The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-19 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

COMMERCIAL STATISTICS. A Digest of
the Productive Resources, Commercial Legislation,
Customs Tariffs, Navigation, Port, and Quarantine
Laws, and Charges, Shipping, Imports and Ex-
ports, and the Monies, Weights, and Measures of
All Nations. Including all British Commercial
Treaties with Foreign States. Collected from
Authentic Records, and consolidated with especial
reference to British and Foreign Products, Trade,
and Navigation. By John Macgregor, M.P., late
Secretary of the Board of Trade; author of "The
Progress of America, from the Discovery by
Columbus to the year 1847." Vol. IV
This, the fourth and concluding volume of this
most important work, contains the commercial sta-
tistics of Hayti and the foreign West Indies, of the
empire of Brazil, and of the East Indies, China, and
Oriental States. The commercial statistics of Hayti
go to prove that the negro race, wherever left to it-
self, rapidly degenerates towards barbarism, and that
the resources of any country which unhappily falls
under the sole control of that idle and improvident
race must necessarily remain in a great measure un-
developed. A comparison between the exports of
Hayti while under white and while under negro
government will at once establish this fact. In 1789
the export of clayed sugar was 47,516,531 hogsheads
—in 1820 it altogether ceased ; in 1789 the export of
muscavado sugar was 93,573,300 hogsheads—in 1826
it amounted only to 32,864 ; the export of coffee in
1789 was 76,835,219 lbs.—in 1826 it was only
32,189,794 ; of cotton there were exported in 1789
7,004,2741b5., and in 1826 only 620,9721b5. Thus
we
.find that there has been an enormous decrease in
the staple productions of the island since it passed
from the government of the whites to that of the
negro race, and that the decrease has taken place to
the greatest extent in those productions on which the
greatest amount of labour is expended to bring them
to perfection. From the statistics of Hayti it is evident
that the cultivation of sugar has given place to that of
tobacco, which latter requires little labour or attention
to bring it to perfection. As Mr. Macgregor justly
remarks—
" Toussaint and Christophe, who understood tho-
roughly the disinclination of the' population to agri-
cultural labour, may well be justified for the severity
of their rural codes when we compare the San Domingo
of 1790 to the island of Hayti in 1846."
Toussaint and Christophe had both been educated in
the school of the whites, and therefore their reigns
may in many respects be considered as almost a con-
tinuation of white rule. It was not until the death
of the latter that the government of Hayti fell into
the power of those who had been bred up in the native
school, and who had not profited by white instruc-
tion. Of the native rule Mr. Macgregor thus speaks :
" From the day on which Christophe expired down to
the present day, a period of twenty-six years, neither
industry nor improvement, nor energetic administration,
or the extension of the education of the people, nor any
progress in the march of civilization, appears in the agri-
cultural, manufacturing, commercial, moral, social, or
political condition of the republic of Hayti. The climate,
the soil, and the pastures, yield, almost without culture,
sufficient merely to feed a people, too indolent to work for
comforts and luxuries.
We turn from Hayti, fast falling back into barbarism,
to :Cuba, where we find a very different state of
things existing :
" In 1760 the produce of sugar and coffee together, in
Cuba, only amounted to about 5,000,0001b5. Forty years
afterwards the produce increased to above 40,000,0001b5.
In 1820 the exports /increased to, aboveloo,ooo,ooolbs. ;
and since that period the increase will appear by re-
ferring to the tables of the trade of Cuba. In
1800 there were, according to Don Sagra, but eighty
coffee farms and plantations ; in 18 i
17 they increased to
i
7EO ; in 1827 to 2,067; at present t s estimated to a bove
3,000. Tobacco is indigenous, and the best qualityis
grown, but it is said not to be profitoble to the planter.
In 1826 the exports of cigars amounted to 197,1941b5.;.
isin olBn3t7h et od7e9cl2i I t
andure of
plantainsco t aanrdelndl
abun-
dantlygo
grown, also potatoes and some wheat."
,n4e3.Blbms.aizTe
Cuba possesses large and flourishing cities, an uni-
versity, several learned societies, and many hospitals and
charitable institutions, and a railroad. In the Spanish
colonies the comparative value of slave and free labour
has been tried fairly, and it has been found that free
labour is, on the whole, cheaper than slave labour, if
Maize, rice,
the free black labourer can be compelled to do that
which every free white labourer in Europe is com-
pelled to do, viz., perform his contract. In the island
of Porto Rico
" The work on the estates is generally done by both
free people and slaves ; the free people are employed in
planting and cutting the canes, and digging ditches, but
it is very difficult to get them to work in the boiling-
houses, where the negroes are principally employed ; on
a few estates, however, where they are well treated, and
are regularly paid, they are employed at all the different
works that are in hand indiscriminately with the negro
slaves. What the proprietors of estates complain of
with regard to the free labourers is, that they cannot
depend upon their remaining with them, but from some
whim, or from having managed to get a little money in
advance, they will leave their work at once, frequently
without giving notice, and at a time, perhaps, when it
may be very inconvenient to lose them: whilst they work
the general pay which the free labourers receive is six
dollars, or about twenty-four shillings per month, and
they receive tho c rano provisions as the slaves, and the
negro drivers have charge over them as well as the
slaves."
The island of Porto Rico would appear from these
statistics to be in a prosperous condition. The recent
revolution has so completely altered the social state of
the French West Indies, that it is impossible from the
past to deduce any conclusions as to the future ; and
the Dutch, Danish, and Swedish possessions in the
West Indies are altogether too insignificant to require
much notice. But it is impossible to study these sta-
tistics without at once becoming convinced of the
upas like qualities of the so-called protective system,
which poisons commerce at its source, and stifles
while pretending to foster it.
The baneful effects of this system of Govern-
mental interference with the course of trade be-
comes still more manifest when we turn to the
statistics of Brazil ; there we find the interests
of every port in that vast empire sacrificed to
those of Rio de Janeiro. As an example of the
effects of protection, and of the motives of Protec-
tionists, we give the following account of the manner
in which vast provinces of the empire are pre-
vented from developing their resources by the dog-
in-the-manger policy of the Cabinet of Rio de
Janeiro :

