SUGAR DUTIES.

HC Deb 19 June 1848 vol 99 cc811-78

On the Motion that the Speaker do leave the chair,

MR. ELLICE

rose to call attention to the painful interest which the melancholy and unfortunate position of West Indian affairs had created in this country and in the colony. That must be his apology for interposing between the Motion of his noble Friend and the Speaker leaving the chair, in order that he might obtain from Her Majesty's Government some explanation of the views of policy they entertained with respect to the future management of those colonies. When the noble Lord the Member for Lynn originally gave notice of his Motion for a Committee of Inquiry into the state of West India Affairs, he then deprecated the delay that must take place between the colonists knowing what would be their fate—

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

rose to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman whether he would proceed with his statement, when he (Sir J. Pakington) had a regular notice on the Paper. He was not aware, when the right hon. Gentleman rose, that he was going to make a speech on the subject, and he now asked him to allow him (Sir J. Pakington) to move his Amendment.

MR. ELLICE

begged to state, in reply, that his particular object in rising was to prevent the hon. Gentleman from moving his Amendment. It was of essential importance, before they were called upon to vote either for the Motion of his noble Friend, or for the Amendment of the hon. Baronet, that the House should have some explanation of the intentions of Her Majesty's Government as to the future state of the West Indies. The question already had been too much narrowed. He was not going into the consideration of the question of protection or the amount of protec- tion, but grave and more serious considerations must be brought under notice before the question could be disposed of. He had in the first instance objected to the appointment of the Committee on the condition of the West Indies, proposed by the noble Lord opposite (Lord G. Bentinck), fearing that it would occasion great delay in the consideration of the subject by the House itself; but after what had occurred, he could not refrain from expressing his thanks to the noble Lord for the judgment and talent he had manifested in the course of the inquiry, and for the untiring patience of the noble Lord and other Members serving on that Committee. If the information could have been obtained from no other source, the report and the evidence taken before the Committee would have been amply sufficient to expose the condition of the colonies in the West Indies to this country. Before they passed to the Resolution or to the Amendment, he wished the House to look to the state of things before them. Since the Emancipation Act had passed, and compensation had been granted under it, and which had been considered in that House by many Members as a munificent boon to the colonies, they should look to the great want of provision that there had been in the shape of other measures which should have accompanied the great change in society effected by the emancipation, and without which measures the compensation given would prove inadequate for the losses which the colonists would sustain. Compensation was justly due to the colonies for the large sacrifices which they would be exposed to by these measures, the merits of which no one could doubt. But then they must look to the degree in which the interests of individuals were guarded, in dealing with the principle of giving adequate compensation for the losses with which they were threatened. They must also look to the course of events which immediately succeeded to the Emancipation Act. Every practical suggestion which had been then most strongly urged—every course which had been most relied upon to follow out that great measure and give it success—had been unattended to, and the colonies were denied all those further plans which were to carry the change into effect. He denied that the colonies were under the necessity of considering that compensation as full, for they were in a much worse situation than they had reason to expect, and they had been exposed to the risk, not only of danger, but of utter ruin. Look to the transactions which occurred immediately after the Emancipation Act. Large sums of money were sent to the Mauritius, and every encouragement was given to the immigration into that place of labourers from India. The population had thus been doubled by means which were withheld from the West Indies. The amount of the produce in that colony had been doubled, much to the disadvantage of the West Indies, and, as it ultimately proved, much to the injury of the Mauritius itself, in consequence of the difficulties it had to contend with as regarded the supply of capital. Then, in 1844 and 1845, the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Robert Peel) adopted the system of admission for free-grown foreign sugar. In alluding to this subject he wished at once to state, that he did not condemn the course taken by the Government of the right hon. Baronet, or of that pursued by his noble Friend and his Colleagues. The circumstances which occurred in 1844 and 1845, by the extent and increase of credit which then existed, brought to this country such supplies of foreign sugar, that there was an enormous competition with that which came from the West Indian colonies. Then followed the Bill of 1846. He begged it to be understood that he did not complain of slave-grown sugar being admitted to competition in the markets of this country. The Act of 1844 admitted free-grown foreign sugar, and the result which followed in 1846 was a necessary result, against which no Government could contend. It was obviously clear that the deficiency in other countries which would arise from foreign free sugar being brought from thence to supply our markets, must be filled up with foreign slave sugar, and therefore the operation of the former law was as effective in giving an impulse to slave sugar as if it were admitted directly. In addition to this, the House must recollect that considerable difficulties arose as to the operation of the law of 1844 with regard to treaties with some foreign countries. The most difficult and nice questions of diplomacy arose, and above all with respect to America, the slave-grown sugar from which country we were ultimately obliged to admit on the same footing as foreign free sugar. The change, therefore, became inevitable. All these measures, however, increased the difficulties of the colonies, for there could be no doubt as to the distressed and ruinous condition in which they were placed. It had appeared before the Committee that, however much Gentlemen might differ as to the propositions which should be adopted, there was no difference of opinion as to the extent of distress and ruin in these colonies, and that it prevailed to such a degree as to be unparalleled in any other country in the world. And what were the remedial propositions of his noble Friend? As to the proposed alteration in the duty on sugar, it was an ingenious but small device to escape being placed on the horns of a dilemma, that was in either doing nothing, or in making a slight alteration in the Act of 1846. He did not ask for protection, but the question was, whether they might not at once lower the duty on English plantation sugar to 10s. a cwt. If this could be done, on the same charge as the amount which his noble Friend proposed to give for the purpose of obtaining a supply of labour from the coast of Africa—and which he believed was the most impolitic purpose to which the public funds could be applied—he trusted it would be done. His noble Friend might say he only intended to lend the money to the colonies, but the House and the country knew perfectly well what such loans were, and what chance there was of their being ever repaid. His noble Friend never could lend 500,000l. for a more useless or impracticable purpose. Then, with reference to the further intentions of his noble Friend with regard to colonies. Supposing his noble Friend succeeded in carrying his resolutions, and his plan should receive the sanction of Parliament, did he consider in what spirit it would be received in the colonies, which all recent accounts described to be in the greatest state of dissatisfaction? The question involved was not merely one of protection. The question was as to whether they should receive some hope of the adoption of propositions calculated to benefit their future condition, or whether they should at once subject them to despair by merely adopting the measures proposed, and by which also they would ensure resistance to the authority of the Government, and the British Legislature would find to its cost that the colonial legislature would not vote subsidies for the support of the Government establishments. He would then ask whether such a small reduction of duties as he had suggested in West Indian produce would not be a most politic measure. This struck him as the best course to follow. He had however chiefly risen to ask, after the feelings manifested in the West Indies under their present distress, and the urgent prayers they had made for relief, if the answer was to be, that all they had to expect was the two measures of the noble Lord? How would such a reply now be received in the West Indies? Did they expect, after what had passed, that the local governments in the West Indian colonies, or in Trinidad, or in Guiana, would be maintained by the legislatures there according to the scale proposed by Her Majesty's Colonial Department, when they received the news of the ruin into which the adoption of the proposed measures would plunge them? What he asked was, whether under such circumstances the Government was prepared to show if it was intended to propose some further measures for the relief of these colonies? His hon. Friend the under Secretary of the Colonies had made, as far as he could perceive, an unnecessary defence of his noble Friend the Secretary for the Colonies, in the charge of his having intended to withhold information from the Committee. There was, however, another point to which he wished to advert. A question was put the other night by the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Baillie) as to whether the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hawes) would not produce some despatches which had been received from the Governor of Demerara? His hon. Friend said he could not then, but they must wait until the answers of the noble Earl the Secretary for the Colonies could also be furnished. This was not a proper answer; and certainly the Government got nothing by it; for all the information which was asked for was already in the hands of all connected with the West Indies. In the colony of Demerara, the Court of Policy of the place, and which had charge of the expenditure of the funds of the colony, applied to his noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Office for a reduction of 25 per cent in the salaries of all public officers in that colony. They stated that the reduction of their means had been such as to deprive them of the power of paying the taxes necessary to defray the charge of the large colonial establishment there. He understood his noble Friend (Earl Grey) had refused to listen to this request, and the consequence was, that the Legislature of the colony refused all supplies. This would be the case in all our West Indian Colonies. What was the case of Jamaica? From what source did the supplies come, which enabled the taxes to be paid in that colony? Out of the pockets of the merchants, who had to pay the most extravagant wages to obtain a supply of sugar, which was sold at such a price here as would not remunerate them. This state of things could not continue. He had before him the financial accounts of Jamaica, from which it appeared the whole of the civil colonial expenditure of that colony was 300,000l.; the charge for collection of this amount was 33,000l.; the charge for the civil establishments was 55,000l.; the charge for the judicial establishments was 23,000l.; and that for the ecclesiastical establishment was 13,000l. Did his noble Friend believe these charges would continue to be paid? If he did not, would he tell the House how he meant that the government of the colony should be carried on? Did he mean to allow things to continue in such a state that the great expectations to be derived from emancipation must fail? The poor people who were the peculiar object of that great measure still required constant attention and care, and it was necessary that a large number of stipendiary magistrates should be maintained, for these people had to go before them constantly and on apparently the most trifling affairs, and if this useful body was not kept up the great experiment of the emancipation of the colonial people would entirely fail. Such were the questions which he wished to put to his noble Friend before they proceeded further. The reason he took advantage of the Motion of his noble Friend, that the Speaker should leave the chair, was that they might obtain some further information to guide the House as to the future prospects of these colonies. He objected to the grant of 500,000l., even supposing the West Indians would take it; but he did not believe they would; but if they did; he believed the adoption of the plan would be the most impolitic course which could be proposed for the benefit of the colonies. What was the state of the West Indies now? A great majority of the planters had been placed under the most unfortunate circumstances, and they had abandoned altogether the cultivation of their property. On three estates cultivation had totally ceased, and the same state of things would follow on a great many more plantations, if proper steps were not taken to avert the threatened evil. If they dealt with foresight and prudence, they might preserve these properties still under cultivation, by proper arrangements for adjusting the demand and supply of labour. If all imperial legislation was to be confined to these measures, the result would be that after having excited expectations, they had only proposed that which would lead to despair. He repeated, if they even now acted with prudence and wisdom, those of the colonists who still cultivated their property might not he involved in the common ruin which had fallen upon the other owners of property in the colonies. He did not disguise the circumstance that his hopes did not go beyond this; for the great proportion of the properties in the West Indian colonies had been irretrievably ruined. He had listened with great attention to the speech of his noble Friend; and there was one passage in it which he had heard with great pain, namely, that part of it in which his noble Friend adverted to the extravagance of the West Indian planters. He was sorry that his noble Friend should have been influenced and been led away by such an opinion, coming as it evidently did from the Colonial Office; a department of the Government which always affected to understand the interests of the colonies better than the colonists could do themselves. For the last ten or twelve years he had ceased to have any interest in the colonies. The property which he had held in those colonies he had let to persons who were formerly his agents, and he now received from them an amount of rent equivalent to the salaries which he formerly paid them as his agents. He did so because he knew the advantage of giving the care of property in the West Indies to persons who resided on it; indeed without this it was almost impossible to cultivate it. But what was the case with those persons to whom he had alluded? Notwithstanding the comparatively miserable charge they had to pay, these persons were almost ruined; and after having expended all the savings they had made from their hard-gained earnings, were now amongst those who applied to the Government and the Legislature for such small aid as would save them from utter and irretrievable ruin. Such a reflection as had been made on the alleged extravagance of the West Indian planters, was, as regarded these poor people, an observation as unjust as it was ungenerous. He hoped he should hear no more of such reflections. As far as he had read the evidence given before the Committee of the noble Lord (Lord G. Bentinck), it appeared to him that there was not the slightest ground for such a charge; on the contrary, it was shown the greatest pains was taken in economising labour, and every means was resorted to to get an increased amount of produce; but still, notwithstanding the adoption of all improvements, the greatest difficulties were experienced in keeping estates in cultivation, in consequence of the price of the produce being insufficient. The evidence also showed that the planters had been obliged to part with their improved machines and engines to persons in the Havana, that being the only chance of getting any return for them. There was another circumstance to which he wished to call the attention of his noble Friend. Allusions had often been made to the white population in our colonies, and in the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. When allusion was thus made to Cuba and our colonies, hon. Gentlemen were apt to forget the different circumstances of the two cases. It might make comparatively little difference between a man living in Spain or in Cuba. The Spaniard lived under a burning sun in one place as well as the other; but the circumstance of an Englishman going to a tropical country was different; and the only inducement which could lead him to a West Indian colony was the hope of getting a return for his capital and for the exercise of his industry. They had also been told that the number of the white population was reduced to a miserable proportion of the whole inhabitants of our colonies, and did not amount to above seven or eight per cent as compared with the coloured population. When even those who remained saw the ruin of the capitalists engaged in the production of sugar in those colonies, it would drive more and more of them away. He would then ask his noble Friend, whether it was wise, by measures of this description, to throw despair into the minds of the whole white population of the colonies, if he wished to maintain the social condition of the people there? These were some of the important considerations which had induced him to interfere. He did not say that he should not vote for the Resolutions, nor did he say that he should vote for the Amendment of the hon. Baronet; all he wished was to ask his noble Friend whether he intended to shut out all hope from the colonists? If he heard no declaration from his noble Friend that it was the intention of the Government to propose other and more extensive measures for the relief of the colonies, he could not support his noble Friend; for he believed by pursuing such a course he should be acting in a way calculated to destroy the best interests of humanity and civilisation in the colonies. He was satisfied, if something much more extensive was not done with respect to our colonies, but a short time would elapse between the passing of these measures and their ultimate destruction. Another subject of great importance was under the consideration of the House, with respect to which he intended to give his support to his noble Friend—he meant the repeal of the navigation laws. Was, however, his noble Friend aware of the effect of this measure on the West Indies, should the cultivation of sugar be abandoned in our colonies? There would then be no temptation to our merchants to send vessels to those colonies, and the trade would get into what was called its natural channel—that was, a direct intercourse between our West Indian possessions and the united States. He did not say that this should prevent them carrying out a great principle of sound policy; but the House should still be aware that the little trade which would be left in the West Indies would be carried on between the coloured people in the colonies directly with the inhabitants of the united States. There was another point connected with the subject which required consideration. Did the noble Lord believe that the present charge for Governors could be maintained in the West India colonies? Some other plan for their maintenance must be devised than getting large salaries for them from the Colonial Assemblies. They would no longer be able to keep Lord Harris in Trinidad, or Sir C. Grey in Jamaica, unless they paid them by the votes of the House, than they could expect to restore prosperity to the colonies by those measures of his noble Friend. No one could read the admirable despatches of Lord Harris and the other Governors in the West Indies, without admitting that it would be most difficult to spare such efficient public servants. They must adopt a much wider course than had hitherto been pursued in the future government of these colonies, and they must avoid that system of petty interference in all details in the colonies on the part of the Colonial Office, which system, however, had not characterised merely the Government of his noble Friend, but of the various Governments which had preceded it for many years. It was impossible for his noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Department, or any other man, to give satisfaction as long as the present system at the Colonial Office was continued, by which they never allowed the people to do anything for themselves in the colonies. His noble Friend proposed that a grant for immigration of 500,000l. should be made to the colonies; and at the same time he said that his noble Friend the Secretary of the Colonies had not yet had time to consider the regulations or rules which were to govern the introduction of these blacks from Africa into the colonies. How long then would the plan be delayed? The colonists would be driven to despair by the answer which the Legislature would give to them if they only passed this measure; and the result would be to diminish, if not to destroy, all the influence of this country with them. They would naturally ask whether they were to have no greater control over their own affairs than they had hitherto been allowed to exercise? They would say, "If you cannot redress our grievances, why will you not allow us to redress them ourselves?" Why would they not, for instance, allow them to elect, as Governor, a man whom he had known during a great part of his life—whose wisdom, experience, and sagacity, were undoubted—he alluded to a near relative of the hon. Member for Montrose in Trinidad? It was not possible that with this last coup de grace the old system of government could be maintained. He wanted, then, to know what the views of the Government here were upon this subject, before he came to deal with what he thought was but a miserable and petty consideration, namely, what the exact duty on a pound of sugar ought to be. If they were prepared to vote money for the reduction of these establishments, they could give them less protection for their sugar. If, on the other hand, they were not prepared to do one thing or the other, then they ought to intrust to the colonies themselves the election of their own Governors—the conduct of their own affairs upon such principles as were best calculated to retrieve their sad condition. He entirely agreed with his noble Friend that the days for protection were altogether gone by, There was one other reason against temporising upon this subject. They were now living in times of great changes in respect to other countries. They had arrived at a moment when it appeared they were to have low prices and high taxes—when there was no chance of escape; for they could not get back to the times of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, in 1844, or to the times of Lord Goderich, in 1824. They had now made up their minds to the system of credit under which no value, or an exaggerated value, was given to commodities. They must now be content with the low prices to which everything was likely to fall, and, as well as they could, reconcile themselves to high taxes. This was a particular crisis in the affairs of this country, at which he should think that it would be both wise and consistent in the character of a reasonable Government to hold out a little assistance to the West India colonies, with a view of enabling them to tide over their present difficulties, and to arrive at a better state of things. He should think that they were called upon to take a comprehensive view of the condition of those colonies, and to have dealt with them in such a manner as would, if not restore them to their former prosperity, at all events prevent the failure of that great experiment they had made in the abolition of slavery—a measure to carry out which they had made great sacrifices, and had required great sacrifices to be made by others. He entreated the noble Lord, before he proceeded with the resolutions before the House, to explain whether the propositions he had already made were the only measures he had in contemplation for the relief of the difficulties in which the West Indies were involved, or for the government and expenses of those colonies, commensurate with the reduced circumstances under which they laboured.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

