The Express.
London, England, 1857-12-30 00:00:00

05,...'"''..........—.--
LIII DAILY sums I LONDOII MOBNII4O West Ind:sm—witere, we are told, the climate enables
~.....,==tmatialralo• ...mid them to dispenre with the refinements of shelter ce
einsassiaa appar el, and the soil provides them with sustenance
ts as moms me arm et 11=X:-.1.....==6.4 al
M .4.....1, ft Oa mad .... --tweely there lo less reasonable expectation that
,T =i'''''6•".".' "mu" wiam-.8....,.._""1- —or sely imported A Means, • tof all inducements
ITS l'°" al" la arejelid t o work, will toil voluntarily under similar circum-
assmeemw ewer el 'm
""'"Rallit 1 . a•pm. ItaDOIL There seams to be • hitch here, a sort of
—,ra Aztvreams._, hiatus in the West Indian argument, which can
:it. uninisT's only be repaired or filled up by • proposal to
Ear. eg • Vinaa all Naas ‘.4 reduce the African immigrants to slavery of some
es sseersie st esseassamitms Imam elm sort or other.
..."1....F=4151...,& .f.- elUrla It might be supposed from the manner in
-- -Thisiese hit tes-Keneweem Pm* which the Times writes that a prohibition of all
f= area . emigration from India to the West India was in
force. The very reverse is the ease. India is jog
as open to the West Indies as to the Mauritius ; and
if the Times will refer to this year's Report of ths
Emigration Commissioners, under the head of the
Weal Indies, it will find the first paragraph com-
mencing thus:

eV Oxasreoo.

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ifiguirmsor ismali oar ...assas"...Mair BMW papa.
MI lON ei alb% 14.16.6141110. V leilMilla In 00
0.419.1111.111..

4M Rr «4 CYrdr
filimemit [le 11•4041elne linmaia 77112111PINAIIUTTW• WoOD
MA ;
it.IMOD Pam Now. olff
a trim; mi• twos 'mem •• 7.

The umber of Coolies ordered for the West !alias for the
8061011 15364 was 4,300 for Britiah Guiana, 3,000 for
Trinidad, and a ship load for each of the Wends of St. Lucia
amid Onsada

In consequence of this " order " from the West
Indies there were actually despatched to British
Guiana 2,987 Indians, of whom only 664 were
females; 1,642 to Trinidad, of whom 414 were
women ; and 376 to Granada, of whom but 68 were
females. Yet we have the Times exclaiming in
December, 1867, " Can nothing of this sort be done
" for the West Indies ? "
The troth is, that from 1847 to 1856 a very con-
siderable addition has been made to the labouring
population of the West Indies. Sierra Leone has sent
them 6,643 free Africans; St. Helena has furnished
them with 7,096 liberated alarm; Madeira has given
them 9,366 of its distressed labourers; China has
furnished 2,000 of its people ; and India, which the
Times treats as closed to them, has sent 20,229
Coolies. In these ten yews the total extent of West
Indian immigration has reached nearly 60,000
labourers of all claws.

Tim Imes 1117.40 trATSCArIi CIPOOWD. Mr.O.
Ad ly irairarhed WHITS CAT; we. TM
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MGR WATER AT LONDON EAMON.
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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30.

Tut West Indian negro peasant is, according to
the Times of yesterday, "as much like a beast as
ever ;" he won't work, he won't cover his preen, or
shelter himself or his family; he is Taoist and
indolent to the last degree. Consequently, argues

Than we see bow very little this great advocate of
the West Indies really knows of West Indian affairs—
how perfectly unconscious it is of the radical via of
West Indian political asonomy—how inconsistent
with its libel of the black peasantry is its proposal to
import more Africans—how it underrates the advan-
tages which the Mauritius pommies for Indian im-
migration ; and how profoundly ignorant it is that
the suggestion it makes has already been actually
in operation for the lest ten years. It is, 112 the
ease of the Tunes and the West India planters,
"the blind leading the blind.*

our contemporary, Weal Lldia planters must be
allowed to commit felony by buying Africans, or, at
all events, to import Indians, as French restau-

tarots supply bread, a dieerslims.
This description of the emancipated peasant of the
British West Indies is not only, as regards its
objecta,• foul, but—in the interests of the planters—
a very injudicious libel; for it is by exaggerations
and untruths of this kind that passions an roamed,
and prejudices cultivated and extended,
antagonism established, and all confidence dastroyeL
The West Indian planters will gain nothing by inch
falsehoods; they will only render their came more