" Exclusive of the want of population on the banks of
the Amazon, and other political and moral obstacles to
opening the trade and navigation of those magnificent
regions of the world, the Brazilian Government has, with
respect to the navigation of the rivers and harbours of
the sea coast, limited the foreign commerce to a few ports.
In the fertile province of Pernambuco, for example,
the harbour of that name is the only port open to com-
merce. In fact, the fear and jealousy of the Govern-
ment of Rio de Janeiro of the power and prosperity
of the northern provinces, has led to the most pernicious
restrictions on trade and intercourse. Penedo, at the
mouth of the Francisco, is well adapted for foreign trade,
though the bar of the river's entrance has not more than
sixteen feet depth of water over it. Yet this port is closed
to foreign trade, from the jealousy of Bio Janiero lest
the produce of the province of Minas Geraes might
escape to sea by the former instead of the latter port.

" The Government of Rio de Janeiro, to cut off the
provinces of Bahia and Pernambuco from the mouth of
the San Francisco, created two new provinces ; taking
one from each of the above, merely from a spirit of jea-
lousy ; and although Penedo, near the mouth of the San
Francisco, a prosperous town, seven leagues only from
the sea, offers every facility for navigation, nothing has
as yet induced the Government to make it a port for
foreign trade. The cotton, sugar, and timber, produced
in its neighbourhood, are now shipped in large canoes,
and are by this wretched, tortuous manner, carried to
Maccio, Pernambuco, and Bahia.

"No plausible objection can even be imagined in
making Penedo a port, as at present the navigation of
the Francisco is physically barred for fifty leagues by
the falls of Paulo Affonso, and, therefore, could not
interfere with the commerce carried on between Minas
and Rio de Janeiro. The throwing open of the lower
portion of the River San Francisco would, at the same
time, be highly advantageous to Brazil and to every
nation with which she Chas commercial intercourse ;
especially if the navigation of the whole river were
opened by a canal to surmount the falls."
Protectionist
dAoctbriibeing done, and the
gneosttepdrevaednhtesretnhcies,
fromhowever to
result will probably be that the northern provinces
of the empire will ultimately be compelled, in self-
defence, to throw off the yoke of Rio Janeiro, and
proclaim themselves a republic. The empire of
Brazil is, without exception, the finest empire in the
world ; but its resources must remain undeveloped
until its inhabitants become more energetic and in-
dustrious. We must defer our observations on the
Oriental statistics to another opportunity.

HIG.TILANDS AND ISLANDS OF THE
ADRIATIC. By A. A. Paton.
private and un-official
" This work," says the author in his preface, " was
undertaken at the suggestion of the late truly esti-
mable Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's Ambassador
ose
with aat the Court of Vienna, in his
literatureeapacitydepartments of
know-
ledge of the trade and resources of foreign parts. It
was his wish that I should give a general view of the
as
whicha p r
familiariseomo ter o f
theall
readertll
material resources of the Austrian empire ; I there-
fore began with a visit to the Austrian ports of the
Adriatic in the years 1846-7; but the present ab-
normal state of trade, and the revolutions that have
since occurred, rendering it doubtful how far I should
make my work a commercial one, and the progress
of events in Croatia having created a demand for in-
formation on that country, the desire to fill up this
vacuum has caused the second volume of the work to
assume a more decidedly political character than was
at first contemplated, and has afforded me an oppor-
tunity for laying before the public the results of
studies on the iaterests of Great Britain in