It appears to me that the more regular course to have been taken would have been that the House should have gone into Committee, and there to have heard such explanations and defence of the resolutions to be proposed by the Government as we should have been prepared to offer. The hon. Baronet opposite, however, has not thought fit to allow that course to be taken; but has given notice of a resolution as an amendment on the Motion that the Speaker leave the chair. That being the course taken by the hon. Baronet, it seems to me that the only course the Government can pursue is, to hear the Motion of the hon. Gentleman, and then to enter upon a defence of the course of policy we propose to adopt. What the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ellice) asks us to do is, to enter into a discussion and general explanation of our views now, before the hon. Baronet shall make his Motion. But that is a course which I am not prepared to adopt. I am the less inclined to adopt that course, because my right hon. Friend—while he declared at the commencement of his speech that he blamed no one—while he threw out objections to every course that has been proposed, and, I should say, to every course that can be proposed—does not seem, with all his sagacity, knowledge, and experience upon the subject, to have made up his mind as to the course which he feels ought to be pursued. My right hon. Friend seems to think that we should not propose the course of giving any more protection, and that we ought not to have pursued the course of advancing money to assist the immigration of labourers into the West Indies. Now, it does appear to me, not only from all we know ourselves, but from all the evidence and suggestions laid before us by others, that one of these courses, or both, are desirable—that either we ought to give them a longer term of protective duties, to enable the planters of the West Indies to make preparations for competition, or that we ought to give them greater facilities for the introduction of labourers, thereby reducing the rate of wages; that one or both of these courses was necessary to remedy the distress which I regret to think exists in these colonies. But my right hon. Friend says it would be better to give them 500,000l. in the shape of diminished duties on their produce. But supposing we were to guarantee this 500,000l., and look upon it as wholly lost to this country, the interest of that sum at 4 per cent would be 20,000l., and the reduction of duties that would give that amount would not be much more than what is proposed by the hon. Baronet; for no one supposes that the reduction of the present duty from 14s. to 10s. would produce a reduction of revenue of much less than 20,000l. I do not mean to follow my right hon. Friend into his various objections, because it would be, in fact, to enter into the whole debate which the hon. Baronet proposes to raise; but let me say, that with regard to the Motion of the hon. Baronet, he seems to me to have made a change in it, which, if his Motion be supported by the House, will place the West Indies, as well as Parliament, in a most embarrassing situation. As the Motion stood on Friday night, it was a very intelligible proposition—it was to give an increase of the protection, which is now 6s., and to make it 10s.; and that was to be done by keeping foreign sugar at 20s. and reducing colonial sugar to 10s. I do not say, whether that was or was not a wise proposition. I have no doubt that the noble Lord the Member for Lynn would have defended it with great ability, and with all that extensive knowledge of the subject which his attention to the Committee must have given him; but at all events that proposition was intelligible. But the hon. Baronet now proposes that the proposition of the Government should be condemned by the House, and therefore leaves the present law to come into operation in July next. It does not follow that, supposing the proposition of the Government is condemned, the next day, or within the next twelve hours, any proposal for increased protection may not be condemned also; and therefore the present Act, which in July will change the duty of 20s. to 18s. 6d., and thereby reduce the protection from 6s. to 4s. 6d., will at once come into operation. In 1841, the present Lord Harrow by made a similar proposition, the object of which was very clear, and it was carried into effect; but the hon. Baronet will hardly gain his object by a mere resolution condemnatory of the present proposition. I, for my part, do not believe that the House would adopt the proposition which the hon. Baronet made on Friday night; and I suppose that he himself despaired of carrying it. He thought there was no hope whatever of raising the protection to 10s., and therefore proposed his present Motion for the purpose of embarrassment and rendering the plan of the Government ineffective. I will only refer to an allusion made by my right hon. Friend to the speech I made on Friday night. He says that I commented on the extravagance of the colonial proprietors, and that I have taken my notions from the prevailing idea of the Colonial Office. He says I have founded the two or three words that I said with respect to extravagance solely on that idea. I beg to inform my right hon. Friend I have taken my notion from reading the evidence of a West India proprietor himself. That proprietor said that he himself went out to this West Indies and made a reduction of 1,000l. a year. That was no under-secretary, no clerk in the Colonial Office, but the gentleman himself possessing the property; and when he was asked how he reduced the 1,000l., he said it was done by perquisites; and when asked what was the amount of those perquisites, he said— I do not believe that the merchants in this country, intelligent as they are, unless they go out themselves, know much of what is going on in the West Indies. My own merchants told me that they believed my estates were economically conducted. When I went out, however, I found they were not so. The attorneys are the head agents of the estate: the merchants simply see the plantation accounts. In the plantation accounts there is always one very large item, namely, labourers' wages; and I will tell the Committee some of the charges which I found were included in that item. There is an estate groom, for instance; then there is attorney's cook and attorney's groom, attorney's servant, attorney's washer, attorney's maid, minding attorney's pigs, minding manager's pigs, picking grass for attorney; besides which, there are manager's servants and overseer's servants. As far as I and the merchant could see, all those came under the head of labourers' wages. That is practical testimony—it is no prejudice of the Colonial Office, but practical testimony; and it certainly made an impression on my mind, and which I had on my mind when I spoke on Friday night, of the extravagance of some of the proprietors. And now I am to be told I am making an unfounded imputation, and maligning the characters of those gentlemen who are not guilty in any way of extravagance in managing their estates. I believe it is not the extravagance of those gentlemen themselves; I believe it is the consequence of that system of management; and I believe there are many instances of a similar character. But I do not wish to prevent the hen. Gentleman from making his proposition. He will have an opportunity of again stating his objections to our scheme, and we shall endeavour as far as we can to explain the views which we hold with regard to the West Indies. I do not, however, think my right hon. Friend has considered fully all the consequences that might follow from the suggestions he threw out of things that might possibly be done. I have always been very favourable to giving the colonists, as far as possible, the management of their own affairs; but when we speak of giving to the West Indians the management of their own affairs, we touch upon some very nice questions of practice, representation, and rights of voters, as difficult as those may be, which we shall have to consider to-morrow on the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose, or still more difficult, and accompanied with more peril, when we have to consider them as applied to the West Indies. If you are to introduce a very low suffrage in Trinidad; if you allow every one of the imported ne- groes into Trinidad who may have been there a year, and is a male of full age, to have a vote, I think the representative chosen by those persons will not tend to assist Lord Harris in his government of Trinidad, and that it would introduce a very difficult problem in the government of the West Indian colonies. My right hon. Friend has not considered all the difficulties that would arise if we should at once introduce a system of representation in Trinidad without due deliberation. I am for increasing the power the people of the colonies have over their own affairs and government; but I am for increasing it with consideration and deliberation from time to time, and not at once for granting them an assembly chosen from the blacks for the government of these colonies.

