The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-09 00:00:00

AMERICA AND THE IVEST

By the United States' mail steam-ship Baltic,
Comstock commander, which a :Tired at Liverpool
yesterday, we have advices fron a New; York to the
28th ult.
The architects of the Crystal Pa lace ;bad reported
that the building would be corn? ?leted, so as to be
ready for the reception of good: .4 by the middle of
this month. The directors exp?,cted to open the
Exhibition between the Ist and 15th of July.
The State Department at Washington had given
notice that Great Britain had complained that wild
cattle had been killed and other depredations com-
mitted by the Americans at the Falkland Islands,
in consequence of which a force had been sent thither
to protect the inhabitants and their property.
A vessel had arrived at New York from Rio de
Janeiro with advices to the 4th of May, at which
date the yellow fever was raging to a. fearful ex-
tent among the shipping.
From California we have one day's later news,
to May 1, but the intelligence possesses no new
features.
In the Canadian Council on the 26th 'the bill to
increase the representatives in the Legislature was
passed by a large majority. On the fo flowing day
the bill to abolish seignorial tenures w AS defeated.
Vice-Admiral Seymour, in the flag-s'ilip Cumber-
land, arrived at Halifax on the 16th -ult. It was
reported that in addition to the presen.it naval force
on that coast several small craft were to be fitted
up for the protection of the fisheries. A rumour
was very prevalent that Belle Island was to be
ceded to the French Government, and. an address
to the Queen, remonstrating against it, had been
numerously signed. Her Majesty's stq..amer Agnes
had arrived from Portsmouth.
Accounts from Kingston, Jamaica :report the
prevalence of yellOw fever at that port.'
The following is the speech of the overnor of
Jamaica on the first day of the new si?,ssion after
the late rupture between the Council an.dc the House
of Assembly
"Gentlemen of the Council, Mr. Speaks T, and Gen-
tlemen of the Assembly,—lt may be exp edient to in-
form you that in consequence of the priuci pal revenue
acts having expired on the 30th of A pril without
any others being substituted, it is cali iulated that
between the first of this month and ti se tenth of
October, if matters should remain on tleeir present
footing, there will have been legitimate de mends upon
the Island Treasury for payments to this amount of
100,0001., and that there will not be money 3 vherewith to
pay more than one-fifth of the amount ; iii which case
the remaining four-fifths, or about 80,0001.,, by virtue of
pre-existing enactments, of which it is yakn for any one
branch of the Legislature to attempt to get rid by reso-
lutions, would become an augmentation of the debt of
the island, which might be legally claimed as payable on
demand. But many, on whose accounts those payments
sooner or later would have been made, cannot wait for
a postponed satisfaction of their claims, and the indif-
ference which may be felt in some quarters as to a score
being run up against the Island Treasury as not a suf-
ficient sanction for that mode of feeding prisoners, nor of
paying a police force, consequently, I am preparing to
discharge at once the female prisoners from the several
prisons of the island, and, at short intervals after-
wards, all the male convicts also whose labour cannot
be made to provide for their maintenance. The police
force, by the interruption of their stipulated pay, will
be legally released from their engagements% consequent
on their enlistment, and I contemplate tine necessity
of asking for the advice of her Majesty's Executive
Council as to the expediency of calling upon all justices
of the peace and other legal subjects of the Crown to
form local associations for the maintenance of the public
peace by voluntary contributions, and. by personal ser-
vices of watch and ward. If any delusion :has prevailed
under which gentlemen have persuaded themselves that
the governor, on such occasions as this, has authority of
license to resort to the Commissariat or Ito the Home
Government for pecuniary assistance, it ist time that I
should put an end to it. I neither have any such power
at present, nor do I entertain the slightest expectation
that her Majesty's Government or the Imperial Legis-
lature will think it reasonable to supply by any aid
whatever the absence of a revenue which the Island
Legislature had the means of renewing instantaneously
if it chooses to do so.
" Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Assembly,—ln
this position of affairs I ask you in her Majesty's name
to grant, in the ordinary manner, the ordinary supplies;
which may at any time be done by renewing and con-
tinuing the Import and Rum Duties Ache of the pre-
ceding year. The whole receipts of the Treasury in
the month of April were about 30,0001., and already
in one short fortnight we have thrown away far
more than the whole of what you thought of saving
in the first half-year. The principal officers of Cus-
toms report to me, that in the first two weeks
of May the merchant vessels which have arrived
in the port of Kingston alone would have been liable to
11,000/. of import duties if the act of last year had con-
tinued in force, instead of 1,0001., under the 2 per
cent ad valorem, which is the duty that is now in
force ; it must be admitted, indeed, that it is not by
any means certain, if the revenue bills had been re-
newed, that the unprecedented number of vessels from
the United States would have come in, and, dismissing
do the painful suspicion of any plan having been
concerted here for private gain, the intelligence cf our
dissensions, communicated, no doubt, through the ordi-
narypublicchannel; has enabled our more clear-sighted
neighbours to make, as they had a right to make, their
own advantage out of our legislative policy. Upon the
most moderate calculation; however, the suspensions of
the revenue accounts between this time and October
would inflict upon the island a loss of more than ten times
the amount of what could have been savedin that period
by the Retrenchment Bill of the last two sessions ; and
those who may be on the watch to turn the public
loss to their own profit will have the opportunity of
stocking their stores at this season of the year with
undutied rum at the rate of 1,000 puncheons a-week.
Was it really, then, economy for which this struggle
was begun, and for which it is kept up Can it be
gravely said that it has been a plan rationally conceived
for the relief of the inhabitants which sacrifices ten
times the amount of import and ruin duties in an
effort to enforce a retrenchment which, although it
would have been a grievous deduction from the in-
comes of individuals, would have been comparatively
insignificant to the public, and would have been ab-
solutely unfelt by the poorer classes of the people ?
What is it, then, that has brought us to the present
pass ? The maintenance of a principle ? Gentlemen,
I know the tenacity and the sensitiveness with whieh
you repel, as contrary to your very peculiar privileges,
any advice or suggestion on the part of the Govern.
ment in relation to measures which are before your
honourable house ; but I believe that, according to
your own views, I shall give you no offence by
speaking of the proceedings of past sessions, which
have become matter of history, and are now before
you for deliberation. Let me attempt, then, to
define what I understand to have been that ' prin-
ciple' for which former Houses of Assembly
and this house, in former sessions, have contended.
There is not any question as to the right of the House
of Assembly to have appropriations first carried in that
house, for it has always been conceded that it must
be so. It is not even disputed that legitimate appro-
priations may be made here on the same bills by
which the supplies are granted ; for although it is the
general rule and the established practice in the British
House of Commons to have the grants and the appro-
priations made by separate bills, that is a matter even
there of convenience rather than of principle ; and the
frequent and customary deviations from the practice in
this colony, while they have introduced a confusion of
appropriations which, sooner or later, it is to be hoped,
will convince you of the superiority and advantages of
the English rule, have established a sort of island
usage which, whatever I may think of it, I certainly
do not think at present of attempting to prohibit
without your assent. But when in former sessions