Tun Fultcn SLAVS Tuna—The Paris Coma-
itstiosfeel of Monday, in an article signed " P.
Dubois," throws off the mask on this subject ; boldly
defends the system which the French government
have adopted of purchasing negroea on the coast of
Africa and carrying them to compulsory service in
the French Antilles; argues that in no other manner
can prosperity be restored to them; and ridicules the
apposition of the English philanthropists. From
this manifestation on the part of the leading govern-
ment print of France, the deplorable inference is
that Lord Clarendon's remonstrances have utterly
Med, and that the revival of the African slave trade
by the Emperor of the French will be persevered in.
What will Lord Palmerston say now?

odious than it is, and create an opposition to their j
views and projects that will frustrate and defeat them,
even when they may be unobjectionable.
That the West Indian peasant can work well and
profitably fur his employer in the sugar field the
history of slavery shows. Why, then, does he not I
work there now steadily end continuously ? His in,-
knots, his prospects, his improvement, are more or
lees dependent on sager production, which is the 1,
staple wealth of the West Indies ; why then dose he
not by his labour maintain and largely augment the
production of that staple ? Surely the chief reason
is plain and simple enough. Yon cannot cast your
ryes over a book of West Indian statistics but it
stares you in the face. Taro, for example, to the
tables relating to our Colonial possessions for IBM,
lately presented to both Hovers of Parliament by
the clocca's command, and then be who runs may
read the cause. The reason is the low rate of wages
given fur work in a country in which labour is not
redundant, and where there are many temptations
not to work for ware at all.
In St. Kits the average rate of wages was in
1835 rid. to 13d. a day, in Nevis it was 7d., in Antigua
to Is, in Montserrat bad., in Dominica 7d., in St.
Laois le., is Barbados* 10d., in Grenada 2s. eld. to be.
a week of five days, in Tobago 10d. a day, in Trinidad
Is. 3d., in British Guiana la. 4d. Now it is to be
remarked that the coat of many of the leading
articles of provisions, nearly all of which are im-
ported—the cost of clothing, in which the emanci-
pated peasant, or " beast," se the Times calls him,
is vain and expensive—and the taxation of all these
coloo ies, are very high. Field work is the lowest kind
of labour, and while it is thus miserably underpaid,
skilled labour in these colonies is very highly remu-
nerated. In St. Kite, for example, the avenge were
of tradesmen are Is. II& to 2s. Id. a day, in Nevi

Is. 6d., in Antigua 2a, in Multiunit Is. to 35., in
Dominica 2a, in St. Lucia 2s. 6d., in Barberton
la Bd., in Tobago Is. 6d., in Trinidad 4s. 241., in
British Guiana 41. These statistics establish two
things: first, that the wages given fur cultivating
sow alfixd no adequate inducement for the pea-
santry to cultivate it steadily and continuously, and
that the profits of skilled labour are large enough to
divert every predial labourer worth his salt to the
prosecution of higher clue work.
It is further apparent from these tables that it is
exactly in those colonies wherein wages for predial
labour are highest that production is increasing. In
British Guiana wages fur field work are Is. 4d.
a-day, and its exports were valued in 1833 at
1,014,94 41. ; in 1&54 they use to 1,403,3321., and in
1833 were worth 1,331,3711. So also in Jamaica,
where labour bears • higher rate than in the
smaller colonies ; the value of Jamaica produce ex-
ported rose from 729,9361. in 113.13 to 958,1241. in
1835. To some extent this rise in value may have
bees clamed by a higher price of sager ; in that
we, however, the profits of cultivation must also
have increased, and the planters can have had no
excuse is want of pecuniary means for not drawing
steady and continuous field labour out of the pea-
sentry by good and adequate wages.
The true policy of the West India planter is to
purchase at its proper market value the labour he
allows to he wasting for sugar purposes around him.
But the real object of the West India planter is the
very reverse of his true policy—it is to lower the
rate of wag,. for field work by immigration. The
emancipated le asantry can liee without the planters,
and their ls'osr is only to be bad for substantial
wages ; those wages the planters, we have seen, will
not pay ; and then, because the peasantry will not
work for load' quate remuneration, they are insulted
by being told that " they are as much like beasts
" as rear as if at any time or under any eircum-
stanees,causeii ut iota, serious, and temperately minded
men could or would apply such a term or use such
language to describe any of the human race, " heirs
" to immoreeity," however low in the scale of
eiviliaation.
But lithe ee.azie. pated peuantryare, in West Indian
estimation, like " besets," it is obviously because of
their African origin and of their Negro character.
Then surely it is the grossest inconsistency to ask for
more Africans, more Negroes, and more " besets,"
unless indeed it is intended to subject the now
arrivals, purchased in Africa, to that compulsory
servitude in the West Indies which the Brill
people paid the planters twenty millions sterling W
free the " ben-'e " they already possessed from. If
Creole Negroes in • state of freedom won't work la dr