SIR J. PAKINGTON

rose to bring forward the Amendment of which he had so very reluctantly given notice; and he was rather strengthened than otherwise in his statements upon the subject by the speech he had just heard from the noble Lord. He felt how great was the task he had undertaken in casting himself, as a mere independent Member of the House of Commons, between the sugar-growing interest and the dangerous policy which Her Majesty's Government, he was sorry to find, were still disposed to persevere in—a policy which he was convinced would tend rapidly to the ruin and destruction of the colonists. He deeply felt how incompetent he was to undertake such an important task; but when he was applied to, as he had been, by those whose interests were involved, to bring the question before the House, he did not feel himself justified in allowing any private considerations to interfere to prevent him from giving them his assistance, how feeble soever that assistance might be. He was surprised, he should say, to hear from the noble Lord the charge that in moving the Amendment of which he had given notice, he was only seeking to produce embarrassment and delay. He assured the noble Lord he had no party motives whatsoever. He was actuated by no motives but the single-minded wish to rescue the colonies from the danger that hung over them; and he did not think that the shape in which he brought forward his resolution was open to the censure which the noble Lord had east upon it. He had altered the shape of that resolution, because, holding the opinion that Her Majesty's Government deserved it, he wished the House to pass a direct censure upon their proposal. But he did not think that any such difficulty could arise out of it as the noble Lord had foretold. He found a Member of the Government in the Committee moving a resolution that the discretion should be in the hands of the Government, and whatever might be the fate of the resolution, he should beg to state that the Government would have no difficulty in coming to an arrangement of the question. He begged to state also that it was not his desire to argue the question as between the principle of protection on the one hand, or of free trade upon the other. He entertained no strong opinions as to protection on the one hand, nor should he, on the other, shrink from advocating that amount of protection which he thought the position of the country might require. But, looking at the question before him, he did not think it belonged to the category of free-trade measures, or that it should stand upon that principle. It rather should stand upon principles peculiar to itself; and he was about to appeal to hon. Members who professed free-trade principles with the same earnestness with which he should appeal to the Protectionists. The noble Lord had told them on Friday night last that they ought not to confine their attention to the single Act of 1846. He told them they ought to go back to the great Emancipation Act passed in 1834. He entirely agreed with the noble Lord in that opinion; and he should repeat what he said upon a former occasion, that the noble Lord himself was not more anxious than he was to see the provisions of that Act carried out. The noble Lord gave them a very important description of the series of legislation since 1834; and he was sorry to say that, looking at that legislation since that period, and the conduct of successive Governments on the subject, he thought it was a series of events not creditable to this country, and most prejudicial to the unfortunate colonists who had been made the subjects upon which the Governments had tried their political experiments. In 1834, they emancipated the whole slave population. At a later period the Parliament of this country had—he would not say whether wisely or otherwise—adopted the principle of free trade; and, as he thought, most unfairly and unwisely, they had made the sugar-growing colonies the unfortunate victims of both those experiments. In so doing, they were guilty of a breach of faith. It was well expressed by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire the other night, out of four conditions which they had made upon the subject with the colonists, the Government had violated three. They had broken their promises made to the colonists at the time of the Emancipation Act. For a series of years they had harassed their colonies upon the subject of increase of labour, and upon the subject of satisfactory labour contracts, to such an extent, that a contract for labour could not be carried out. Thus the colonists suffered from their vacillation; and it was to that vacillation that the sufferings of the colonists could be traced. After that series of most unjust treatment of the colonists, they, in 1846, at length arrived at that final experiment which the right hon. Gentleman opposite had so justly and aptly termed the coup de grace—an Act to which he did not hesitate to ascribe a very large portion, and, in his humble judgment, by far the greater portion, although perhaps not the whole, of the great and ruinous depression to which the colonies were now subjected. Complaints came from the colonists in such urgency and in such numbers, that, when the House assembled early in the year, it was found impossible to pass over the distress existing; and the noble Lord the Member for Lynn moved for the appointment of that Committee, which he had since conducted as chairman in a manner which had elicted the admiration of all who sat with him as members of it. When the Committee was appointed, there was a debate, in which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer took part, and he expressed himself in these terms:— But I should deceive both him and the House, and, what is still more material, the West Indians themselves, if I led them to suppose that in consenting to the appointment of this Committee, Her Majesty's Government meant to imply the slightest doubt of the propriety of the course which they adopted in 1846, or the slightest intention of departing from the provisions of that Act. I think it but fair to all parties that this statement should be made as decidedly as possible, and as early as possible, because I believe that upon a subject of this description uncertainty is the worst of evils. And on the 29th of May, on the day that the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn presented the report to the House, he found the noble Lord the First Lord of the Treasury said, in answer to the hon. Member for Montrose— The report of the Committee which had been presented that evening, recommended, he was informed, that the differential duties should be continued for a certain period beyond that fixed by the Act of 1816. On that subject he could state at once that the Government did not intend to propose any alteration of the Act of 1846, with the view of increasing the amount of the differential duties, or continuing them for a longer period than that fixed by the Act. That was the language of the Prime Minister, and yet on Friday last, notwithstanding what both he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, the noble Lord came down to the House and proposed a plan, which, whatever might be thought of it by different parties, would be certainly a very material deviation from the Act of 1846. Now, he thought he had a right to ask why had that deviation been made? He could not attribute it to any other cause than that the evidence taken before the Committee proved the condition of the case to be of such pressing importance, that the Government found they could not adhere any longer to the Act of 1846. He, therefore, so far congratulated those hon. Gentlemen who were opposed to that Act. But they next came to the question of whether or not the change which the Government proposed would be sufficient to mitigate the distress. He would not detain the House by entering into the question about the differences between equalising the duties in the year 1854 instead of 1851. Neither would he stop to inquire what was the reason why the Government thought the duties might be equalised at 10s. the cwt. instead of 14s., which was arranged by the Act of 1846. But he did think that every one would agree with him, that the change proposed by the Government, irrespective of its bearings upon the colonial question, involved very important financial considerations. And when the Chancellor of the Exchequer reproached the noble Lord the Member for Lynn, and those others, including himself, who were of the same opinion as the noble Lord, for proposing to give the colonists a 10s. differential duty, which could be done by lowering the duty on colonial sugar 4s. the cwt., and said that, were such a plan adopted, it would involve very serious financial derangements, he must reply that he thought the plan proposed by the Government was open to the same charge. He did not know how far the right hon. Gentleman might speculate on retaining his present office till 1854; but he thought the right hon. Gentleman would assuredly bequeath to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, whoever he may be, the legacy of having to deal with a very large hiatus in the sugar duties. Perhaps the Government anticipated an increase of consum- ption which would raise the importation to 400,000 tons a year, the quantity which would be required to bring up the deficiency; but he thought that was a very large and very sanguine calculation. His object, however, was to consider how the question would bear upon the colonies, rather than upon the finances of this country; and how far a differential duty of 7s. to descend by 6d. a year for three years—how far such a proposal Could be considered an adequate remedy for the existing state of things. But, in the first instance, he should call the attention of the Government to the serious inquiry of whether they could be confident enough to say that their arrangement with regard to brown clayed sugar would be available as against Cuba and Brazil. He thought that the muscovado sugar, coming in at a lower duty by 18d. than the brown clayed, would be an inducement to those foreign countries to send muscovado rather than brown clayed; and he was borne out in that opinion by the consul (Mr. Crawford), who stated that, for the sake of economy, they were manufacturing the sugar in Cuba after the manner of Jamaica. He considered it very doubtful whether the proposed duty of 7s. per cwt., such as it was, would be applicable to the sugar-growing interest of Great Britain. He thought it much more probable that the greater part of the sugar would come in from the foreign countries as muscovado. But he would presently consider also the question whether, as a protective duty, the 7s. duty would answer the purpose. He thought it would have no effect in saving from ruin the sugar-growing colonies. In 1846, when the Government first brought forward their scheme, these colonies were in a state of comparative prosperity; and it was under the operation of that very 7s. duty in 1846, falling to a 6s. duty in 1847, that the present frightful amount of distress had arisen in them. Now, when they were reduced to that state of distress, how could it be supposed that they could be relieved by a mere revival of those very duties under which they had suffered? In the best event they would have, at a 7s. duty, only 1s. more than they had in 1847; but in bringing in muscovado sugar they would be 6d. a cwt. worse. He was sorry to be obliged upon this ground to say that he was driven to the statement that the duty proposed by the Government was wholly insufficient to meet the falling-off of the revenue. In considering the question in its hearings upon the British colonial interest, they should take into account, as the most essential point, the comparative cost of producing sugar in the free-labour British colonies, and in the slave-labour plantations of foreign countries. He regretted to be obliged to go into statistical statements; but he should give a few figures in illustration of that part of his argument. He should beg leave, in the first instance, to refer to the evidence of Mr. Tollemache, and in doing so he should observe that he adverted to that gentleman's evidence, because none could be more truly or faithfully given. Now, that gentleman, in answer to a question as to what further extent he could carry his reductions in the cost of production beyond what he had done, replied that his cost of production, when he had had a large crop, was 19s. per cwt. By the reductions he had effected, he reduced the cost in 1847 to 17s. 8d. per cwt.; and that was after the rum and molasses had been deducted. In a subsequent answer he said, he hoped at some future day—not an early day-hut at some future day he hoped to be able to reduce the cost of production so low as 15s. 6d. the cwt., but that was prospective; and he could not lay down his sugar in London at less than 22s. 0¼d. per cwt. Now, the price in June, 1847, had varied from 26s. to 22s.; and how would it he possible for any sugar grower in the colonies, who could not land his sugar in London at a less price than 22s. 0¼d., to sell it at 22s? Mr. Tollemache stated it as his decided opinion, that under the circumstances, and so long as such a state of things continued, it would be impossible for the free-labour sugar of the West Indies to compete with the foreign slave-labour of Brazil and Cuba. He would next quote the opinions of other witnesses, who spoke as to the condition of Jamaica and other places. He would not cite any more figures than he could possibly help. He would mention first the average of 138 estates in Jamaica. According to a return made to the House of Assembly of Jamaica, it appeared that the general cost of production was about 1l. 2s. 7d. the cwt. throughout the West Indian colonies. One witness (Mr. Greene) stated the cost of the estates with which he was connected at 1l. 2s. 9d. Another witness (Mr. Wiggins), who overlooked twenty-two estates, stated the cost to average 1l. 9s. 2d.; Mr. Geddes stated it at 1l. 3s.; Mr. Miles at 1l. 8s. 2d.; and the average cost of pro- duction over all Jamaica was 1l. 5s. 2d. That statement was fortified by a despatch which had been forwarded by Governor Sir Charles Grey—the despatch of which they had already heard so much the other night. Governor Grey stated it to be his opinion, that a permanent cost price of less than 30s. a cwt. would cause the greater portion of the cultivation of sugar in the West India islands to drop. The Governor of Trinidad, Lord Harris, stated 1l. 5s. 10d. as the cost of production. In Barbadoes the witnesses variously stated the cost on different estates at, 1l. 9s. 5d., 1l. 5s. 5d., 1l. 4s. 11d., 1l. 5s. 10d., 1l. 3s., giving an average cost of production of 1l. 5s. 8d. for Barbadoes and British Guiana. The cost in St. Vincent was 1l. 1s. 5d.; in St. Kitt's, 1l. 1s. 10d., giving the general average of 1l. 2s. 8d. as the cost of production in the West Indian colonies. Now, for the average cost of production in slave-growing countries, the noble Lord at the head of the Colonial Department had caused an inquiry to be directed to the various consuls in the foreign slave-growing countries, with a view to ascertaining the cost of production. But he did not think they had given the noble Lord a fair estimate of the cost, inasmuch as those estimates were given without the deductions which had been made from all the estimates given to the Committee, of the cost of producing sugar in the West Indies. Their estimates also related to the brown clayed sugars, whereas the cost of producing muscovado would be one-fifth less. The cost of producing sugar in Cuba, after making these deductions, would be 6s. 8½d. per cwt.; in Porto Rico, 5s. 2d. per cwt.; and in Bahia, 8s. 9d. per cwt.; leaving the average of the cost of producing sugar in these slave countries, 6s. 10½d. per cwt. Now, if 6s. 10½d. were deducted from 1l. 2s. 8d., the cost of producing sugar in the British settlements, there remained 15s. 9½d. as the difference between the cost of producing sugar at the present time in the slave countries and in the British colonies. He was sorry to have detained the House with these figures, but the conclusion which they had led him to arrive at was this, that as long as there remained a difference of 15s. 9½d. per cwt. between the cost of producing in Cuba and Brazil and in the British colonies, it would be impossible for the latter to compete with slave-grown sugar while they had only a protection of 7s. or 5s. 6d., or whatever it might be. He felt, therefore, that the scheme now proposed by the Government could not possibly afford anything like a sufficient protection to the West India colonists. There could be no doubt but that the colonies had a right to complain of the manner in which the Act of 1846 had been carried. That Act was passed for the exclusive advantage of this country. It was passed to carry out one of the greatest experiments that could be made—that of trying how far free labour could compete with slave labour; and why, therefore, did they not accompany it with some provision for supplying free labour to the colonies? It was no new complaint that the colonies wanted more labour, and it was but an act of justice to them to establish, that fair relation between the employer and the employed which existed in this country, and which ought to exist in every country. The Government ought also to have put an end at the same time to the system of squatting which had proved so injurious to the colonies. He admitted that during the last year some progress had been made by the noble Lord at the head of the Colonial Office in supplying labour to the colonies. One of the provisions adopted was, that captured Africans should be delivered free of charge in Jamaica; but that was an arrangement that was obviously open to great abuse. He understood that the noble Lord now proposed allowing contracts for the engagement of free labourers as a part of his plan. [Lord JOHN RUSSELL: I mentioned it as a proposition to stand by itself.] At all events there could be no question but that it was most important that labour should be provided for the colonies. Under the present system it was impossible that the cultivation of the British colonies could go on. He would not trouble the House by going into details; but the purport of all the evidence was that the colonies were now subject to a most ruinous competition. The witnesses showed that if the present prices had prevailed for a number of years past, the cultivation of the estates must have been abandoned ere the present time. He hoped the House would permit him to mention another proof of the working of that Act of 1846. It was a circumstance that had been lately mentioned to him with regard to an estate in Demerara. The estate was sold in 1843 for 25,000l., and it had subsequently had 10,000l. expended upon it in improvements. The sale in 1843 was under a fiat of bankruptcy; and in April last the same estate was again sold by auction under a bankruptcy sale, when it produced only 2,800l. That was an instance of the state to which the West India colonies had been reduced. Looking at the period that had elapsed, and the prices that now prevailed, he believed that he was justified in saying that the whole of this state of things was to be traced to the working of the Act of 1846. He believed that he was right in stating that no less than eighteen mercantile houses of the highest respectability connected with the West Indies had lately become bankrupt; and he feared that if the present state of things continued much longer, other houses must be soon involved in the same state. If such, then, was the state of the West Indian colonies, what, he would ask, was the condition of another important colony? He wished for a moment to draw the attention of the House to the present state of the Mauritius. He would take the evidence of Sir George Larpent on this subject. Sir George Larpent was an avowed free-trader, and he was sure that Gentlemen on the other side of the House would not be disposed to think that he (Sir George Larpent) was likely to take an exaggerated view of this question. Now what was that gentleman's opinion? Sir George Larpent said— From 1838 to the present time, the vacillation of Parliament, the changes of legislation, and the departure from what was understood to be the system to be adopted during the time we laid out our money, and sent out our machinery, and carried on those works, has been such as to bring these enormous losses upon us, I beg distinctly to say, I do not attribute all the losses to the Act of 1846; but when we were getting out of our difficulties that Act of 1846 plunged us back again into them. The cost of producing sugar in the Mauritius was 20s. 10d. per cwt., and at such a cost it was impossible for them to compete with the slave countries, where the cost was so low as he had already stated. No less than seven of the first mercantile houses in England that had been connected with that colony had, in consequence, been involved in ruin, their total liabilities amounting to the enormous sum of 3,249,000l. Among them were the houses of Sir John Reid, who had so long sat among them in that House, and of Sir George Larpent himself, and others of equally high character, but all alike involved in ruin by the melancholy state to which the colony had been reduced. Leaving the Mauritius, he would turn to the East Indies, and there too he found exactly the same state of things prevailing. He feared that he was trespassing at too great length on the indulgence of the House, and therefore he would not go into details on this part of the question. He found that in consequence of the change that had taken place in 1836, the export of sugar had been constantly on the increase up to 1846. In the year 1836 the amount of sugar exported from the East Indies to this country was 152,165l., while in 1846 the amount had increased to 1,425,114l. He found, however, that the cost of the production of sugar was in Bengal 20s. per cwt., and in Madras 23s. per cwt.; and, looking at the distance of that part of the world, it was evident that these sugars could not be transported to the English market at the prices which they now commanded. Looking at the falling-off in the exports of cotton, and other matters to which he would not now allude, connected with the finances of India, he thought that it was most important that the export of sugar from the East Indies should not be annihilated, as he feared it must be by their present measures. He wished, in the next place, to call some unanswerable witnesses of another class in his favour, namely, the Governors of the colonies themselves. He would, in the first place, allude to the despatches of Lord Harris, the Governor of