The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-29 00:00:00

PH E PRES S, AUGUST 29, 1857.

Gorrtspoittante.

FINANCIAL FALLACIES.
TO THE EDITOR OF " THE rrtr. is."

Sir,—The fallacy enunciated by Lord Palmerston
in his speech of Thursday the 20th, as reported by
the Times the following day, and generally trumpeted
forth to the world by the Whig organs and sup-
porters of Government—namely, that the unpa-
triotic conduct of the Tories in crying out for reduc-
tions at the beginning of this session—is quickly
refuted by the following figures. The revenue made
up to the 31st of March last was over 70,000,0001.;
:he revenue made up to the 30th of June was
above 72,000,0001.; the war income-tax produced
16,000,0002—it now produces 7,000,0001.; the na-
tional debt requires 30,000,0001., including the re-
payment of Gladstone's 2,000,0001. Exchequer Bonds
due in May ; the forces, including the vote for the
Persian war, required nearly 21,000,000/.;—together
51,000,0001. Then come the civil estimates, which
under twenty-five years of Whig reform retrench-
ment have been increased from 3,500,0001. to
8,000,0001., leaving a surplus of upwards of 10,000,0001.
according to the proportion of revenue collected up
to Juno last. Does Lord Palmerston mean to assert
that 10,000,0001. were necessary to retain the perfect
soldiers dismissed last spring by Government under
the false plea of economy, or to call out for thirty
days' training the militia, one-third of whom will
never rejoin their colours, retain the skilled artificers
turned away from Woolwich and the docks, whom
they can inever recall ? A vote of 1,000,0001. would
have sufficed to have kept faith with the dismissed
artisan, retained the soldier now to be replaced by
recruit, and kept up the militia as a corps de reserve
for the army and home defences. The country's
expenses are 62,000,0001., including the cost of col-
lection ; the country pays 72,000,0'10/. in taxation.
What becomes of the remaining 10,000,0001., accord-
ing to the last quarter's revenue? H. D.
August 27.

FREE AND SLAVE LABOUR.
TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS."

Sir,—The rapidly growing institution of slavery,
its cotton monopoly, with the deficiency of the raw
material for our manufacturers, and the general high
price of tropical produce, are questions of grave
import to Great Britain after having paid 20,000,000/.
to emancipate its negro serfs, under the representa-
tion of our rulers of that time that their labour as
free men would speedily take precedence of that of
the slave. Any information, therefore, relative to
this momentous question may not be unacceptable
►o your readers ; and from a work published in Jane
last, entitled " Russell's North America, its Agricul-
ture and Climate, with Observations on Cuba," I
have culled the following extracts, which bear on
the subject of slave and free labour, as the result,
apparently, of the author's unbiassed observations
and opinions during his tour. At page 293 he
says:--

Until the institution of slavery be weakened, as it was in
Europe, by the redundancy of the predial population, I
have as little hope of slavery relaxing its grasp in the
United States for many years to come as of people deny-
ing themselves the luxuries of cotton, sugar, and tobacco.
I have failed to discover a single element in active opera•
tion %liich points to a different conclusion. At a moderate
estimate, the slaves in the United States are wind], at the
present moment, 450.900,0001. No scheme for emancipa-
tion has been proposed which would not he attended with
a sacrifice of property it is in vain for us to expect to be
made. Thus slavery, I fear, will not loosen her grasp till
labour, which is at present obtained by coercion, can be
otherwise commanded thrJugh the force of circumstances.
The 20,000,009/. paid for emancipation is but a
drop in the bucket as compared with the present
value of the Yankee's slaves. At page 130 Mr.
Russell remarks that—

The nominal hire of a slave engaged in agricultural
operations is, therefore, rather less than that of a free
labourer. The cost of maintaining the slave is less than
that of boarding the free man—a difference that will so tar
assist in compensating the planter fur the inferior work of
the slave. These facts tend to show that slave labour
cannot be materially dearer than free, even in those States
where the two admit of being fairly compared
For had slave labour been so much inferior to free, as it is
generally supposed, it should have lessened the value of
property in the slave States. Hut it is generally believed
the chief profits of the Kentucky and Maryland slave-
owners arises from breeding slaves and selling them to the
cotton and sugar planters in the Southern States, which
still have so much unoccupied land. Hence, at the
present time, the institution of slavery exhibits no symp-
toms of docay in the richest corn•grcwind lands of the
Northern States.
Page I 40 :

The dread lest abolition would onTj be a transferring
the slave from the Northern to the Southern States serves
as a check to the zeal of those who wish to have the

system uprooted Slavery possesses great
advantages over free labour in the cultivation of tobacco,
for, among other reasons, shiveowners can always
command the quality and quantity of the labour required
to raise this crop economically . . . . On good land
a free man or a slave can cultivate twenty acres of Indian
corn, and as many of wheat.

