§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTONpresented petitions from the island of Jamaica, and from British Guiana (signed by 4,000 of the inhabitants), complaining of the distress under which they were suffering in consequence of the operation of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846.
§ SIR ROBERT H. INGLISpresented a petition from the Bishop and clergy of the Established Church, and ministers of all the other religious denominations in Jamaica, complaining of the distressed condition of that island, and praying for justice to an aggrieved community, whose sufferings had been incident to a system of policy supposed essential to the welfare of the Empire. The petitioners set forth, that it was no ordinary exigency that had combined them, whatever the diversity or the agreement of their political opinions, in an unanimous appeal on this subject, but a feeling that in the threatened ruin of the agricultural and commercial interests of the Colony their own usefulness and ministrations were involved, and they, therefore, recorded their solemn conviction that unless some wise and well-directed efforts were made to reconcile as far as it was possible an act of justice to the West Indian proprietors and their dependants with such policy, and to allow either the differential duties between the produce of the free cultivator and slave-grown sugars to subsist as a special exception on moral grounds to a general political rule, or some other prompt and sufficient remedy to be devised for the evils under which the British West Indian colonies suffered, the privations already sustained by the planters, the labours of the ministers of religion, and the costly philanthropy of the mother country in effecting emancipation, would be abortive, the cultivation of estates and the religious and educational institutions in the island simultaneously abandoned, while the masses of the population would inevitably retrograde to a state of barbar- 431 ism worse than that from which they had been rescued. The hon. Baronet having also presented a petition from the Chief Justice, other Judges, barristers, solicitors, and others, practising in the law in the island of Jamaica, then, pursuant to notice, asked the right hon. Secretary for the Colonies whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government would be directed, in the course of the next Session, if not in the present Session of Parliament, to the distress in the island of Jamaica, and in other colonial dependencies of the Crown, with a view to relieving the same, either by a continuance of the differential duties on slave-grown sugar, or by a reduction of the duties on free-labour sugar, or by any other mode which they may recommend to the wisdom of Parliament, regarding such a subject as an exception, on moral grounds, to the general question of free trade.
§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTONI think, Sir, it will be in the recollection of my hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, that, at an earlier period of the present Session, I had to answer a question of a somewhat similar character to the present. In answering that question, I stated that it was not the intention of Her Majesty's Government to propose to Parliament any measure on this subject during the present Session; and now, in answer to my hon. Friend, I must say, that so far as the present Session is concerned, my answer on the part of Her Majesty's Government must be the same. But I took that opportunity to state my own deep conviction of the severe and painful distress under which several of our West Indian Colonies are suffering, from causes to which my hon. Friend has referred. This impression undoubtedly must be confirmed, not only by the petitions which my hon. Friend has presented, but also by the two to the same effect which I have myself presented this evening from the island of Jamaica and from the colony of British Guiana; and I fear that there can be no doubt that up to this time those Colonies are suffering under very great and severe distress. The question of my hon. Friend, however, proceeds to ask what course Her Majesty's Government intend to take upon this subject in the next Session of Parliament. Now, I think he will see that it would not be proper, even if it were possible, for me to say what might be the precise course that Her Majesty's Government may think it right to take in a future 432 Session of Parliament on this or any other subject. But if he asks me, as he does on this occasion, whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government will be directed to this subject, it undoubtedly is my duty to say that the anxious consideration of Her Majesty's Government will be, as it ought to be, directed to such allegations of suffering on the part of any of the Colonies of Her Majesty that may be laid before them.