Trinidad, to whose opinions he was disposed to attach considerable weight. Writing on the 18th of September last to Earl Grey, Lord Harris stated that, without entering into details, he did not hesitate to express his conviction that if the colony was not to be left to subside into a state of comparative barbarism, some more than ordinary relief was necessary to support it in the contest in which it was now engaged. That was the state of the colony in September last, and he need not remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that things had not improved there since. In a despatch from Governor Reid, of Barbadoes, sent home in February last, he said— I think it right, however, to state, in general terms, that from all I learn, the cost of making sugar by free labour is greatly beyond the cost of making it by slave labour. My opinion is, that sugar cultivation by free labour cannot yet withstand competition on equal terms with slave labour, and that freedom should be nursed by protection for a considerable time to come. How long that time should be, your Lordship will understand that I cannot say. If there be no protection, the cultivation of sugar will be further given up in Grenada, and it will dwindle in all the windward islands, excepting Barbadoes. Whilst travelling in these islands, and amongst estates falling off in production, I felt a conviction that, without protection, the most serious result for humanity would not be the loss of sugar, but that the consummation of the greatest act of human legislation—the abolition of slavery—will be retarded, and perhaps endangered. In a despatch, dated December last, from Governor Higginson, of Antigua, to Earl Grey, and which that noble Lord had referred to in another place, it was stated that— The majority of the estates are heavily encumbered, and very few of the proprietors have capital at command; and the ruinous rate at which they are compelled to borrow, greatly augments the cost of production. I do not believe that, at the present prices, half the gross proceeds of sales are netted by the sugar grower, the larger portion being swallowed up by the duty and the merchant's charges for freight, commission, discounts, &c. The state of the market must regulate the profits and losses of the producer; and if that were to continue as at present, the culture of the cane must necessarily be abandoned, because, as I have before observed, existing prices do not remunerate him for his outlay. He would now call the attention of the House to a memorial from the House of Assembly of Jamaica to Her Majesty, setting forth their distress. From that memorial it appeared that a sum of 1,405,887l. had been expended in the production and manufacture of 57,000 hogsheads of sugar, leaving the average cost per cwt. at 1l. 2s. 7d., and thus confirming the statement that he had before made on other authorities. The Committee of the House of Assembly proceeded to state, that— Your committee submit that the question now left for the British Government to decide is, whether, putting the ruin of the colonists altogether out of view, the national interests will be promoted by annihilating sugar and coffee cultivation in its own colonies, the inevitable effect of which must be, and that speedily, to transfer to foreigners a high-priced monopoly of these articles in the British market. Governor Light, in a despatch dated Guiana, 23rd May, said, that the distress among a large class of planters was so great, that they had not money to pay for labour for the cultivation of their estates, and that consequently a large portion of the cultivation of the colony should be abandoned; but that one result would be, to throw more labour into the market, which would be beneficial to those who could weather the present storm. He (Sir J. Pakington) could not view with much complacency the benefit that would arise to the few planters who were able to weather the storm from the ruin of the remain- der. He had already mentioned the despatch from Sir Charles Grey, in which he laid it down that a permanent price of 30s. a cwt. was essential to prevent the greater portion of the sugar plantation of Jamaica from being abandoned; but, unwilling as he was to detain the House, he could not refrain from quoting one other despatch from Lord Harris, that had been briefly alluded to the other evening by his hon. Friend the Member for Bristol. Lord Harris, writing from Trinidad on the 5th of April last, stated that— It is pitiable to witness a fine colony daily deteriorating; a land enjoying almost every blessing under heaven, suffering from a shock from which it does not rally. But the deepest pang of all to an Englishman is to see the hearts and the affections of a whole population becoming gradually alienated from the country which he loves. Lord Harris was then writing from Trinidad, and describing a feeling which must grow up under the circumstances now existing there. Further on, his Lordship said— It is impossible for me to express too forcibly the extent of the present distress; but I will give an extract from a communication made to me lately by Mr. Rennie, the very intelligent manager of the Colonial Bank, whose acuteness in business, and whose disinclination to yield to difficulties, is exceeded by none in the colony, and who, from his position, is enabled to acquire a more intimate knowledge of the actual state of affairs than any other person:—'The position of the colony is at the present moment most deplorable; bankruptcy and want stare every one in the face, and an extensive abandonment of estates appears inevitable, after the present crop, unless bold and immediate measures of relief are speedily afforded. Real estate is now perfectly valueless, and cannot be realised at any sacrifice; money has disappeared, and credit is entirely at an end; mercantile engagements can no longer be met, and parties of the highest probity, possessed of ample assets in houses and landed property, are cruelly forced into insolvency, owing to the inconvertibility of real estate.' Such was the language of Mr. Rennie; and finding it quoted in the despatch, it should be taken as affording some right to assume that Lord Harris did not greatly dissent from the views which Mr. Rennie laid down. He wished for a moment to revert, in the next place, to an important part of this subject, namely, the effect of the existing laws on the exports of manufactures from this country. He found from a table of exports submitted to the Sugar and Coffee Planting Committee by Mr. Burn, the editor of Burn's Commercial Glance, that taking the nineteen months before the passing of the Act of 1846, the value of cotton goods exported to the British colonies amounted to 5,988,544l., while for the nineteen months next after the passing of that Act the amount was 4,856,286l., showing a decrease compared with the corresponding period before the passing of the Act of 1,132,268l. During the same period, however, he found that the exports to the slave-labour countries of Cuba, Porto Rico, and Brazil, had increased from 2,490,770l. in the nineteen months before the passing of the Act of 1846, to 2,946,151l. in the nineteen months subsequent to that period, showing an increase of 455,381l. Now, while the exports to their own colonies had fallen off since 1846 to that large amount, they found that the exports to the slave countries had increased; but the increase, however, was not so great but that there was a serious balance against the manufacturers, amounting in the whole to no less than 676,887l. But if they could not at present reckon on any advantage to the manufacturers from the policy of the Government, what, he would ask, was likely to be the result to the consumer? He could not deny but that the consumers had derived a great advantage from the low price that sugars had ranged at during the last twelve months. He had before him a statement, taken from a quarter with which he was sure hon. Gentlemen opposite would not quarrel—he alluded to the Economist. It was a list of the quantities of sugar grown in the various quarters of the world. He would not trouble the House with the details; but he thought he had a right to state, that if the distress which he had already alluded to existed in the West India colonies, in the Mauritius, and in the East Indies, the result must necessarily be, if that distress continued, that the cultivation of sugar must cease in large districts of the British possessions; and then, after having driven their own producer out of the market, the consumer would be left exposed to any overcharge of price that the slave-labour countries might think fit to demand. The subject was one which it was impossible to treat of shortly, but he had been as brief as he possibly could. He felt now obliged to turn to another branch of the question, and he did so with feelings of pain and humiliation which it was impossible for him to describe. He alluded to the important and interesting portion of the subject that was connected with the question of slavery and the slave trade. He had expressed on Friday evening his astonishment that the First Minis- ter of the Crown should have come down to that House, and have made a statement on such a subject as the present, without making a single allusion to the question of slavery; but on farther consideration, he felt bound to say, that he did not feel so much surprise as at first that the noble Lord should have endeavoured to avoid the question. It was no part of his object to offer any party opposition to the noble Lord. He believed that the noble Lord and all Her Majesty's Ministers were sincere in entertaining the feeling that was so common to all Englishmen, of being anxious to put down slavery. But he was satisfied that the noble Lord must have felt the difficulty of approaching this part of the subject, knowing, as he must, that every prophecy that had been announced against the measure of 1846 had been fulfilled as to its tendency to increase slavery and the slave trade. It now became his duty to repeat those charges. His right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth, in the speech which he made in 1846 on this question, distinctly stated it as his opinion that the inevitable consequence of the measure then pending would be to increase the slave trade. In the other House of Parliament—and he believed he was in order in alluding to the matter, as it was recorded on the journals of the House—a protest had been recorded against the measure, attached to which he found the name of no less a personage than the Lord Chief Justice of England—one who was not at all disposed to support the views of that (the Opposition) side of the House. He found also attached to that protest the name of a right rev. Prelate, who, together with the name of Wilberforce, inherited that hatred of slavery which had conferred such a distinction upon it. He alluded to this subject with pain; but if this greatest measure in which England had been engaged, was to be abandoned for the fanciful success of a political theory, or for the monetary advantage of a halfpenny a pound in the price of sugar, he would call upon the House of Commons to interpose, and not to depart from those high principles which were alone worthy of Parliamentary support. And he should say, that it was satisfactory to him to think that the names of Wilberforce and Buxton were still to be found in the two Houses of Parliament to follow up the efforts of their predecessors in the cause of freedom, which had already conferred such a lustre on the names they bore. As he had brought this charge against the Government, of having by their policy advanced the slave trade, he felt bound to support it by evidence; and the first witness that he would call was the noble Lord whom he did not now see in his place, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The noble Lord was called as a witness before the Sugar and Coffee Plantation Committee, and he stated that in the year 1846 no less than 55,000 slaves had been imported into the Brazils, and that in 1847 a similar number, if he recollected rightly, had been imported, making 110,000 slaves imported into Brazil in these two years: whereas the average number imported between 1840 and 1845 inclusive, was only 32,000 per annum. Another witness examined before the Committee went farther, and said that 75,000 slaves were imported into Brazil in 1847. In confirmation of this view he would refer to a return, which he ought not to omit mentioning, of the amount of machinery sent from Great Britain to those slave-growing countries. In 1844 the value of the machinery exported to Cuba was 6,573l., and to Brazil, 17,505l.; but it gradually increased until the year 1847, when the value of the machinery exported to Cuba amounted to 17,664l., and to Brazil to 35,152l. Here again was evidence of the impulse given by our legislation to the produce of sugar in those slave countries. He should now turn to the evidence of a most important witness on this subject, Captain Matson of the Royal Navy—a gentleman, who, he believed, had seen more service upon the coast of Africa, and captured more slaves, than any other officer in Her Majesty's service. It so happened that Captain Matson was accidentally at Havana, when the intelligence of the passing of the Act of 1846 arrived there; and in the course of his examination before the Committee, this question was put to him:— You are of opinion, are you not, that the change in the laws of this country, admitting slave-grown sugar, has been one cause of very much stimulating the slave trade?—Very much: I was at Havana when the news arrived. What was the feeling of the Havana?—A feeling of rejoicing universally; the price of slaves very much increased, and so did the price of land. I saw both British merchants, slave merchants, and some of my old friends the slave captains (that is, British merchants, Spanish slave merchants, slave captains, &c.), they all told the same story, and the latter spoke with great glee. It was a day of jubilee there?—It was. And he also believed it was a day of jubilee. Such was the view taken by the people of Havana when they heard of the Act of 1846 having been passed. Captain Matson was afterwards asked— Can you give the Committee any information upon the mode in which the slaves are usually packed in the slavers?—They are packed as closely as salt fish; they are doubled up and stowed as closely as they can in the night, when they are obliged to go below. Are they in irons?—The men are generally in irons; it depends upon the part of the coast they are taken from. The north coast is the most difficult, is it not?—Yes; in the Bight of Benin and Gallinas they are the most savage race. I have seen many cargoes from the neighbourhood of Congo go without any irons at all. The ordinary practice is, is it not, that where a slavetrader calculates upon carrying 300 slaves to the other shore, he embarks 500?—Yes; that is for the purpose of putting them to the test. It is impossible for the most practised eye to tell a healthy from an unhealthy slave; but the trader reckons that during the first 48 hours those slaves that are unhealthy, and who would not stand the voyage across the Atlantic will sicken; and supposing the vessel will take 300, crowded, he would put 500 on board, making sure that during the first 48 hours they will be sufficiently weeded to leave a prime cargo. As the slave sickens during the first 48 hours, they leave him on deck, and give him nothing to eat, but let him die, and then throw him overboard. As soon as they begin to sicken they are put on one side?—Yes; weeding them, as it is called. Those who get over the first 48 hours will go across the Atlantic; and perhaps but one of them dies in a week. He was afterwards asked— Can you account for their sickening and dying so very soon; if an European went on board however sick he might be he would not die so soon from going to sea?—It is the change and the effect of the crowding; they die principally from dysentery; they cannot be fed so well, their victuals are not cooked so well, and the weaker their constitution the sooner they sicken; in fact, it is the only means that a slave trader has of ensuring the taking a prime cargo across. Of course the sickly slaves would not die so soon if they had nourishment. The next question Captain Matson was asked was— What seized vessel would they embark 500 slaves in; a vessel of how many tons? His answer was— I took a vessel with 427 slaves on board, of 49 tons. Perhaps he might be told this was nothing new, and that he was only repeating the oft-told tale of the horrors of the middle passage. He was sorry to say, that these cruelties were committed under the sanction of the Government of this country. It was here in England, where we had made such noble efforts for the suppression of the accursed traffic of the slave trade, that by the encouragement of the Government it had been renewed, and things been brought to the pass which Captain Matson in this frightful evidence disclosed. God forbid he should charge upon the noble Lord or upon the Government any such intention as this but he entreated them to pause in the legislation upon which they were embarked, to turn their attention to this part of the subject, and see the conclusion which must be drawn from the statements now offered to the House. With regard to Cuba, it was notorious that previous to 1846 the slave trade there had almost entirely ceased. He believed he might say it had altogether ceased, because the transport from Africa to Cuba was much more difficult than it was to Brazil. It was a longer voyage, and it required a more costly vessel. But what had our legislation done? Captain Matson was asked— What do you think would be the most advisable course to pursue with regard to Cuba?—Two years ago there was no such thing as a slave trade in Cuba; it is only within the last twelve months that there has been any slave trade whatever. It is the alteration of the law that has produced it?—Yes; it is the alteration in the demand for their sugar. That has affected Cuba much more than it did Brazil, because they could not afford to carry on the slave trade; at Brazil they could, because they did it at so much less cost; they gave next to nothing for an old vessel, and very few hands could navigate her; while from Cuba it required a fine vessel, well manned, to take very few slaves. Eighteen months ago, I think for a year before that, there had not been more than one or two solitary instances of slaves being landed at Cuba. In your opinion, the resurrection of the slave trade in Cuba is to be ascribed entirely to the stimulus given by the alteration in the laws admitting slave-grown sugar?—In Cuba I think so entirely. So that it was clearly under the operation of the Act of 1846 that the slave trade in Cuba had revived. Mr. Higgins, a gentleman well known in connexion with the West Indies, had given evidence upon this subject. This gentleman stated he had lately been in Cuba, and had had an opportunity of witnessing the working of slave labour there. He said they worked their slaves eighteen hours per day, and that, during the latter part of the time, they were goaded to work by the lash; that the people in the field "are stimulated by a driver or mayoral on horseback, armed with sword and whip;" and that, in fact, they were hunted by dogs. Mr. Higgins said that unless he had actually seen it, he could not have conceived anything in the human form so degraded as he found the slave population of the island of Cuba. Here, again, in this gentleman's evidence there was proof of the operation of that system which we were doing all we could to encourage by our legislation. He would next turn to the reports sent home by British consuls in these slave holding countries. Our consul at Rio, Mr. Porter, our consul at Bahia, the Governor of Sierra Leone, Mr. Hooper, our consul at Pernambuco, Sir T. Herbert, our admiral at Monte Video, and the commissioners at the Havana, all agreed in saying that the slave trade was now in full activity. He thought he was now justified in saying he had proved the charge with which he commenced, that the prophecies of 1846 had been literally fulfilled, and that the result of that measure, however little contemplated or desired by the Government, had been to give a most fearful stimulus to slavery and the slave trade. In his opening speech on Friday night the noble Lord passed over in silence this part of the subject; but the indignant language that followed induced him, in his reply, to advert to it. And what did the noble Lord say? Why, merely that he hoped and believed that the triumph of free labour over slave labour must be the means ultimately of destroying slavery and the slave trade. He assured the noble Lord he desired as ardently as he did to see the day when the great experiment of free labour would be successful; when the free grower could undersell the slave grower; but we were not likely to accomplish that great object under such legislation as the present Government had carried on either in 1846, or such as they were now attempting to carry out in 1848. If they wished to exterminate the odious traffic of the slave trade, they must cautiously shape their legislation in such a manner as to allow the British grower ultimately to be in a position to compete with the slave grower; and until that day arrived, they must give him such a protection as would enable him to enter into free competition. He had to express his gratitude to the House for the attention with which they had listened to him during a statement which he had felt little able to make, and during a great part of which he had been compelled to dwell upon very dry topics. He had endeavoured to show, and he trusted he had been successful, that the present depression of the colonies had arisen from our own legislation, and that we must endeavour to place them in a position to compete with slave labour, if we desired to see them successful. He had endeavoured to show, and he thought he had succeeded, that the consequences of the legislation of that House as it now stood, if they were about to persevere in it, must be, as their past legislation had been, to increase slavery and the slave trade. He implored them to retrace their steps upon that point before it was too late. He implored them to retrace their steps as they valued the prosperity of those great dependencies of the British Crown, and the character, the reputation, and the consistency of this Christian land. Before he sat down he must say, and he said it with deep feeling, that whatever might be the ultimate decision of this House, he prayed that their deliberations upon this anxious subject might "conduce to the honour, the welfare, and the safety of our Sovereign and her dominions."

