During the short time he was in the Colonial office, a document, prepared by the registrar-general of slaves in Demerara, had been received containing this statement— that looking to the condition and circumstances under which those slaves were imported, it was evident that there must be a rapid decrease in the population for many years to come. The whole course of the noble Lord's accusation rested, not upon the fact of a decrease in the amount of population, but in his having connected that fact with the production of an enormous quantity of sugar. That part of the noble Lord's case he would meet by a simple and unequivocal denial. He totally denied, that there was any production of sugar upon that estate which the noble Lord or any man acquainted with West-Indian cultivation could call enormous. By a reference to other estates it would be found, that their production frequently exceeded, not in small quantities, but to the extent of 30, 40, and 50 per cent., the production of that particular estate. This enormous quantity of sugar, therefore, was a matter originating entirely in the noble Lord's imagination. At this distance of time, he (Mr. Gladstone) could not recollect the facts; but he believed there were about 550 persons on the estate, and that the annual quantity of sugar produced was under 600 hogsheads. He would therefore say— that taking into consideration what the noble Lord had forgotten— the state of the property and the power of the machinery upon it, the production of sugar was below what it might have been, and greatly below that of other estates. If the noble Lord would undertake to prove his assertion upon this point, he (Mr. Gladstone) was ready to meet him; but he could not avoid complaining that the noble Lord had made that assertion upon grounds which he believed the noble Lord would not himself very 413 much rely upon, and which he thought would occasion some surprise to the House. He complained that the noble Lord should have made an attack upon the nearest relative of a Member of that House, without having had the courtesy of sending him word that he intended doing so. Mark the reply of the noble Lord on the third of June, 1833:I can assure the hon. Member that, if I had conceived that the statement which I made on a former occasion would have been considered by him or any other hon. Gentleman as an attack upon the character of those with whom he is connected, I certainly would not have failed to communicate my intention to him beforehand.With that explanation, he was contented at the time; but he certainly did not expect that, after a lapse of eight years, the noble Lord would have again attacked the character of his father, during his absence from the House, and without having given him notice. He did not mean to accuse the noble Lord of having broken his pledge, because he was convinced that the noble Lord had forgotten that pledge as completely as he had forgotten the feelings of those against whom his attack had been directed; but this he would say, that a more absurdly irrelevant attack had never been made in that House. The noble Lord had said, that the hon. Member for Newark had no right to speak, because his father was the proprietor of a certain estate upon which, according to the allegation of the noble Lord, which he totally and broadly denied, the mortality was attributable to the overproduction of sugar. Now, even supposing it to be true that those abuses did take place was it possible that he could be held responsible for them, or was his liberty of speech in the debates of that House to be abridged, because those over whose actions he had no more control than the noble Lord himself should have been guilty of such things? He contended, likewise, that the attack of the noble Lord was unjust, not that the conduct of any man ought to be safe from investigation by that House, which he regarded as the grand inquest of the nation and the proper tribunal before which complaints should be made, but because he conceived that those who made such complaints should be ready to sift them to the bottom, and not make use of them as weapons of debate for inflicting attacks with which the worst man might amuse himself, and 414 against which it was impossible that the best man could be secure. He did not claim exemption from animadversion in that House, or wish to set himself up as a model of the manner in which their debates should be conducted. Fault had been found with the remarks he had made upon the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh, and having reference to one who had preceded him in his public career. But if he made an attack, he made it, not by assailing those in whom he was deeply interested, but by pronouncing upon one, for whose memory he must have felt the greatest respect, an eulogium which, if feeble, was at least sincere, and by calling upon him to vindicate the course he had pursued, which he did in a manner fully worthy of him. But, if he were to be punished for his parliamentary delinquencies, and others for their excesses in debate, by attacks having no reference to them or their own conduct, but only aiming through them at absent or innocent parties, he would tell the noble Lord, that that was a description of warfare of which he (Mr. Gladstone) should rather be the object than the agent. The hon. Member then referred to the statement made on Tuesday evening by the Undersecretary for the colonies in reference to the management of Hill Coolies on his (Mr. Gladstone's) father's estate. He could only say, that he had never heard there was any mortality amongst them beyond what was natural after the period of their landing; and he had never heard of any serious complaints, except in one instance, when the complaint was brought by one Hill Cooly against another. These Hill Coolies were to a man satisfied with the treatment they had received, and had themselves declared in the presence of a stipendiary magistrate, that instead of claiming an immediate passage back to India, or taking their chance for labour in the colony, they preferred continuing in the employment they were then in.