Whilst the slave can only manage, the author says,
two acres of tobacco, from tha constant attention it
requires. Page 142:

In estimating the comparative productiveness of free
and slave labour, one fact must be kept in view—women
do not assist. in field work in any of the free States, or in
Canada. On the other hand, negro women are all em
ployed on the plantations, and at some operations Rs
effectively as the men. Hence in the United States a
given number of slave population engaged in agriculture
is really more productive than the same number of free.
. . . . Even a rich district, cultivated by slaves, may
compare very favourably with one cultivated by free men
with regard to the amount of produce they severally
raise The best land along the rivers will
soon be occupied by slaveowners, while the inferior and
more inaccessible will be slowly taken up by free setttlers
Page 152 :
The allowance for an ablebodied slave is four pounds of
bacon and twenty pounds of Indian corn meal a week,
besides buttermilk.
Page 155 :
If a planter's son obtains eight or ten slaves, and emi-
grates with them to the rich lands of the Mississippi, and
cultivate cotton, he will with ordinary attention and
industry soon accumulate a fortune So long. there,
fore, as there is abundance of new land in the United
States to carry off the surplus labour, slavery remains as
profitable as ever it was. . . . As an example of the large
internal traffic in slaves, it may be mentioned that one of
the engineers on the North Carolina railroad stated that
on one occasion he had taken 601 slaves south in one
train.

Virginia is stated to export 20,000 annually to the
South ; these, at only 1501. each, amount to 3,000,0001.
Guano, he tells us also—
Has been applied to a considerable extent in raising
cotton.
Page 180:

The cost of providing the negroes. young and old, with
food and clothing is from thirty to forty dots. per head.
An average of thirty-five dots. gives not quite a
day for 3( 5 days, and we are told by Mr. Baring
that in Demerara the planters give 2s. 6d. and 3s. a
day, and Lord Brougham says if the Jamaica
planters would give Is. 6d. per day, they would get
as much labour as they require, and that at that rate
of wages the negroes would leave their little farms to
work on the large estates. Time will prove if this
assertion be correct. My own opinion, from having
lived among them, is, that they will not leave their
little farms to work on the large estates now that the
price of their farm produce—cotton, sugar, coffee,
ginger, arrowroot, pimento, and vegetables of all
kinds—is good, and will well remunerate the little
farmer for his labour at home, and possibly enable
him to compete for labour with the large estates. At
page 281 Mr. Russell says :
This German settler confessed that nearly all of his
countrymon who emigrated with him were now slave-
owners. They were poor on their arrival in the country,
but no sooner did they realise a little money than they in-
vested it in slaves. . . To obtain the first was the prime
difficulty, for the possession of one seem to afford security
for obtaining another on credit.
Page 286 :
The natural increase of slaves is from two to six per
cent., and goes far to pay the interest of money invested in
them.

And at page 242 h 9 tells us that—
It is undeniable that the enianciption in onr colonies
has given a great impulse to slavery in other parts of the
world.

And he might safely have added, which the equali-
sation of duty on slave produce by Great Britain in
1M46 has powerfully increased.—Yours, most obedi-
ently, _ _

Ax OLD JAMAICA PLANTER.

July, 1857.

Obituarg.

THE LATE LTEUT.-GENERAL SIR Hsu WILLIAM
BARNARD, K.C.8., was son of the Rev. William Bar-
nard, LL.B., of Water Stratford, Bucks, and was
born in 1799, and married, in 1828, Miss Craufurd,
daughter of the late Brigadier James C. Craufurd.
After receiving his early education at Westminster
School, lie removed to the Royal Military College at
Sandhurst, having adopted the army as his profession,
like his uncle the late General Sir A. Barnard, Lieut.-
Gavernor of Chelsea College. Alter completing his
military studies at Sandhurst. he entered the Ist
( enadier ) Foot Guards in June, 1811. He was
for some time attached to the staff of General Sir
Andrew Barnard, when commandant of Paris in 1815,
and subsequently that gallant general's aide-de•can3p
when Sir Andrew commanded the northern district.