SIR E. N. BUXTON

rose to second the Amendment proposed by his hon. Friend, though, perhaps, it was possible that he might approach this subject with views not altogether identical with those which his hon. Friend entertained. He did not altogether agree with his hon. Friend, when he said that this country had committed an injustice against the West Indies in depriving them for two years of apprenticeship, and that upon that account we were bound to grant them increased protection. The fact was that the Government was originally opposed to that alteration, but the country found out, when it had given 20,000,000l. to insure freedom, that freedom had not been given to the slave; that the grossest abuses prevailed during apprenticeship, which was in effect slavery, and consequently it was determined to do away with the two remaining years of apprenticeship. He must also say that he agreed in this Amendment of his hon. Friend with some difficulty, because he was quite satisfied that the policy which justice and humanity demanded was the policy pursued by this country up to 1846, namely, the system by which we excluded altogether sugar produced by slaves, and admitted sugar which was the produce of free labour in foreign countries. Had it been possible to regain that course of policy, which he believed to be the true one, he should not have hesitated to propose an Amendment in that sense; and he did not despair of seeing the day when that policy might be resumed by this country. He was well aware, however, that there were strong arguments against the adoption of such a course, and that Her Majesty's Government had declared in the strongest manner that there were treaties which would prevent its being carried out. Men, however, of great eminence, like Lord Aberdeen, had expressed a different opinion on the subject of those treaties. There was great importance, however, in the argument that they were, by their legislation, practically stimulating the slave trade. It might be many years before the price of free-grown sugar would be lower than the price of slave-grown; at the same time he was satisfied, looking at recent events upon the Continent, and the total breaking down of credit there, we should have had a great hold upon Cuba and Brazil if we had been able to say to them, "We will not give you our market so long as you retain slavery and the slave trade; but we will, if you abolish slavery and emancipate your slaves.'' There being, however, the greatest difficulties to an adoption of that line of policy, he felt that if he could not secure all, the best he could do was to take the Amendment of the hon. Baronet, which he thought must have the effect of giving a great encouragement to free-labour sugar in our own colonies, and the further effect of checking and suppressing the slave trade, which at present was extremely profitable in Brazil and Cuba. On this ground, whilst he differed in some degree on matters of principle from the hon. Baronet, it was that he united with him on his Motion. The hon. Baronet had gone through the whole subject of the West Indies so ably and so fully, as to leave him but little ground to occupy. In quoting, however, the despatch of Lord Harris, his hon. Friend omitted the following paragraph, which he thought should be noticed:— It is sad and painful to behold men expecting ruin quickly to overtake them; it is, perhaps, sadder and more painful to see them struggling and toiling against adversity, but with their energies dulled, and their arms palsied, from the knowledge that their labours must be unremunerative, and that failure can be the sole result; it is most distressing to witness this, and at the same time to be aware that much of the misery from which they are suffering, and that which awaits them, is of a nature which they are unable to avert by any acts of their own. He quoted this passage, because it seemed to him to describe the condition of the whole of the West Indies at this moment; and because he feared it was utterly im- possible but that a large portion of them—perhaps two-thirds—he imagined the final result would be one-half—must be given up for sugar cultivation. The chief remedy proposed by Her Majesty's Government for this miserable condition was to guarantee a loan for immigration from the coast of Africa. From what his noble Friend had said on this subject, the House might almost be led to think that nothing had hither to been done in this respect. And when the noble Lord urged it as something to take the place of protection, that 500,000l. would be guaranteed, he could hardly have been aware that in the colony of the Mauritius a sum of 900,000l. had been expended for immigration; that 95,000 Coolies had been imported there during the last ten years; and that the Cultivation of Mauritius had doubled since slavery was abolished: yet, in spite of all this, it was at this moment in a state of ruin and bankruptcy. It was true that immigration into the West Indies had not been so great; but from 1834 to 1847 it had been as follows:—Jamaica, 12,200; British Guiana, 47,700; Trinidad, 19,9000; making nearly 80,000. The returns, however, were imperfect, and he calculated that the whole number would amount to 90,000. This was what had already been done in this way; and it was now seen what had been the result. They had also the opinion of men well able to give advice to the Government and country on this subject. Governor Lord Harris, writing to Earl Grey, dated Trinidad, 21st of February, 1848, said— It is questionable, under present circumstances, whether immigration can, or, if so, whether it ought to be continued; and it is still more questionable, if it be true, as I am informed, that orders have already been received for one-third of the estates in the colony to be thrown out of cultivation after the present crop. But if it is to continue, when is it to cease?.… To compete with the slaveowner, it is not only cheap but continuous labour which the planter requires, and of which he at present cannot be certain, but which he is obliged to use all methods in endeavours to obtain.… I would here call your Lordship's attention to the result of the policy which has been carried on, and how, by it, the finances of the colony have been reduced; how its means have been consumed in a most extravagant and but very partially successful system of immigration. To this has everything been sacrificed; and for the sake of getting an extended care cultivation, which is now on the point of being abandoned, all improvements, even the most important, have been neglected. It was true this country would be liable, in the first instance, for the 500,000l.; but it Was to be a charge on the revenue of the colonies, and therefore all those arguments which Lord Harris so forcibly urged against previous immigration held good with reference to the system now to be adopted by the Government. He cordially joined in the recommendation that the immigrants should be imported at the expense of those for whose benefit they were to be employed. At all events, under the present state of the West Indies no great benefit could be expected from immigration. He had various other statements respecting the payment of wages. Lord Harris, in a despatch to Earl Grey, dated Trinidad, February 21, 1848, said it would have been impossible to enforce the payment of the monthly tax— in consequence of their inability to pay, for the wages of numbers have been in arrears for a long time, as much as three or four months. A Baptist missionary wrote from St. Anne's Bay, Jamaica, under date the 5th of March last— Jamaica certainly does not want labourers. There are some planters in this parish who own that labourers are not so much wanted as money. There are vast numbers of persons in this parish who cannot get work; many have to leave for other and distant districts to secure work, and in some places, where work is given the wages are not forthcoming. I could mention several cases in which labourers have had to wait weeks and months for their money. Lord Harris to Earl Grey, dated Trinidad, March 8, 1848, wrote— It is frequently very difficult to arrive at the truth with respect to the differences which occur as to the nonpayment of wages, but cases in which there were strong reasons for supposing that the Coolies have not received the full amount due to them have come before me. I speak not of the present time, because the nonpayment of wages is now almost universal, from the inability of the planters to procure money. In alluding to a particular case his Lordship said— As far as I could learn they had received neither wages, clothing, nor medical aid, and but the smallest modicum of food;— and added, in reference to numerous other cases— A stranger to the facts will hardly credit the negligence which has been manifested in this respect"— namely, the proper care of immigrants. Governor Light to Earl Grey, dated Demerara, April 4, 1848, wrote— The distress of some of the planters may, perhaps, cause the Creoles to hold back their labour for fear of nonpayment of wages. The Government Secretary, in forwarding a return from the same colony for the first three months of this year, remarked— Eight estates had no Creoles in January; six had none in February; one had none in March, for want of means to pay wages. A Committee which sat on this subject had unanimously resolved that a necessity existed for an immediate and great application of relief. No one could say that immigration now to be begun, the effect of which could not be much for years to come, was an immediate or great application of relief. It was utterly impossible that any living man could say that this proposed assistance was an answer to the demand made by the Committee over which the noble Lord presided for an immediate and great application of relief; and, looking at the condition of the West Indies, and the policy of this country, which had been so changeable, it was his conviction that the principles of free trade ought to have been applied to those colonies with much greater caution than they had been. The great motive, however, which induced him to take up this question was his feeling that in it was involved that great principle of justice, humanity, and religion, which led this country forty years ago to abolish the slave trade. He considered the question was, whether we were in future to be dependent for a large proportion of our sugar upon our own colonies, which produced it by free labour, or upon colonies which produced it by the most cruel and brutal slavery the world ever saw, and thus revive a trade unparalleled for enormity. On this part of the subject the hon. Baronet had almost supplanted his argument. It had been shown that prior to 1846 the slave trade had decreased; but since the Act of that year the slave trade had greatly increased, and the slavetraders and sugar producers in Cuba and Brazil were in a condition of almost unparalleled prosperity. According to Mr. Bandinell's evidence, from 1840 to 1845, the yearly average importation of slaves into Brazil was 32,600; in 1846, the importation of slaves was 64,000; in 1847, 63,000. He thought that with respect to the Brazils, at least, every person in England must admit, that since the promulgation of the Act admitting slave-grown sugar into this country, slavery in that country had at least doubled. In Cuba, where previous to the passing of that Act slavery had entirely ceased, it had, he admitted, not increased to the extent that might have been anticipated; but that he believed might be accounted for in a great measure by the hurricane in 1844, by which a vast number of coffee plantations were destroyed; and in consequence great numbers of slaves have been transferred from the cultivation of coffee to the cultivation of sugar. Upon this subject, Her Majesty's Commissioners, writing to Lord Palmerston, from the Havana, on the 9th of March, 1847, said— We regret to say that there are manifest tokens of the slavedealers again resuming their former practices, two vessels having been despatched, we are positively informed, for the coast, though we have not been made acquainted with their names. We do not therefore feel authorised to name them upon suspicions of our own, the two we suspect being cleared ostensibly, one on the 2nd of February for Barcelona, and the other on the 28th for New Orleans. We hear also, that two others have been sent direct to the coast from Spain. Respecting these movements, therefore, we have to exert our utmost diligence in obtaining proper information. If the present price of sugar continue, there will be such strong inducements for an extended cultivation, and in consequence such a demand for labour as will make the slavedealers and others run all risks whatever to supply it. The returns afforded the sugar planters now are such as to make us astonished that they do not draw even a greater number of persons to engage in its production. Again, on the 9th of April, 1847, they said— We are credibly informed that no fewer than seven have lately sailed for that purpose, and that several others are fitting out. The great demand for slaves, in the present enormous profits to be derived by the cultivation of sugar, will of a certainty induce these parties to encounter every risk to obtain the labourers required, and a continued vigilance will therefore be necessary to defeat their practices, as heretofore. He thought it was not necessary to go further into this question. He was perfectly satisfied that every independent man who looked at the subject with an unbiassed mind, would see that, whether taking Cuba or Brazil, it was manifestly and undoubtedly true that we must now make up our minds that if we admitted their sugar to open and equal competition with the sugar of our colonies, a very great increase on the African slave trade would be the result. During the last year 38,000 tons of sugar were admitted into this country from Cuba; and he believed, looking at the depression of our colonies, and at the orders which had gone out that cultivation should cease, and estates be given up, that it was not too much to expect that within a year from this time we should be using slave-grown sugar at the rate of at least 100,000 tons per annum. He confessed that it was his opinion, indeed, that after a time the quantity which we should use would be much greater even than that. But he was of opinion that the great misery which we inflicted upon a large number of our fellow-creatures by encouraging the slave trade, was not at all called for by the necessities of the occasion. Every year, hitherto, the produce of our colonies had been equal to the demand, and during last year he found that an enormous increase took place in the production, the colonies being enabled to produce a quantity of sugar greater by about 40,000 tons than in any previous year, whether during the periods of slavery or free trade. [Lord J. RUSSELL: That was under the Act of 1846.] The noble Lord said that that was under the Act of 1846. In reply to that, however, he would say that it was an impossibility such an effect could have been produced in so short a time as could have elapsed since the passing of that Act. He was himself a free-trader like the noble Lord. But he would say of free trade as Pope said of riches, that it was— …. "in effect No grace of heaven, or token of the elect. He confessed he had entered upon this subject with very painful feelings; for he could not but see that those high principles by which this country had been guided for many years were now supplanted by others which, though important in themselves, were far inferior to those principles on which he had acted in former years. He would willingly admit that it was the duty of that House to supply our great labouring population with all the necessaries and all the comforts of life in as great abundance and at as low a price as possible. He believed that it was eminently the duty of that House to do all in their power to effect that object; but at the same time he did believe most confidently that if the people of England had the question fairly put before them, and were clearly made to understand that by cheap sugar was meant slave-grown sugar, which must be had at the expense of the blood and happiness of the slave, they would willingly give a higher price for the produce of the freeman. The character of this country must suffer in the eyes of foreign nations, who would say that all our professions and wishes to put down the slave trade were not carried out in our actions. The following were the sentiments expressed in the Congress of the United States on recent British legislation, extracted verbatim from the Times of May 31, under the head "America:"— Mr. Calhoun replied: He had no doubt it was formerly the intention of Great Britain to abolish slavery everywhere, but since that time, there had been a momentous change of opinion and policy on the part of Great Britain. The whole Act of Abolition was now openly denounced in Parliament, and in language as strong as he himself had used. Great Britain was now resorting to the slave trade itself, as the means of promoting the prosperity of her plantations. Very different was the language of Dr. Channing, ten years before— Great Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt, and with a grinding taxation, contracted a new debt of 100,000,000 dollars, to give freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African. I know not that history records an act so disinterested, so sublime. In the progress of ages England's naval triumphs will shrink into a more and more narrow space in the records of our race. This moral triumph will fill a broader, brighter page. He did not despair that the House of Commons which passed the Act of 1846, under the impression that it would not have the effect of increasing the slave trade—now that they found that it had that effect—now that they discovered their lamentable error—would retrace their steps, and pass resolutions which would, at least in some degree, tend to revive and encourage the innocent and free cultivation of our colonies, and to repress the foul and murderous cultivation of Cuba and Brazil.