§ Viscount Howickwas convinced, that the House would think it imperative on him to answer the statements of the hon. Member; and in doing so, in the first place, he would state to the House what it was he did say. On a former evening, on which he had made the statement, he thought— and he appealed to the Gentlemen who were in the House at the time— he thought the hon. Member for Newark, in the course of his speech, did bring this heavy charge, not only against the Govern- 415 ment, but against those who supported them, that for some mere party purpose, or at best with a view to overcome some financial difficulty, they were prepared wilfully and deliberately to incur all the evil and all the horror of increasing the slave-trade. When he said he imputed low and degrading motives, what he meant was this, that he thought the hon. Member for Newark did impute to the Government and to those who supported them an indifference to the vast amount of human suffering which the encouragement of the slave-trade involved. The hon. Gentleman might view this question in a different way from him, but he could assure the House, that there was no imputation of motives which he felt more deeply and sensibly than that. He thought, that to suppose a Member capable, for party purposes, or with the mere view of any financial advantage, of overlooking the sufferings inflicted by the slave-trade, was supposing him to have a black heart indeed. He had complained, that the hon. Gentleman had imputed motives to those at his side of the House, when the conduct of his own party and of those connected with himself rendered them liable to the imputation of questionable motives. He did not impute to Mr. Gladstone, then the owner of the Vrieden-Hoop estate, that he wilfully and deliberately sacrificed human life for the purpose of acquiring increased wealth for himself; but what he did endeavour to show was, that there were circumstances connected with that property which made it important, that the hon. Gentleman should view with some indulgence the motives of others. He asserted in 1833, and he repeated now, that he was convinced, that Mr. Gladstone was not cognizant of the evils that took place on his estate; but that the tendency of the system was to produce such as those to which he referred; and he proceeded to argue the propriety of the hon. Gentleman and others, when a man's conduct was open to two explanations, taking the more favourable one instead of the harsher and more uncharitable. He thought this a perfectly legitimate course of argument to take. The hon. Gentleman had said, that he made a statement which was not correct. On that point he begged leave decidedly to differ from the hon. Gentleman. What he asserted was, that in Demerara, during the existence of slavery, an examination of the statistical returns showed, that where there was a large production of sugar, there was also a large rate of mortality amongst the negroes employed. On 416 a most careful examination of the papers, he found that conclusion not to be shaken. The hon. Gentleman debated this subject with him in 1833, and the hon. Gentleman did not attempt to disprove any of the facts on which his argument was founded. The hon. Gentleman drew different conclusions from them, and accounted for them otherwise than he; but this main fact was left untouched, that in Demerara a large production of sugar, and high rate of mortality were found exactly to correspond. He repeated that statement. In 1833 he showed by documents, that the mortality was greater on the sugar than on the cotton estates. This was attempted to be accounted for by the nature of the population; but he showed, that on the Vrieden-Hoop, estate, females preponderated; and that, so far from there being any deficiency of births, the births on the cotton and sugar estates did not materially differ. The difference in mortality was not accounted for by saying the old and infirm preponderated in one estate over the other; for it was on the young and healthy the burden of sugar cultivation fell. That was the statement which he had made in 1833, but if the hon. Gentleman wished, he would repeat his motion. The hon. Gentleman spoke from recollection. He had referred to the authentic records of what took place, and they completely confirmed his own memory. As to the return for which he had moved, showing the deaths which had taken place on this estate, the hon. Gentleman distinctly objected to it on the ground that it should contain information as to the disease of each slave, the state of their health, and such other particular information, which it was utterly impossible could be obtained