the House of Assembly, adhering to the practice
of granting the principal revenues only from year to
year, has asserted a right to pretermit pre-existing
charges on the Island Treasury which have been regularly
established by law, and so to marshal in a new order the
appropriations of its grants as to defeat former appro-
priations permanently established by the whole Legisla-
ture, and in effect to repudiate those legal charges, whe-
ther it be wholly, or only in part, with a reservation of a
power to repudiate other portions at any future time, it has
seemed to me to be, in reality, not a contention for
a principle, but the assertion of a right to do wrong,
which it was the duty of the other branches of the Legis-
lature firmly and steadily to resist ; and which, if it
were to be generally conceded in the colonial empire of
England, would be destructive of the prosperity of all its
parts ; would everywhere generate distrust, and make
confidence in public faith impossible, and would dissemi-
late political confusion in the four quarters of the globe.
" Gentlemen of the Council, Mr. Speaker and Gen-

tlemeu of the Assembly,—With the prospects which are
before us, it is, perhaps, of little present use to say
what might be done by a single-minded effort, for the
peace and welfare of the island. But, as all this ruinous
distraction, by the frequent recurrence of which Jamaica
has been throughout its annals so unhappily distinguished,
appears to me to be the direct and unavoidable result of
some perversions of the model institutions of England,
so I believe that the main and immediate mischief would
bo
e remedied
ules, at once by reverting in those few particulars
t Englis r and by
being contented with the Hon. House of Assembly
a power as perfectly analagous to
the British House of Commons al it might be possible
to make it, which after all, perhaps, would be found
to be as great a power for any good purpose as
that which it possesses at present, or even supposes
itself to possess. Therefore, whensoever and in what-
soever manner opportunity and leisure may be found or
created, I recominend that your attention should be
given first, to a regulation of the civil and ecclesiastical
establishments by reductions which shall either be pro-
spective or shall be made upon the basis of a fair and
moderate compensation for existing interests ;
m n
secondly,
et of
to the provision of a permanent fund fortheyn
thethe Governor
fjrtheestablishments t
time
iie enabling t
mo
p to, y
Ministerial
of
officers, holding seats in the Assernb to bring forward
e
G oxv chrei niHeonut
snei eoafs uAressams in
bUilya house.
bad
declared Kingston a
free port.

Niw ZiALAND.—Advices from NQ'! ,Zealand to the
Gth April state that coal of superior quality had been
found on the shores of the Oeholsk sea, in longitude
I.sti E.