The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

I have listened. Sir, with great attention to the speech of the hon. Gentleman opposite, and also to that of my hon. Friend behind me, to understand what is the measure which the hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Pakington) would suggest that we ought to adopt, or what proposition, with respect to protection, he wishes to lay before the House as a substitute for the proposal of Her Majesty's Government. That he merely proposes to negative the proposition of the Government, and leave the existing law as it is, I conceive, considering the views he entertains, to be a thing impossible. But surely a fairer course than he has taken would be, to adopt the proposal of the Committee of which he was a member, which was composed of Gentlemen who no doubt paid great attention to this subject, and who have made a recommendation on the subject. That would have been a natural course to have taken; and that is the course which I understood him to indicate on a former night that he would take; but he has changed his mind; he now puts his Motion in a shape which he hopes will catch a vote or two, and he leaves the question as indefinite at the close of his address as when he first rose. At this moment accordingly, after the utmost attention on my part, I am utterly unable to conceive what he proposes to be done for the benefit of the planters, or what the protection is which he proposes to extend to them. My hon. Friend he-hind me (Sir E. Buxton) says that his Motion is, if we would agree to carry it out, to enforce the total exclusion of slave-grown sugar from this country. He would act upon the theory of the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, who has stated to the House that when the Act for the emancipation of the slaves was passed, in 1834, the Houses of Parliament and the country entered into a contract with the West India planters, first, to pay the 20,000,000l. for their slaves, and next, to give them a permanent monopoly of the English market. Now, that is a clear and intelligible proposition, and I have always admitted that such a course would be consistent with the principle which some Gentlemen in the House entertained at the time, that if we chose to take away the slaves of the planters, we were hound to make proper compensation. It was argued, however, by others, and among them by Lord Stanley, that the compensation then given was a full compensation. ["No, no!"] I say it was so argued by Lord Stanley—and he Stated the grounds of his opinion—whether you admit it or not. You might, of course, have given them the further compensation of the monopoly of the English market, by the perpetual exclusion of foreign sugar; and that would have been a consistent course for the hon. Gentleman opposite to have pursued. But the House of Commons on former occasions has decided against that perpetual exclusion of foreign sugar, and against the maintenance of a perpetual high protecting duty. If it were true that by the contract of 1834 the West India planters were to have exclusive possession of the English market, that contract was broken in 1844, for it is an actual breach of such a contract to have any foreign sugar of any description admitted to compete with the grower of colonial sugar. My hon. Friend behind me has admitted, in accordance with what every man of common sense must hold, that the Act of 1844 did give positive encouragement to the produce of slave-grown sugar; and on this point I must say that the noble Lord opposite misunderstood what I stated the other night on this subject. What I then stated was—and I have the fact now before me, in a document which I hold in my hand—that in the last year 3,000 tons of sugar, the produce of slave labour, were admitted, and which we were obliged to admit, under treaties with the countries where it was grown. But let me recall to the House the opinion of the present Lord Harrowby, who moved the well-known resolution on this subject in 1841, and whose sincerity in the anti-slavery cause no one will doubt. What was his opinion of the Act of 1844? He said— The market of Hamburgh was open to the sugar of Cuba, and it would be found that the encouragement given by this country to Java was, in the Hamburgh market, an encouragement given to Cuba sugar. The distinction of free and of slave-grown sugar was a fallacy, by adopting which they might gratify their feelings, but they would not obtain their object. I recollect he said you might as well attempt to take a spoonful of water out of one side of a basin, in the expectation that it would not be filled up from the other side, as to hope that when you took only free-grown sugar into consumption in this country, the slave-grown sugar would not be taken up by the rest of Europe. It is, in fact, a direct encouragement to slave-grown sugar—an encouragement just as certain, though not of course quite to the same extent, as if you took it to yourself. I do not mean to say that the Act of 1846 did not give further encouragement to slave-grown sugar. But if you stand upon the contract you say was made with the planters, then I say that the first breach of that contract which the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire complains of, was made in 1844; and therefore it does not be with those who supported the Act of 1844 to say that they will oppose all legislation which in any way whatever gives encouragement to slave-grown sugar. It may seem strange to my hon. Friend behind me (Sir E. Buxton), but there was no person, so far as I can find, who opposed that measure on the ground of wishing to put down slavery. I do not believe that even the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford (Sir R. Inglis) made this a ground of opposition on that occasion; but at least no division took place on such a ground in opposition to the Bill. It is not only Lord Harrow by, however, whose opinion I have to offer, but I may adduce the evidence of one of the witnesses examined before the Committee on the Sugar Duties, a gentleman of great credit and intelligence, whose name has often been mentioned in this House—I mean Mr. Greene, who, speaking of the result likely to be produced by the admission of slave-grown sugar, says— I believe in a great measure that it will make very little difference; but I do consider it will make a difference. I do not consider the difference will be very much if free-labour foreign sugar were to be admitted here, and slave-grown sugar excluded. I also admit that there must be a difference, although but very little, in the encouragement given to slave-labour, whether slave-labour sugar or only free-labour sugar is admitted for consumption in this country. But what were the grounds on which the Act of 1844 was passed? It was on the ground of the inadequate supply of colonial sugar, and of the high prices paid for their sugar by the people of this country. That is not my statement. It was the statement of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, himself a West India proprietor (Mr. Goulburn). The hon. Baronet opposite has stated, and my hon. Friend behind me (Sir E. Buxton) has repeated the assertion, that the colonial produce was always sufficient for the consumption of the country. It is difficult to know how to estimate the capability of the consumption of the country; but if we will only look a very few years back, and see the consumption of the country then as compared with what it is now, and at the same time consider the constantly increasing population, we must admit that so monstrous a proposition as that colonial sugar has always supplied the consumption of this country has seldom been made in this House. In 1840 the consumption of sugar in this country was 179,000 tons; last year it was 289,000 tons—an increase of 110,000 tons in those seven years. In 1842 the consumption was 193,000 tons, being an increase of 96,000 tons in five years, or, in other words, an increase equal to one-half of the whole consumption of 1842. I therefore assert that in 1842 the supply of colonial sugar was not adequate to the consumption of this country; and I think that if the quantity consumed has increased by one-half in five years, as these figures show it has done, there being consumed in 1842 only 193,000 tons, while in 1847 there were 289,000 tons, it must be admitted that the supply of sugar was in the former of these years quite inadequate for the country. [Mr. GOULBURN: Take the year 1847.] I do not deny the fact with re- spect to the year 1847; but the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman was that the colonial supply was always equal to the demand; and, although it might be found to be so in one year, I cannot on that account admit the correctness of the inference as to all former years. And now with regard to 1846, when we proposed the present law. At that period the principles of free trade had made great progress. Between 1844 and 1846, when the Bill was proposed, free trade had greatly advanced, and there were hardly any persons except those who voted with the noble Lord the Member for Lynn who did not distinctly avow that the principle of permanent protection against slave-grown sugar must be given up. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth stated that view most distinctly; and the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Barkly), as distinctly as he could utter it, said, "I am for free trade in sugar as I was for free trade in corn." The protection in corn having been given up, the hon. Member for Leominster very consistently said, that having voted for free trade in corn, he would vote for free trade in sugar also. Many other Gentlemen held the same view, though they contended for a gradual change, in order to enable those most interested to accommodate themselves to their altered circumstances; but the principle of protection was entirely given up, except by those Gentlemen who voted with the noble Lord the Member for Lynn; and therefore I am entitled to assume that the great majority of this House are decidedly against the principle of permanent protection. I must say, that though I agree with the hon. Gentleman opposite in the strong expressions he has used as to the horrors of slavery and the slave trade, still I think the question is not what those horrors are, or even whether there may have been a temporary increase to the slave trade since 1846. I suspect the hon. Gentleman has somewhat overstated that increase; for I believe it will be found that the number of slaves imported in 1847 hardly exceeded those imported in 1846; and I apprehend that the Act of 1846 had little effect on the importation of slaves in that year. If the increase in the importation was owing to any Act at all, it was owing rather to the Act of 1844 than to that of 1846. The great question is, by What means is slavery ultimately to be put down? And I entirely agree with my noble Friend near me, and with the opin- ion expressed by many Gentlemen in this House, that you will never succeed in putting down slavery, unless you beat it by the superior cheapness of free labour. You have been endeavouring to put down slavery by compulsory means, and the late Sir F. Buxton expressed himself satisfied of the inefficacy of those means. He pointed out in an able publication to what extent you had increased, as you are doing now, the horrors of the middle passage; and he proposed, what was afterwards carried out, an expedition up the Niger. That expedition was attended with a fearful loss of life, and proved an utter failure, 80 far as regarded any civilising intercourse with the savage tribes of Africa. That was given up, and we are now maintaining under treaty with foreign Powers the strictest possible blockade of the coast of Africa. How far that is successful, evidence has shown; I believe it may be confidently stated that hitherto that strict blockade, maintained with the concurrence of the French and the Americans, has been ineffective in putting down the slave trade. Whether there is any chance of its succeeding, we shall know better from the report of the Committee which is now sitting on this subject; but hitherto it has not succeeded in checking the evil to any considerable extent. If, then, all the means hitherto tried have failed, and if there still be one course left open to us—that of carrying out the principle of free labour, and putting down the slave trade by successful competition—we ought to make the attempt to put down slavery by this means. That this was the true mode of doing so, I have heard, time after time, from the friends of slave emancipation. If you tell me that slavery cannot be put down by the competition of free labour, and can point out a better mode, then that is another question; but all I say is, that every means we have hitherto tried has utterly failed; and unless the object can be gained by the competition of free labour, in my opinion slavery will continue. I will now advert to the recommendation of the Committee on Sugar Planting as to the rate of duty. The Committee have recommended a protection of 10s. for six years to the colonies; but if the argument of the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Pakington) is good for anything, there is a difference of 15s. 9½d. between the cost of producing slave-grown sugar, and the produce 'of free labour. If that be true, then I apprehend that nothing short of a differential duty of 15s. 9½d. will suffice; and it will be out of the question to listen to any notion of a mere temporary protection of 10s. only. Indeed the whole of the argument of the hon. Gentleman opposite went to the extent of permanent protection in favour of the West India colonies. The Committee, however, do not go this length, and concur in the opinion which I have expressed against permanent protection, instead of that propounded by the hon. Member. The Committee say that ultimately the prosperity of the British colonies must depend upon their possessing the means of successfully competing with the producers of slave-grown sugar, and not upon protection. That being the case—if sooner or later the West India colonists must come into competition with slave-grown sugar—the question remains, by what means can our colonial sugar be brought into successful competition with slave-grown sugar? It is my firm opinion that this result cannot be obtained by high or lasting protection. Protection has not secured the West India proprietors against periodical seasons of distress. At various periods during the last fifty years, distress visited the proprietors, and in some cases the cultivation of many estates was abandoned in consequence. It had been distinctly shown before the Committee, that the protection enjoyed during the last few years has essentially impeded that reduction of wages on which the planters must depend for being able to compete successfully with the producer of slave-grown sugar. I am almost afraid of touching upon the subject of the management of estates in the West Indies, lest I be accused of imputing extravagance to the proprietors. I can assure the House that I have not the slightest intention of casting that imputation upon the proprietors; neither had my noble Friend on a former evening, although he was subjected to reproof on that account by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. It is in evidence, however, that there is much waste in the management of estates in the West Indies. Take the case of Mr. Tollemache. That gentleman employed persons of the highest character in the management of his estate, and there is no reason to suppose that abuses prevailed in that case which were not common to West Indian estates generally; but when Mr. Tollemache went over to the West Indies, and applied his knowledge of landed property in England to his sugar plantation, he succeeded in reducing the cost of management by 900l. or 1,000l. a year, and he expected to be able to carry the reduction still further. Another witness, Mr. Greene, gave remarkable evidence on this point. He stated the cost of the management of two estates, the first of which was as follows: In 1843 it amounted to 2,300l., in 1844 to 2,400l., in 1845 to 2,200l., and in 1846 to 1,600l. From this statement it appears that a reduction of more than a third in the cost of management was effected in the space of two years. On the second estate the reduction is stated to have been still greater; in 1843 the cost of management was 2,300l., in 1844 it was 1,700l., in 1845 it was 1,800l., and in 1846 it was 1,300l When such evidence was given by persons conversant with the management of West Indian estates, it appeared to be impossible to deny that a large needless expenditure was incurred with respect to property in those islands. The evidence which was given before the Committee on the subject of the reduction of wages, is equally strong with that relative to the management of estates. Wages have been reduced in almost every colony, and the reduction has been greatest in the old colonies. It is a remarkable fact, that distress exists not so much in what are called the old and exhausted colonies, as in those which are comparatively new, and possess a large extent of fertile land. This is the result of the high wages paid to labourers, and that again is the necessary consequence of the competition for labour amongst the proprietors caused by the high price of sugar produced by protection. The hon. Member for Leominster, in his evidence, stated distinctly that the planters bid against each other for labour, by which, consequently, the cost of production was enhanced. I, therefore, am justified in contending that by continuing protection, we should defeat the very measure on which we must depend for the prosperity of the colonies and the ultimate suppression of the slave trade. As bearing upon this point, I will take the liberty of reading an extract from a despatch written by the Governor of British Guiana. He says— Had the diminution of wages taken place in 1847 rather than in 1848, many estates now jeopardised would, perhaps, have escaped; for the crops were large enough to have given profit, had expenses of labour not absorbed it. The evidence of the hon. Member for Leominster is decisive against protection of a permanent character; for, speaking of the introduction of labour into the colonies, he says, that if it should take place under a system of permanent protection, the planter would be induced to extend his cultivation, and at the end of six or ten years he would be in the same unfortunate condition as that in which he was at present placed. The hon. Member, therefore, recommended that a protecting duty of 10s. should be continued for two years, and that then the scale of 1846 should be resumed. The hon. Member, it is clear, desires protection only for a short time, in order to enable the planters to reduce the wages of labour. I would not advocate a reduction of the wages of the negroes if I were not convinced that they can bear it. The concurrent testimony of the witnesses examined before the Committee, shows that the negroes are possessed of large sums of money, which they are in the habit of expending on luxuries, and even in the purchase of land, to an extent that persons in a much higher condition of life in this country cannot attain. The Governor of Guiana states that one negro in that colony had bought a farm for 5,000 dollars, and that a very limited number of other negroes have recently purchased an estate for 50,000 dollars. I request the House to attend to the following passage in the evidence of Mr. Innes:— Supposing the colonies did believe that Parliament was able and willing to secure them a permanent protection of 10s. upon every cwt. of sugar, what do you believe would be the effect of that conviction upon the colony, upon the cultivation of estates there, and upon the rate of wages?—I believe the effect of It would be to transfer much of it into the hands of the labourers, and to defeat the endeavours of the planters to reduce wages and other charges. Mr. Pick wood also gives some evidence worthy of consideration:— Supposing we were to pass an Act to-day, increasing the protection upon sugar for the next three years, or to continue the present rate of protection for the next three years, and the news were to go "out to the island of St. Kitt's, do you believe that the immediate influence upon the rise of price consequent upon the passing of that Act, would have the effect of increasing the rate of wages?—Yes; I cannot take upon myself to say how far, but I am persuaded that a great proportion of the duty would be swallowed up in that way; it would raise the rate of wages, I am certain. It is not a little remarkable that the reduction of wages which has occurred has taken place last year for the first time, and that no efforts were made to effect that object until the differential duty was reduced to 6s. I say again, that if the House should take any retrograde step—if it should go back to the duty of 10s., as recommended by the Committee, it would assuredly defeat the only means by which our planters can ultimately be enabled to sustain permanent competition with the producers of slave-grown sugar. I will not follow the hon. Gentleman in his calculations respecting the relative cost of slave labour and free labour; but I may observe, that it appears from the evidence of Mr. Pickwood that at the present moment the cost of free labour in St. Kitt's is not greater than that of slave labour. This is the passage in Mr. Pickwood's evidence to which I refer:— The cost of that gang of slaves, which your father considered necessary to manage the estate, was as great as you would require to pay for free labour, according to the present current rate of wages, to cultivate that estate well from one end to the other at the present time?