§ DISSENTIENT—
§ 1. Because the Bill, by increasing the consumption of sugar the produce of Brazil and Cuba, will increase the demand for the slave labour by which that sugar is produced, and thus tend to stimulate the Slave Trade, through which that labour is supplied.
§ 2. Because the Government of this country has been engaged for more than thirty years in endeavouring to induce all foreign States to prohibit and prevent the Slave Trade; and has recently concluded a Treaty with France for the conjoint application of a large naval force to its suppression, while Parliament has passed enactments of an unusual and stringent character to facilitate the accomplishment of that object.
§ 3. Because to establish fiscal regulations which tend, by encouraging the Slave Trade, to counteract the measures so adopted for its suppression, is inconsistent with good faith towards France, our ally, and disparaging to the policy and to the reputation of this country.
§ 4. Because the immediate reduction of the discriminating duties on British and foreign sugar, in the manner proposed, and the gradual assimilation of those duties as it is to be effected by the Bill, are measures for which India and the Colonies are 677 in their present condition not sufficiently prepared, the West Indian Colonies especially still suffering under the effect of the various conflicting enactments which Parliament—first, in its unscrupulous cupidity, and since in its late repentant morality—has passed with respect to them, and India having been only recently enabled, by a tardy act of common justice, to compete on equal terms with the other sugar-producing dominions of the Crown.
§ 5. Because the projected scheme for facilitating the introduction of labourers from Africa into the West India Colonies is not yet in detail before Parliament, although proposed as a means of enabling those Colonies to meet on more favourable terms the foreign competition to be created by the Bill; and there is but too much reason to apprehend (the condition of Africa being considered) that this projected scheme of relief cannot be effectual without practically reviving the Slave Trade in British vessels, under the specious disguise of immigration.
§ 6. Because the whole measure is of a nature to convey the impression that the people of this country are become tired of the honourable but costly character they had assumed, of the moral instructors of nations; that they are now resolved to seek compensation for the charge they are bound by treaty to incur, in endeavouring to suppress the Slave Trade, from the increased revenue to be derived from regulations tending to its encouragement; and that they no longer acknowledge the claim of India and the Colonies to have their interests equally considered, although unrepresented in Parliament.
§ ELLENBOROUGH.
§ S. OXON, for the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 6th reasons.
§ BEXLEY.
§ BROUGHAM.
§ August, 13, 1846.