The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-11 00:00:00

Z4llc evproSyS•

MAILS
• The urns for Tigo, Oporto. Lisbm, Madeira, Cella, and Gibesltat
will be made up on the morumg of the rth January.
Vas overland closed max, eta Marseilles, to tee Mediterranean
= Aden, Ceylon, India, Hang Kong, Sm., will be made up on the
of the 10th January.
United
-The raid. for British Neagh Almeria, Bermuda. mad Mae United
Matas, will be made up on We eerMng of the 14th January.
The West India Malls, eveluding Bermuda, NIIIMM,
110adUraa, New Orleans, Vera Cruz, Tampico, end Porto Kier, and
Wartuding Wore for Madeira, Jaemel. °tribalism. sante Maths,
Magna, Panama, Weal Cart at South America, and W. illAUS4illo
Kleargua, will be made up are the evening of the 17th ).many.
The merle:et master °Mealier, Malta, Cares. the lodge Mien&
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon. ladle, Mong-Kong. and China. via Southampteis
will be made up on the morning of the :10th January.
maiis for New Booth Wales, tr.to Pietaen's Land, rad New
Zealand wll be made up on the eeesing of the Mr January.
Tue malls for the &mails. the loret Plate, Monte Vtdeo, Pernam-
buco, Bahia, Madeira, and Buenos Ares, will be made up or the
• rating atlas 4th February.

TO COSIIISPON DENTS.
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lost ugg elk& 14 Ilessist•soss. N Two o'cluelt es the kg et pgbileatles.

HIGH WATTS AT LONDON Iltiilolll.
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LONDON, TUESDAY, JAN. 11.

IT is no exaggeration to say that not one British
legislative act relating to the slave trade and colonial
slavery has been marked by the knowledge and fore-
thought of statesmen. From about the time that
the anti-slavery movement assumed the character of
an important political question, down to the passing of
the Reform Act, the ministerial party looked with
jealousy upon all innovations as of a revolutionary
tendency. Every improvement in our social institu-
tions—popular education and rationalised law, as well
as the protection of personal liberty and free-trade—
had to be wrung from unwilling rulers by popular
agitation. Every concession on the part of govern-
ment was made, not from conviction, bat
from fear of deranging the balance of party
influences, or arousing popular violence against some
institution which ministers cared little for. The
crude and exaggerated suggestions of hustings orators
were adopted by sceptical ministers, who saw no
reason tbr putting into workable form what they be-
lieved to be unworkable. It is to be hoped that in
time the new popular influence in parliament will dis-
cover the expediency of selecting representatives with
the accomplishments required for legislators, instead
of sending any sort of people on chance, with a pre-
determination to bully ministers into doing what is
wanted; but hitherto the principles and practice of
the anti-reform bill era can scarcely be said to have
been abandoned. Parliament is still too little regarded
as the instrument for making acd upholding a good
administration; the old heresy, that all governments
are ex necessitate vicious and ill-disposed, and only to
be kept in order by the dread of popular clamour and
disturbance, is still prevalent.
It is solely because all legislation for emancipating
industry, until within these few years, and all legisla-
tion for promoting the recognition of personal rights
and liberties of all races of human beings to the pre-
sent day, have been mere reluctant adoptions of the
crude measures urged by multitudes under the im-
pulse of a vague benevolence, that we find the promo-
tion of personal freedom and of unfettered commerce
placed in antagonistic relations in our sugar colo-
nies. In this country one after another of the
barriers of protection have been removed, and
industry of all kinds has only prospered
the more in consequence. But the removal
of protection in the sager colonies has been
preceded and accompanied by measures which have
weakened them for competition with other sugar-
growing colonies. With comparatively few excep-
tions, the negroes in the British West Indies are at
this moment little, if at all, superior to the negroes
throughout the rest of America, in respect to the in-
fluence which the calculations of prudence or the am-
bition of elevating their station in life exercise over
their conduct. Their ambition and desires are of a
limited range, which the productiveness of their soil and
climate enables them easily to gratify. This premised,
let us contrast the different relations in which the
British and foreign sugar-planters sand to this light-
hearted and unreflecting race. The Brazilian or Cuban
planter can exact any amount of labour from his
negroes, by compulsion, and when their number
decreases, he can supply the deficiency at a cost that
leaves him ample profits. During the last half cen-
tury the British planter has been prohibited :—first'
from tilling up the diminishing ranks of his labourers
by importations from without ; next from exacting
from them (even while slavery continued) more
labour in the course of a day than was requisite for
the completion of a " task' of which a hale negress
has been known, since emancipation, regularly to per-
form two or three daily of her own free-will for several
years ; and, lastly, from obtaining any other than vo-
luntary labour. Every other condition of production be-
ing the same, it is impossible that the British planter,
thus circumstanced, can compete in the same market
with the Cuban or Brazilian on equal terms, unless
some measure is adopted for giving him an adequate
command of continuous combined labour.
The moral sense of the British empire—of the
whole world—would revolt at an attempt en our part
to revert to slavery or the elite° trade. Besides it is
impossible. Negro slavery could not co-exist with
the numerous free negro populations of' our West India
colonies. The ships which disembarked negro slaves
among them would merely import materials for
agrarian outrage.
As yet, only two proposed measures for enabling our
British sugar planters to keep their ground against
those of Cuba and Brazil, have met with any degree
of popular acceptation. One is the scheme fur put-
ting down the slave trade by force or diplomacy, or
by a combination of both, and for putting eh parties
on a level by withholding future supplies of slaves.
The other is by the imposition of differential duties
on slave-grown sugar, to give our own free-labour
produce the monopoly of our own markets at least.
Of the armed and diplomatic crusade against the
traffic in slaves, all parties are getting heartily sick.
All the negotiations recorded in five annual bulky
folios, and the expensive squadrons kept up by
England, France, and America, for the suppression of
the slave trade, have proved inadequate even to in.
crease materially the price of the slaves landed in
abundance in Cuba and Brazil. Nor is this all.
Before the slave trade was declared illegal, the mor-
tality amongst the negroes during the middle passage
averaged about 9 per cent. In 1840 it was estimated
by Sir FoWELL BUXTON at 25 per cent. Again, the
operations of the West African coast blockade
have materially checked the development of the
• legitimate traffic along that coast. Under any cir-
cumstances the jealous watch which the squadrons
are obliged to keep over all vessels that may' to en-
gaged in slaving could scarcely be exercised without
the fair traders suffering occasionally. But, in truth, the
squadrons seem to have proceeded upon the assump-
tion that every vessel trading to North Western Africa
is, on that account, a suspicions character. The effect
of the anti-slave trade measures hitherto pursued by
this country has been rather to retard than to ac-
celerate the extinction of that traffic. They have en-
listed national pride in its behalf : young end gallant
Brazilians of goad family have been known to engage

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