—Yes, if you could get the labour. It appears to me, notwithstanding the observation of the hon. Baronet behind me (Sir E. Buxton), that it is most desirable to facilitate the introduction of labourers into the West India colonies, or rather into some of them; because in Barbadoes they have more labour than they know what to do with, and in the opinion of Mr. Barkly labour actually impedes the improvement of the estates; but it is evident that a very small amount of labour introduced into the colonies will, in all probability, have the effect of keeping down the rate of wages. The hon. Member for Leominster says, in his evidence, that no enormous increase of the labouring population, but a few thousand Africans being introduced, would enable them to keep down the wages. It appears in the evidence of the hon. Member for Bristol, that a small amount of labour would answer the purpose. The possibility of the reduction has been defeated by the high price consequent upon protection. I stated, that on the first night on which this question came on, I should be prepared to take into consideration the expeose of carrying over liberated Africans. I believe it to be equally for the benefit of the colony of Sierra Leone, and of the liberated Africans, that they should be conveyed to the West Indies, and not left to remain in a state of barbarism, or perhaps be kidnapped again. This brings me to the question of immigration. Upon this point I am left completely in the dark as to what are the intentions of the two hon. Baronets who have addressed the House. I must say, that I know of no restrictions existing upon immigration, except those which are deemed necessary to prevent the revival of the African slave trade, There is no check upon immigration from China, or from any part of the African coast, which is not tainted with the slave trade. Upon this point neither the Committee nor the hon. Gentleman who has submitted the Amendment to-night, has recommended anything; all is left in the dark. As to the system of contracts to which the hon. Gentleman adverted, I believe that the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford, when in office, permitted the planters to enter into contracts with the negroes for three years. [Mr. GLADSTONE: I speak only from recollection; but I believe that my permission did not extend to contracts with natives of Africa or of the West In, dies.] I was not aware that the right hon. Gentleman's permission was accompanied by such stringent restrictions. My noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Department has signified that he will not object to any reasonable regulations relative to contracts which may be sanctioned by the Colonial Assemblies. I am by no means sure, however, that the contract system would be found to work well. Mr. Tollemache says, "The contract system has been tried in Antigua, though I doubt very much whether it answers;" and I confess, I am inclined to think that it is not likely to answer, and for this reason the object of the contracts is to compel labourers to work for a lower rate of wages than that usually received. ["No! it is to bind them to work."] My noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Department has no objection to any contracts for binding labourers to work, provided they are not treated as criminals to compel them to fulfil the terms of their contracts; but I do not believe that any system of forced labour will answer, if the labourers find that the persons working on neighbouring estates are receiving higher wages, or enjoying advantages which they do not receive. In the same way it is very difficult to enforce the law as to squatting: the fault is not in the law, but in carrying it out. It is plain enough, from the evidence taken before this Committee, that it is very much through the conduct of the managers of estates that squatting has taken place. What is the evidence of Mr. Borthwick? He says— There was a competition among the planters; the proprietors of large estates, or men who could command capital, gave high wages to a few labourers on purpose to get the labour, and they swallowed up the little estates by that means; they defeated their own purpose, because no sooner were the little estates abandoned, than the negroes became independent settlers upon those little estates. I think one of the witnesses described such a case in the neighbourhood of Kingston, of negroes who raised vegetables largely for Kingston market, and who said they were ready to pay rent for the land, but nobody asked for rent. How it is proposed to put an end to this system, I do not know; if nobody will take measures to dispossess them, or ask for rent, I do not know what can be done. If, then, I am right, upon the concurrent evidence of the West Indian witnesses, the introduction of no great amount, but a certain amount of African immigration is essential with a view of keeping down wages; and, if so, I do think the proposal we have made of advancing money, or giving a guarantee of a loan, if they choose to raise one, is one of the best modes of proceeding. I do not say that all will avail themselves of it; but we give them the means of doing so, where the want is felt—in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guiana; and, so far as I can gather from the most attentive consideration of the evidence, I can conceive no object for which an advance of money could be so well employed, as in the introduction of labour into those colonies where it is wanted, It will be available in those colonies in which the want is most felt. The hon. Gentleman has asked, what other means are to be taken for the relief of the planters? I fully admit that neither the introduction of labour, nor any other measure, will avail, unless we are prepared to give a protecting duty for a further time than was contemplated by the Act of 1846. We have been taunted, indeed, with departing from the principle of the Act of 1846; but I do not consider that we are doing so in the slightest degree by continuing protection for a certain time longer. The principle acted upon in 1846 was that for a certain time a certain amount of protection should be given to the West India colonies to enable them to prepare for ultimate competition with foreign sugars. It is no question of principle whether that period be four years or six; and if the experience of the last two years shows us that the period has not been long enough, and if adverse circumstances since the passing of that Act have aggravated the distress under which the West India colonies are suffering, I do not gee that it is in the slightest degree inconsistent with the principles of the Act of 1846 that the period of protection should be extended. There is another fault found with the Act of 1846—and that is also referred to in the report of this Committee in the 10th resolution, namely—as to the mode of levying the duty; it is said that the Act does not in point of fact give the protection it professes to give, that various sugars are subjected to one duty, and hence the whole of our colonial muscovado sugar is exposed to the competition of the best brown clayed Havana. That is stated most clearly in the evidence of Mr. Greene; I will not trouble the House with quotations, but he states that there are differences of from 8s. to 9s. in value in the articles, and that what he wants is an actual protection, whatever the amount may be that is given, and not a nominal protection as at present, which in many cases amounts to but 1s. or 2s., and in some cases to nothing at all. We propose, therefore, to introduce a new classification into the brown sugars, and to divide those sugars of foreign growth, which at present come in under one duty, into ''brown clayed," and ''muscovado.'' We propose to continue the duty on foreign brown clayed for a year more, at its present amount of 20s., and then to reduce it according to the scale which is in the hands of hon. Members. Foreign muscovado we propose to leave until 1851, at the rates fixed by the Act of 1846, and then to diminish the rate gradually to 10s., which, after 1854, will be the duty on all brown clayed and muscovado sugar. The hon. Member has said, that in his opinion this will be defeated by foreign sugars coming in as muscovado, and not as brown. From all my inquiries I am led to believe that that will not be the case; and I do not believe that the distinction will render it worth while to take any different modes of preparing sugars. The House may be curious to see what different descriptions of sugar now come in under the same head. [The right hon. Gentleman produced two samples, and laid them on the table.] I think it must be evident from the first sight of these sugars that these are of such dissimilar quality that it will not be at all unfair to make a distinction in the duty. Of course, everything depends upon the point at which we fix the standard; and after consultation this morning with the officers of the Board of Trade and of the Customs, I may say that I believe, without pledging myself exactly to the precise description, that the brown clayed sugar now worth 36s. 6d. in the market, long price, will be the standard of "brown clayed sugar;" and that only what is inferior to that will be admitted as foreign muscovado sugar. The officers see no difficulty whatever in carrying out that distinction. We do not propose to extend it to colonial sugar. It has always been urged that our classification was a direct discouragement to the improvement of the cultivation; at the end of six years all will come in at the same rate of duty; and we do not think it necessary to make the distinction for those few years; we propose to leave to the improved colonial sugar the advantage it now possesses. If we are right in supposing that the greater part of the foreign sugar will come in at the higher rate of duty—if, in fact, the really formidable competitor with colonial sugar is this description of foreign sugar—then we shall give a protection for a year higher than is now enjoyed by the West Indian proprietors. The recommendation of Mr. Innes is, that the fall in the present rate of differential duty should be suspended for three years; the present differential duty is 6s., and the proposal we make is, comparing colonial sugar with that foreign sugar which is its really formidable competitor, to give a differential duty of 7s. for the first of the next three years, 6s. 6d. for the second, and 6s. for the third. We, therefore, propose a differential duty higher than he recommends. We also propose to extend the protection, in one way or other, beyond 1851, when it would expire by the present law, and to continue it to 1854. If the present law remains un-changed, the present protection to colonial sugar is 6s., falling to 4s. 6d. in July, to 3s. in July, 1849, to 1s. 6d. in July, 1850, and expiring in July, 1851; according to the law, as we now propose it, the protection for the higher description of sugar will be 7s. till July, 1849, 6s. 6d. for the next year, 6s. for the next, then 5s. 6d., 4s. 6d., and 3s.; on the lower description of sugar 5s. 6d., 4s. 6d., 4s., 3s., and 2s.; the whole to be reduced to the same duty of 10s. in July, 1854. We propose also, what I believe is known to be a considerable advantage to the West Indian, though I find the Committee have made no recommendation of it, namely, the reduction of the differential duty on rum. I certainly was surprised that they made no mention of it, for it was alluded to very distinctly in the evidence. I expressed an opinion above a year ago that the duty was higher than justice required, and I have said the same thing in this Session; I did expect that the subject would be followed out by the Committee, but the whole matter is passed over in silence. I believe it is not an immaterial thing, with a view to the cost of producing sugar. And I find that the quantity very largely has increased; the rum entered for home consumption in 1846 was 2,684,000 gallons; in 1847, 3,330,000; and the increase goes on—for I find that the quantity introduced in the first four months of 1847 was 849,000 gallons, and in the first four months of 1848, 1,010,000. I believe the duty may properly be reduced to 4d., as we propose. This, therefore, is what we propose for the benefit of the producer of colonial sugar—to continue to him an amount of protection higher than he at present enjoys for a limited time, and to extend protection beyond the time now limited by law; we also propose a reduction of the differential duty on rum, and an advance of money for the purpose of facilitating immigration; and we shall be perfectly ready to consider any suggestion, though the Committee have made none, with a view to check vagrancy. While the measure we propose is for the interest of the colonial producer, we have not been unmindful of the interest of the consumer. If we had increased the duties on foreign produce, we should have disregarded the interests of the consumer. The interests of the colonial producer are identical with those of the consumer, because I believe that it is to the increase of consumption that the producers of sugar must look for the advancement of their own interests. I don't believe that by the course we have taken we shall exclude any foreign sugar from this market of this country for the ensuing year. With the present duty of 20s., foreign sugar comes freely into the country, notwithstanding the difference in favour of colonial sugar. The difference between the duties on colonial and on foreign sugar is a boon to the West Indian producer; but I don't believe that this increased protection will enhance the price of sugar for the ensuing year, or subsequently. There are considerations which I think show that such is not likely to be the case. In the first place, there is a very large stock of sugar on hand in the warehouses at this moment. Comparing this year with last year, and including the stocks of the five chief Continental ports—for when sugar is freely imported here, it is necessary to take the stocks in Continental ports—the whole quantity in stock is 143,000 tons this year, against 104,000 tons last year. There are, therefore, 40,000 tons more in stock this year, than there were last year. The accounts from the colonies and from Cuba concur in showing that there is every probability of a large produce this year. More than that, the probability is, that in the present state of the Continent, the larger part of the sugar will come to this country in the first instance. Taking the large amount of stock on hand, the anticipated result of this year's crop, and the prospect of imports, which, under other circumstances, might have taken a different direction, the probability is that a larger quantity of sugar will be brought into the market of this country than last year, and that increased supply may be expected to have the effect of preventing any enhancement of price. Maintaining the duties on the scale we propose, I believe this country has no reason to apprehend that the price of sugar will be enhanced. I have, therefore, reason to believe that the consumption will be considerably increased. It is only on increased consumption that the success of the planter depends; for production cannot be largely increased unless consumption be so. The noble Lord has stated the quantity of sugar produced last year in our colonies, and has represented it to be equal to the consumption of this country last year; and he added that it was possible the production of our colonies might equal, in another year, the consumption of this country, and even exceed it. But did he not see, that if the production of our colonies exceed the consumption of this country, they must enter into competition with foreign producers in the foreign market, and that the price which they will then receive for their sugar will depend on the price consequent on the competition of the foreign sugar. Protection would be of no advantage to them. If by the stimulus given to production in our colonies, they were induced to produce more sugar than the consumption of this country alone could take from them, they would lose all the benefit of protection, as was the case some years ago, when the colonial producers derived no benefit from protection, because, growing more than this country consumed, they were obliged to compete with foreign producers in the foreign markets, and the price they obtained was regulated by the price in the foreign markets. If the anticipations of the hon. Member were realised, their sugar will have to compete with foreign sugar in the foreign markets. If on the other hand they produced only at a high price, it is clear that the consumption even of this country would not be increased. In this way the permanent interest of the colonial producer would be injured. And the same reasons which induced the Government of the right hon. Member for Tamworth to pass the Act of 1844, and the present Government to pass the Act of 1846, would exist in full force to compel the Government to act on the principle of those measures, by introducing other sugar to keep down the price of colonial sugar. There is one other topic to which I must refer—I mean the effect on the revenue of the measure of the Government. As to what the hon. Member (Sir J. Pakington) proposes we are left in the dark; but what the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Barkly) proposed, the other night, was, adopting the resolutions of the Committee, to leave the duty on foreign sugar at 20s., and reduce the duty on colonial sugar to 10s. for a period of six years. If the proposal of Her Majesty's Government endangers the revenue, what would be the effect of the proposal of the Committee? The loss of 1s. per cwt. on colonial sugar, taking the consumption of last year at 240,000 tons, would amount on our proposal to 240,000l.; but the proposal of the Committee would be a loss of 4s. per cwt., or of 960,000l. on the consumption of last year. But I do not contemplate a loss under the proposal of Government. I do hope, and I think there are good grounds on which to show, that the loss involved in our proposal will be made up by increased consumption; but I am certainly not prepared for such an increase of consumption as to make up the loss which the proposal of the noble Lord's Committee would involve, namely, a loss of 960,000l. The loss can only be made up by an increased introduction of sugar, and by increased consumption, the duties on that increased consumption being paid into the Exchequer. The question, then, is, what is the probable increase of consumption for next year? Looking at the increased consumption of the last three or four years, I find the effect of lowering the duty has been an increase on the year 1844–45 of 36,000 tons; on 1845–46, of 19,000 tons; on 1846–47, of 28,000 tons. I don't believe there will be any great reduction in the price of sugar in 1848–49; and therefore I think it safer to look at those two years in which there was no reduction when forming an estimate of increased consumption. If I take the increased consumption for the year from the 5th of July next to the 5th of July, 1841, at 15,000 tons, the utmost loss to which I could look forward would be 45,000l., supposing colonial sugar at 13l. per ton. If the increased consumption of 15,000 tons consisted of 10,000 tons colonial sugar, at 13l. per ton, and 5,000 tons foreign sugar at 20l. per ton, the loss would be 10,000l. If the increased consumption were taken at 19,000 or 20,000 tons—and after the distress of last year we may fairly anticipate a great change for the better, even if the whole increase were on colonial sugar—I should be a gainer. That would give me an increase of 20,000l. If the 20,000 tons of increased consumption consisted of 15,000 tons colonial and 5,000 tons foreign, the increase would be 50,000l. There will also be some risk of loss on the reduction of the duty on rum. The former reduction has led to a considerable increase; and I have very little doubt that an increase will take place to a considerable amount in the present instance, which will go fully to make up for the reduction. I find that within the last four months there has been at the present rate of duty an increase on rum of 160,000 gallons. An increase to an equal amount would go to make up the present reduction, which was no exorbitant increase on a consumption of 3,000,000 gallons in the course of a year. If that increased consumption takes place in sugar and rum, then I shall be no loser whatever by the present measure. I do not think there is any other point on which it is necessary for me, on the part of the Government, to offer explanations to the House. I hope that in what I have said there is nothing to show any want of sympathy for those who have suffered from the state of matters in the West Indies. But the question is, in what way the permanent interest of the colonies can best be promoted. It will be necessary for an extension of the consumption of their sugar, which can only be effected by means of an increased production, that they should obtain the means of production at a cheap cost, the cheap cost of production depending on the rate of wages. It seems to me clear to demonstration that protection has prevented the reduction of wages in our colonies, on which their facility of production depends. I shall not go further into any argument on the subject of protection generally. But they have not thereby been protected from loss in former times; and sincerely looking to the permanent interest of the colonies, and to the policy which it is the duty of this country to pursue, my conviction is that the course which the Government has proposed for the consideration of the House, whether it be regarded so far as it may be ultimately conducive to the prosperity of those colonies, or to the extinction of slavery, is the only one which promises to secure the attainment of those objects.

