The National Register.
London, England, 1808-01-04 00:00:00

SLAVE TRADF.

Ja.m.tica..—The House of Assembly of Jamaica have
made a report on the Act passed in the last Session of
Parliament, for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It is
the object of this report to represent the stop put to the
importation of Slaves, as ruinous to the Colonies. This
has been always the argument of those who opposed that
benevolent measures but it is obvious that if it were true,
it cannot be proved by any effects which have yet resulted
from the abolition, as sufficient time has not yet elapsed
to sheer• either benefits or disadvantages of the Act. if,
however, the wisdom of the Legislature had not adopted
that measure, it is to be feared that the Colonists would
have experienced the dreadful effects of an abolition, not
brought about by the influence of law, but by violence.
The constant and unlimited importation of Negroes from
Africa would have finally reduced our West Ind►a Islands
to the melancholy situation of St. Domingo.
The following are the Resolutions of the Committee of
the House :

" Resolved, That the Act of the Imperial Parliament for
abolishing the Slave Trade, is pregnant with evils to this bland,
militating not only against its general welfare and interest, but
threatening its total destruction as a British West India Colony.
That depriving this extensive and yet unsettled Island of the
means of a supply of labourers from Africa, to cultivate the
soil, must be eventually ruinous to the Proprietors and others
interested in it : many indui-trions and enterprising settlers, who
have braved the difficulties and hardships always attendant Lit
infant embellishments in the interior and mountainous situations.
will, with their families, be reduced to poverty and wretched-
ness; and, when these settlements are abandoned by their pre-
sent inhabitants, they will become the haunts and fastnesses of
disaffected and rebellious negroes. That properties in possession
of mortgagees, receivers, guardians, and others, must shortly
fall a sacrifice to this Parliamentary regulations : becau,e, from
their peculiar circumstances, they cannot be supplied with la-
bourers, the result of w hick w ill be, to deprive a numerous de-
scription of persons, from the earliest state of infancy to the
most advanced and helpless ages, of the common means of edit-
cation :Ind support."

The Jamaica Papers received on Tuesday, contains a
Memorial of the Committee of Planters, Merchants, and
others, interested in the West ludia Colonies, which though
presented so k►ug ago as last June, has not, till now, been
published in any Paper in this country. In this Memorial
the Planters complain,
That where the relaxation of the navigation system would
be beneficial to the British Planter, it is enforced; and,
where the enforcement of it would be beneficial to him. it is
unaccountably relaxed by the novel permission granted to the
Neutral Power of cam ing the produce of his rivals to undersell
him at the European market.
•• That your Memorialists are unwilling to intrude their con-
cerns upon the important relations of the Mother Country with
Neutral Powers ; but humbly conceive, that it cie;pwt reasuaa-

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