The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-24 00:00:00

"' ITV*MI

LONDON, FRIDAY. DECEMBER 24, 1847.

Very exaggerated rumours are prevalent in the
United States as to the mercantile movement now
observable in our West Indian possessions, It is
conceived by some of the American journals that the
doom of our colonial interests in that beautiful archi-
pelago is at length sealed, and that Jamaica, Trinidad,
and Guiana itself will very speedily effect their sepa-
ration from the mother country, in the hope of re-
alising certain republican predilections, and of securing
their commercial prosperity as well as their political
independence. Nay, the anticipations of our contem-
poraries across the Atlantic are not restricted to the
British dominions in the West Indies, they anticipate
a similar declaration on the part of Cuba—the
Virgin of the Antilles—and look forward even to the
period when Canada, as well as Mexico, shall bss
" enfolded in the arms of the Union." Surely
the cause of all these auguries and predic-
tions is sufficiently manifest; the motive in which
they have originated is transparent. Everything has
evinced of late the greed of the United States for
territorial aggrandizement. The history of the
model republic is little better than the narrative of a
succession of flagrant and most unjustifiable spolia-
tions. Its avarice has advanced—gradually—south-
wards. The most enormous act of annexation was,
until the invasion of Mexico, the annexation of
Texas ; since then, however, California has been
seized, and the brave soldiers of Washington marched
into the very citadel of the Montezumas. Nothing
has retarded this unprincipled ambition of the Ame-
ricans, stimulated as it has been by the equally
unprincipled connivance of Mr. President Poex. It
has pressed onwards from the Rio Grande to Mon
terey, from the quays of Vera Cruz to the battle-
ments of the republican capital. It has triumphed
while throwing bombs and rockets into streets where
the majority of the victims of destruction were
women and children. It has signalized its victories
in the land of which COaTES was the first conqueror,
by hanging the mercenaries of RILEY in a batch—on
a row of gallows—in cold blood. Knowing these
things, it is anything but surprising that the lust of
dominion ahould extend beyond the shores of the
continent, and while hungering for the subjugation
of Canada in one direction, and of Mexico in another,
should yearn for the capture of Cuba, and Trinidad,
and Jamaica, and Barbadoes, and the rest of the
West Indian Archipelago.
Never were anticipations more premature ; never
werem predictions more ill-timed and inappropriate.
ime asurably more has just been done by the Su-
preme Government for'the retention of those colonies,
and for securing the gratitude and obedience of their
inhabitants, than hrasbeten recently accomplished for
remote any other of our
Isossessions. Hitherto the
W n
proprietors in our
West Indian Islands were cramped
into a condition very nearlyueriaperxfimating to that of
pauperism by the evil influences
and gigantic blunders. The
with penury, moreover, b ; threewere
ree affihicted
y these h
while their estates were situated in one tofinr
most fruitful regions on the surface of the
globe. These three causes of their calamities
were : —I. The impossibility of obtaining labourers
sufficient to cultivate the plantations. U. The
villanous :system of Protection, as applied to them-
selves,—namely, the necessity, which was forced upon
them as a boon (as a boon, forsooth !), of having the
mom )poly of the English markets, when they were
unable to supply anything like the amount demanded
by t',ne consumption of Great Britain. 111. The ex-
pen Jive system of agriculture adopted by the planters,
a systenl which squandered the largest capitals, with
a certain ity of resulting in the least possible returns.
such has: been the mercantile Cerberus, the triple-
headed monster which has destroyed the energies and
misdirected the fertility of our islands in the Gulf of