MR. K. SEYMER

observed, that hon. Gentlemen on that (the Opposition) side of the House had predicted all the evils which had ensued from the measure of 1846, but they were not in a position to propose a remedy. It was for the Government to do that, and they were now anxious to force upon the Government the reconsideration of the question. He thought that in a case of this kind they might fairly take the evidence of persons who were acquainted with Cuba; and it appeared from the statement of Captain Matson, who was at the Havana at the time the Bill of 1846 was passed, that the people of Cuba had previously been on the point of abolishing the slave trade, in consequence of the inconvenience they experienced from their exclusion from the British market. The largest mercantile house in the Havana had petitioned for the remission of slavery, on the ground that if slavery were prohibited, their sugar would be admitted free to the British market—the best market in the world. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated, that the high and extravagant wages paid in the West India colonies were attributable to the system of protection. He considered that a curious argument to be advanced by a free-trader; for he recollected the agriculturists in the west of England being taunted about the low wages they gave, and they were then told that protection had been of no use to the labourers. The colonists had been obliged to pay high wages in order to keep their estates in cultivation; and the protection they had enjoyed, though it might have enabled them to do this, had not enabled them to do more. He had always regarded this question as one of simple justice to the colonies. He conceived that the producers of sugar in our colonies had been the victims of the peculiar state of parties in the mother country, over which they had no control, and from which they ought not to have suffered. He believed the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Sir R. Peel) had all along been in favour of affording some protection to the sugar-growing colonies, and had given his vote in favour of the measure of 1846 with great reluctance. He thought that the right hon. Baronet had been influenced by the peculiar position of parties in that House—that he felt the inconvenience of defeating a Government which had just entered upon office, and therefore, on political grounds, gave his support to the Bill. If he (Mr. Seymer) was asked what course he would have taken, he would reply that he would have done justice to the colonies, and that he would have left with the Government the responsibility of throwing the country into confusion about the difference of a penny a pound in the price of sugar; and he believed that, if the subject had been fairly placed before the people of this country, as involving the question of the slave trade, they would have given a verdict in favour of the views of the right hon. Member for Tamworth, and against those of the noble Lord opposite. He (Mr. Seymer) had regarded this question as one of justice. He had no doubt that some hon. Gentleman on his own side of the House, who had supported the Bill of 1846, would recollect the opinions expressed by some of the more desponding Protectionists when the measure was adopted sanctioning free trade in corn. It was then predicted that the result of that measure would be abandoned estates and ruined proprietors—that the farmers would become labourers, and the labourers paupers. Now, the case which had been thus hypothetically put with respect to the British agriculturists, was literally true with reference to the West Indian colonists. He appealed, then, to hon. Gentlemen on that, as well as on the opposite side of the House, to retrace their steps. He would advise the free-traders not to identify free trade with the present condition of the West India colonies. Let British agriculturists ever be reduced to the state of the West India colonists, and let that state be traceable in the one case, as it was in the other, to the legislation of that House, and all their corn-law theories would not prevent the re-enactment of protection. As to the political economists, he would not appeal to them on this subject; they were incorrigible. They seemed to view with great sang froid the ruin of their fellow-countrymen, provided they were ruined according to rule. This country at one time encouraged both the slave trade and slavery. It eventually abolished both. The right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to think that when the Emancipation Act was passed, the colonists were paid the full value both of their estates and of their slaves; but the slaves alone were valued at 43,000,000l., while the whole compensation awarded to the planters was 20,000,000l. He recollected that at that time the political economists said that free labour was cheaper than slave labour. He had no patience with these people; they were right in their decimal fractions, and wrong in their millions. The abandoned estates and ruined proprietary he had before mentioned were sufficient proofs of the accuracy of their anticipations. But when the Emancipation Act was passed, a promise was made to the planters that a system of apprenticeship should be continued for seven years; that they should receive assistance to promote immigration; and that protection would be afforded them by this country. Hon. Gentlemen were aware to what extent these promises had been kept. He certainly had not expected that a country which had in 1834 made such sacrifices for the abolition of slavery, would in 1846 have sanctioned a measure the tendency of which was not merely to encourage slavery, but the slave trade. He held in his hand a letter from the manager of an estate in the West Indies, who, writing on the 19th of January, stated that the labourers had not then returned to work after the Christmas holidays, but that he hoped they would return in about a week. Now, he would ask the House to consider what must be the condition of the agricultural districts of this country, if in the middle of July or the beginning of August, the agricultural labourers insisted upon having three weeks' holiday? Yet that was just the case of the West India colonies. The colonists had, in fact, been ruined by the exertions they had made. Those persons who had derived their incomes from the colonies alone were reduced to poverty, while those who possessed property in this country had been compelled to send out funds to carry on the cultivation of their estates. The machinery which used formerly to be sent out to our own colonies, was now consigned to Cuba or Brazil. The proprietors could not be expected to send out expensive steam-engines to our colonies when they could not be certain that for ten days or a fortnight at a time they would not be obliged to stand idle. The unfortunate colonists were next told that they ought to reside on their estates. He did not know that much would be gained by a person who had lived nearly all his life in this country going out to reside on his estates in the West Indies; but whether this was desirable or not, the omission of it surely formed no reason why the proprietors should be entirely ruined. The supporters of this measure laid down two great principles—first, that free labour was cheaper than slave labour; and next, that protection was the bane of commerce. Now, how did it happen that, during the existence of slavery and protection, the absentee proprietors contrived to keep their estates in good preservation, and to have good returns besides? Let hon. Gentlemen opposite explain that. The answer which he would give was, that neither of the two principles he had referred to was true. The noble Lord at the head of the Government seemed to think himself justified in being proud of his success, because he had brought forward a measure with the view of cheapening sugar, and that sugar had been cheap ever since the measure passed. During the same year that the Sugar Bill passed, a Bill was passed to encourage the manufacturer, and give cheap corn. With regard to the state of the manufacturers since that measure passed, the hon. Member for Manchester had sufficiently described them, so he would not say any more about that; but it was notorious that corn had been higher in price since that Bill passed than it had been for many years before. With regard to the Sugar Bill making sugar cheap, he begged to observe that the cheapness had been produced at the cost of tremendous sacrifices on the part of our colonists, who had been obliged to sell their sugar 20 per cent below prime cost; and the result was, that many of them had been ruined, while others were on the point of declining business. The point for the noble Lord to consider was, whether the cheap sugar would continue after the ruin of the colonist was completed. He begged to make one observation with respect to the despatches of Lord Harris. Every one who had read those despatches had been struck with the manner in which he referred to the growing disaffection of the colonists. It was a sad spectacle, he said, "to see the hearts and affections of a whole population becoming gradually alienated" from the mother country. This alienation was occasioned by the loyalty of the colonist being too severely tested. What was meant by loyalty? People were loyal because they believed that under that particular form of government they were more likely to enjoy liberty than under another form. But how could this feeling exist among the colonists after the manner in which they had been treated by the mother country? He was not surprised that in Jamaica they should have asked for "Yankee Doodle" instead of "God save the Queen." There was one part of the evidence which had not been quoted, to which he begged to refer—he meant the evidence of Senhor Cliffe, who stated that nine-tenths of the slaves imported into Brazil went to the sugar plantations, and who alleged, from what he knew of commerce generally, that "there is nothing so profitable under the sun at the present time as that trade is." How was it possible, then, to put down the slave trade so long as they took measures which tended to encourage it? It was argued by some that consistency required that we should not make such a fuss about slave labour—that we took the cotton, coffee, and tobacco of slave countries—and that therefore we must take sugar also. He begged to remind the House that when this country abolished slavery, she was satisfied with that, and did not think of interfering with the domestic policy of any other country; but with regard to the slave trade it was different. On that question we had risked going to war with our neighbours. The United States, however, so far from importing slaves from Africa, were so far protectionists that they encouraged this native branch of industry, and a horrid branch it was—the breeding of slaves for the home market. We no more encouraged the African slave trade, therefore, by taking the cotton, tobacco, and rice of America, than by taking the claret of Bordeaux and the deals of Norway. The House had been told, also, to trust to free trade putting down slavery. He believed that free trade would put down slavery when it put down war. The question before the House to consider was, what had been the effect on the slave trade and slavery of the late measure proposed by Government? He did not doubt that the intentions of Government were good; but they were not to consider the intentions, but the effects of their measure. Now, in spite of all the mystifications that had been used, it was impossible to deny that there had been a great increase, both of slavery and the slave trade, in consequence of that measure. On that ground the House ought to take its stand. He did not quite agree wish some hon. Members on the importance of cheap sugar. He thought cheap beef, cheap bread, and cheap beer, fully as important. Sugar was not like salt, a necessary and wholesome ingredient of food. If the hon. Member for Fins-bury (Mr. Wakley) were present, he would allow that sugar was not so wholesome an article as was generally believed. He (Mr. Seymer) had heard that in America, in consequence of the great consumption of sugar, there was no lady aged 30 whose teeth would bear inspection. He would have preferred supporting the Amendment of the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Pakington) in the form originally introduced; but as the Hon. Baronet had not thought proper to put it in that form, he should still vote for his Amendment rather than support the proposition of Government.

MR. HUME

confessed that though he was a free-trader in the fullest sense, he did not feel that he was obnoxious to the charges made against free-traders by the hon. Member who had just spoken. He agreed in much the hon. Gentleman had "aid as to the injustice done to our colonies, but he wished to show that free trade had nothing to do with the question. It was said the other night that free trade was got rid of, if once a differential duty were established; but he said, that free trade could only properly exist where the parties were in like circumstances, and where both parties were at liberty to apply the same means to the same end with equal facility. In corroboration of this opinion the hon. Member quoted the evidence of Mr. Deacon Hume, given before the Imports Duties Committee, of which he (Mr. Hume) was Chairman, to the effect that the British West Indies would, on equal terms, be able to compete with Cuba and Brazil. They were not, however, on equal terms, for the British West Indies were deprived of labour; and until they were placed on the same footing as Cuba and Brazil with respect to labour, it never could be said that free trade could exist. They ought not to compare this trade in sugar in the West Indies with the trade of Bradford, or of any other town in this country, because the circumstances were altogether different. In this country they had labour in abundance, but in the colonies there was not labour; and the latter had a claim upon the mother country on that account. The question therefore was, how could they restore that of which the colonies had been deprived? Of course they could not make amends to the men who had been ruined, and who were now gone; but to those who remained they were bound to do justice. The annals of legislation could not furnish such examples of injustice as had taken place in reference to the West Indies. Every Act passed by the mother country—every assurance made—every engagement entered into—had been broken. Mr. Innes, whose evidence had been referred to by the noble Lord at the head of the Government, in one part said that it was his opinion that confidence in Parliament was entirely destroyed, and that no Act could be passed which would inspire the colonies with the slightest degree of confidence. He (Mr. Hume) asserted that he knew no means by which slavery could be put down, except by making free labour cheaper than slave labour. Slavery could not exist if free labour were allowed, under proper circumstances, to be used. This was not a new opinion. It was the argument of all those who in former years advocated the emancipation of the negroes, that free labour, if it had a fair trial, would produce sugar cheaper than slave labour; and it was his complaint that that fair trial had never been given to free labour. The hon. Baronet had said that the engagement that was made to the colonies in 1834 had been fulfilled. It was no such thing. The hon. Baronet also said that the full price for the slaves was paid to the colonists. That was not so, and the reason was that the slaves were undervalued. They had been valued at 45,000,000l. instead of 101,000,000l., which was their actual value, and not one-fourth of that value was actually paid. It was also stipulated that the apprenticeship system should continue for six years, and that the West India colonies should have exclusive possession of the home market for their produce; but in both of those respects there had been a breach of the public faith. They were now looking to this question as one of pounds, shillings, and pence; but when he spoke of the question in 1834 in that manner, he was told that it was one of humanity. At that time they had rashly and hastily made the bargain for emancipation; and what had been the consequences? [The hon. Gentleman read a circular of Lord Glenelg's, issued in October, 1845, to show that the intention of the Government, by the measure of emancipation, was to enable the colonies to supply Great Britain with sugar without being dependent on slave produce, and preserve them in prosperity.] It was the want of labour that had prevented that intention being fulfilled; and the colonists had been under such restrictions as to the importation of labour, that it amounted to a virtual prohibition. The Orders in Council, the acts of the Government, in reference to the importation of labour, were not known to Parliament or the public. They were issued secretly by the Colonial Office. Who, under those circumstances, was to blame? Was it fair to complain that the West Indians, who probably resided in this country, carried on their estates at great expense, when they were prevented from obtaining the means of managing them? But he thought that, from the evidence before the Committee, some of the best cultivated estates in the West Indies were those that belonged to proprietors in Europe; and if sufficient labour were supplied, he was satisfied they would have been carried on well. But a series of violations of engagements, and the improper proceedings of the Colonial Office, had prevented it. That office was, in fact, a nuisance. Better would it have been for the fortunes of this country and of the West Indies had the Colonial Office been locked up. If they had allowed the colonies to manage their own affairs, there would not have been such distress. They could not even pass any fiscal regulations without the petty interference of the Colonial Office. They must prevent the interference of ignorant men. What could Lord Grey or Mr. Hawes know about the colonies? He gave them credit for being clearheaded and sharp men; but could they intuitively know what was necessary for the internal management of any colonies as well as those who were residing there? Amongst the various grounds upon which the colonists might rest their complaints was this, that for two months at a time they did not know what to expect—the colonists had been ruined by the measured of successive Governments. Lord Harris very truly stated some of the evils which arose from the interference of the Colonial Office at home with the business of colonies respecting which they knew nothing. It appeared from the statements of Lord Harris that Major Fagan laid down excellent rules and regulations for the government of the Coolies; that those regulations had been considered in council by Lord Harris, and fully approved; that they had been found to work well; that those regulations kept the Coolies on the estates well fed and well clothed. No doubt there might have been some faults in them, for they had been drawn up at a short notice, but under them the Coolies were healthy and comfortable. Lord Grey, however took upon himself to cancel those regulations, and to substitute a code of his own, or rather, as he believed, the noble Earl caused, in a great degree, the old regulations, to be readopted. What ensued? The Coolies acquired wandering habits; they went into the woods, where many of them were lost; and nothing was now more common than to find the skeletons of Coolies, whose deaths might fairly be imputed to the influence of those regulations. The hon. Member for Coventry had very truly said, that the ignorance of those who governed our colonies was much to be deplored; that in instances innumerable they had betrayed that ignorance; and he himself could lay before the House various authorities to prove the ignorance and incapacity of those who ruled the colonies. The colonists had an unquestionable right to a good supply of labour; but difficulties were always thrown in their way by the Colonial Office—down to the present hour all imaginable difficulties were thrown by the Colonial Office in the way of emigration. It was said, that the cause of the existing evils in the colonies was competition amongst the colonists; to that the answer was obvious—give them a sufficiency of labour, and competition would immediately abate. What was the real state of things in the colonies? The negroes were the masters, and those who had been masters were now servants. The negroes went to the little work that they did in carts, and carried silk umbrellas. What satisfaction was it to the colonists to be told in that House by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Government did all for them that it possibly could with regard to labour? The fact was, that the Government did nothing. Not that Lord Grey-was any worse than his predecessors—they were all alike—and the colonies were reduced to a state almost of destitution. The want of labour became most apparent in the year 1838, and from that time till 1846 it went on increasing. For his part he could not understand why the Govern- ment did not allow the colonists to go to the coast of Africa, and there negotiate by treaty with the native chiefs for a supply of labour; the chance ought to be given them, for they had been exposed to a severe trial, and compelled to endure the consequences of a great experiment. Was it not, then, the duty of a paternal Government to give them the means of restoring credit and confidence? Surely, means could be devised for that purpose. As to the Government plan, it had nothing to recommend it; the colonists had much better remain as they were, and be allowed to die quickly. He would say, give them sufficient protection; yes, he would call it protection. Give them a fair chance to restore credit and confidence, and they would continue to supply this country as they had ever done. He believed that nothing less than a period of ten years' trial would do any good to the colonies. Let not that be thought too long; the House had passed fourteen years without doing anything, and now the colonies were in a state of destitution, and almost of despair. If Government would withdraw their squadron from the coast of Africa, and apply one-fourth of the money wasted there towards the West Indies, they would be before many years in a flourishing state. Hitherto Parliament had broken every engagement it had made with these colonies; let them now make one and keep it. If nothing were done to prevent the present downward state of the West Indian colonies, in a few years very few Europeans would be left there; they would be left to the negroes, and if they escaped a St. Domingo and maintained peace, it would be as much as could be expected. The existing condition of affairs was a sad disappointment to all who looked upon the great experiment of negro emancipation as one worthy of this country. If Parliament would now give the colonies a long term, if they would enact vagrant laws, enforce continuous labour, allow the colonies to form their own estimates, and make one comprehensive scheme for them, the House might even now rely on success. He felt compelled to oppose the plan of the Government. He trusted the Motion of the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Pakington) would be carried, and that the hon. Baronet would then be prepared to submit to the House a plan upon which they might decide fairly, for there was no other way of doing honour to themselves or good to the colonies.

Debate adjourned to Thursday.

House adjourned at a quarter to One o'clock.