in this country, and which he doubted whether it could be obtained in the colony. He did not withdraw that motion voluntarily. He thought the return, in the shape it was voted for, was calculated to elicit all the information necessary for forming a judgment, and he only abstained from pressing it, because Earl Spencer stated, that there was no possibility of obtaining the information which the hon. Gentleman required. But as the hon. Gentleman now said, that he withdrew his motion, because he despaired of sustaining its allegations. [Mr. Gladstone: No, no."] He appealed to the recollection of the House, whether the hon. Gentleman had not, ten minutes ago said, that he offered to withdraw the motion, and by so doing, in fact gave up the case." He totally denied that he gave it up, or that he gave 417 it up for any other reason than because he was not allowed to press it. Indeed, the only object of the motion was, to make the House officially cognizant of documents which he had in his own possession. This was the explanation which he had to give. He could assure the hon. Member that he used no offensive observations to him or to his relation; but he did want to show, and he thought it necessary, fair, and right, to show, that those on the hon. Gentleman's side required as indulgent consideration of their conduct as any one on his. When the hon. Gentleman complained that he did not give notice that he was about to make such statements as he had done, he could only say, that it was scarcely possible for him to give such a notice. A great number of hon. Members were anxious to speak in the debate, and it was utterly impossible to know when he should have an opportunity of addressing the House. Besides he was not aware, that it was the usual practice, when a Gentleman intended to answer the argument of a preceding speaker, and perhaps to retort on an attack which had been made, to give notice of his intending to take such a course. He could sincerely assure the hon. Gentleman that he was sorry he had given him pain, but he still thought it not unimportant, as an attempt had been made to excite throughout the country a cry of inhumanity against those with whom he was connected, to show that others would suffer not less than them from the practice of imputing the worst motives for the conduct of men.
Mr. Gladstoneunderstood the noble Lord to speak now in a sense very materially different from what he was reported to have spoken the other night. If he meant to argue, that the cultivation of sugar under slavery was less favourable to human life than the rearing of cotton, he would entirely concur with him; but that was not certainly the conclusion which one would have drawn from reading the speech made two nights ago by the noble Lord. His statement then was, that upon the particular estate in question an enormous quantity of sugar was produced beyond the average of the other estates in the island, and that, in consequence, the mortality had been greatly increased. That was the statement of which he complained, and which he most unequivocally denied.
§ Viscount Howickwas very glad the hon. 418 Gentleman had reminded him of a point he had intended to state. He now begged leave to repeat what he before stated, that the produce on that estate was considerably above the average in the colony. He had referred to a document for the purpose of showing, that every negro employed on that estate had produced 2,000lbs. of sugar, while the negroes on other estates in the colony, where there had been no decrease of population, had not produced more than one half of that amount.
Mr. GladstoneTaking into consideration the difference in the power of the machinery employed, I beg leave most unequivocally, distinctly, and broadly, to deny that part of the noble Lord's statement.
Mr. Vernon Smithbegged, in explanation to state, that the assertion he had made the other evening was, that the mismanagement of the Hill Coolies on the estate of the hon. Gentleman's relative in British Guiana, had been the main ground on which the proposition of his noble Friend (Lord J. Russell) had been resisted, for the introduction of the Hill Coolies into the Mauritius. He hoped he should also be allowed to state that the noble Lord, the Member for North Lancashire, had misrepresented another part of his argument, with respect to the effect of this measure on the slave question. All he meant to urge was, that he could see nothing in the proposition of the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool which pledged them to the abolition of the foreign slave-trade, and therefore he saw no inconsistency in opposing it.