In 1824 he was aide-de-camp to General SirJ. Keane
in the West Indies. He served as assistant adjutant-
general in the northern district from 1817 to 1852
when in April in that year he was appointed to the
command of the South Wales district. It was while
so employed that he was selected by the late Viscount
Hardinge to go to the Crimea in the command of a
brigade, when he was made a major-general. The
lamented death of Lord Raglan occasioned a vacancy
in the command of the Eastern army, to which Ge-
neral Sir James Simpson, the chief of the staff, suc-
ceeded. Major-General Barnard, at the urgent
request of Sir James Simpson, was then appointed
chief of the staff, a post he wss well qualified to fill.
Sir Henry Barnard was subsequently appointed to
command a division of the army before Sebastopol,
and was made a lieutenant general while so employed.
The peace following soon after the tall of Sebastopol,
Sir Henry left the Crimea to take the command of
the troops stationed at Corfu, after the evacuation
of the Crimea. From Corfu h? returned to England
to command a division at Shornecliffe and Dover. It
was while so employed in November last that he was
appointed a major-general on the staff at Bengal.
The services of the gallant officer before Delhi, with
his comparatively feeble force, since the outbreak of
the minim of the Bengal. regiments, were of no
ordinary description, and it is feared that anxiety,
coupled with unceasing labour, had combined to
accelerate his death. His commissions bora date as
follows :--Ensign, June 9, 1814; Captain, Aug. 15,
1822; Captain and Lieut.-Colonel, May 17, 1831 ;
Colonel, Nov. 9,1846 ; Major-General,June 20, 1851.

SIR HENRY MONTGOMERY LAWRENCE, K.C.8., whose
death in a sortie beneath the walls of Lucknow is
announced in the telegraphic intelligence from India,
was a brother of Sir John Laird Muir Lawrence,
K.C.8., being the eldest son of the late Lieut.• Colonel
Alexander William Lawrence, of the county of Lin-
donderry, sometime Governor of Upnor Castle, who
distinguished himself by his gallantry at Seringa-
/warn. His mother was a daughter of the late Cap-
tain Knox, of county D.megal. H 3 was born at
:Vlattura, in Ceylon, in 1800, and married, in 1837,
Honoria, the youngest daughter of the Rev. George
Marshall, of Carndonagh, Ireland, but was left a
widower in 1851. Having received his early educa-
tion at the diocesan school at Londonderry, and after-
wards at the college of Addiscombe, he entered the
military service of the Hon. East India Company, in
the Bengal Artillery, in 1821, and soon ob'ained the
character of an able and energetic officer. He served
in the Cabul campaign under General Sir George
Pollock, in 1813, and received shortly afterwards the
brevet rank of major. In the same year he became
British R .sident at Nepaul. He afterwards took part
in the campaigns on the Sutlej, after which he was
made a military Companion of the Bath, and pro-
moted to the rank of lieatenant.colonel. In 1810
he was appointed Resident at Lahore and agent for
the Governor-General on the north•western frontier.

On the annexation of the Punjaub, in 1849, he was
appointed by Lord Dalhousie chief commissioner for
the Government of that district, and for his able ser-
vices in this and his preceding employment was made
a civil K.C.B. In 1854 he obtained the rank of full
colonel, and was also nominated an honorary aide-
de-camp to her Majesty. He was the author of
" Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Runjeet
Singh ;" and the firmness and ability which he had
shown in checking the progress of the recent mutiny
must be too fresh in our readers' memories to ne-d
repeating here. We can only add, that in Sir Henry
Lawrence the India service and the country have
lost an officer whose head and hand they could ill
afford to spare in the present crisis. But it is
not only as a soldier or as au eminent civilian
that Sir Henry Lawrence will be missed here-
after, high as his character stood in both capa•
cities. As a frank, open, honourable, and straight-
forward man, and as a generous and unselfish friend,
he had few equals, and no superior; so that his loss
will fall quite as heavily upon private society in India
as it will upon the public service. As an instance of
his generosity, it deserves to be recorded that for
many years, whilst drawing a handsome rcvenne
from his official employments, he devoted all that
he could spare of his yearly salary to the foundation
of an asylum for the orphan children of European
soldiers, which bears his name, and will long stand
as a memorial of his good deeds on the hills between
Simla and Umballah.

MR. H. F. BULWER MACREADY, son of the eminent
tragedian, we regret to say died on Saturday last, in
his nineteenth year.
MR.WILLIAM SHIELLS, R.S.A., died in Berwickshire
en Thursday week, in his seventy-thirlyear. He
Possessed consilerable versatility, but it was in
animal Painting that his forte lay. He frequently
contributed to our recent exhibitions pictures of
Scottish interiors, which, though agreeably coloured,
and evincing considerable feeling, were (probably
from a deficiencyin early training) not equally suc-
cessful in other requisites. Mr. Shiells was, we
believe, the oldest member of the Royal Scottish
Academy.