The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-12 00:00:00

EVENING FMITION

ton from our own colonies, they were to give encourage-
ment for the production of sugar also in slave countries,
particularly when it was clearly shown that we could ob-
tain an adequate supply of free labour sugar from ur
own colonies ? He was astonished to hear any person
bearing the name of the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite,
contend that their efforts to abolish slavery and the slave
trade, were to be confined entirely to the extinction of
those evils in our own colonies. He was astonished that
that Right Hon. Gentleman should state to the House
and country, that their efforts to prevent slavery
t other countries was quite Quixotic. The Right
Hon. Gentleman had also stated, that he would
. refer to what had taken place upon former debates and
former divisions, and he felt that he should be able
thereby to charge many who meant to vote on the pre-
sent occasion with great inconsistency.—(Hear, hear.)
He also seemed to insinuate that there were a new born
zeal on that side of the House for the extinction of sla-
very. He (Sir G. Clerk) did not see how he could maintain
such a charge, for those who sat on that side of the
House had supported emancipation since it was brought
forward by Mr. Canning in 1823. If the Right Hon,
Gentleman entertained, years back, the opinion he now
entertains on the subject of slavery in Cuba and the Bra-
zils, why did he not support the motion of the Hon.
Member for Wigan, when he brought it forward. He
must give the Right Hon. Gentleman credit for one
thing, and that was keeping strictly to that which was the
proper subject for their consideration that night, viz., the
proposition with respect to the Sugar Duties, which had
been brought forward by her IVlEnesty's Ministers. On
that subject, he felt no doubt that such had been the pro-
duction of sugar latterly in the colonies of this country,
that we should not require it from foreign colonies.
The House ought to recollect that the country was iu an
artificial state Lit was burdened with a debt, the charge
on which exceeded all the other expenses of the country,
and its pecuniary matters were, therefore, placed on a far
different footing to those of other countries. It had been
admitted on all hands, that such was the fertility of the
island of Cuba, that it could produce sugar of' a superior
quality at a lower price than could be tained from our
own colonies. If the question was one simply of price it
was therefore at an end. But there were higher considera-
tions than those which were connected with money; and
much as the people of England might be relieved by lower-
ing the price, he was sure they would cheerfully consent to
pay the higher price, rather than abandon interests
which were dear to them. With respect to the market
of the Brazils, whilst the people of that country re-'
quired our cotton, hardware, and other manufactures,
they would continue to take them whether we continued
or ceased to be the carriers of their sugar.—(Hear, hear.)
'There had been a great increase in the produce of the
West Indies during the last year, and he had no doubt,
that when the great experiment of free labour had been
fully iried, there would be as large an amount of sugar
sent to th;.7 country as there was formerly, which, on an
average, was 'czne-fourth more than was actually con-
sumed. As to any ,t.enefit which would be conferred by
this reduction, he apprd ended that there would, in
reality, be very little benefit to the consumer. As was
generally the case, it would be absorbed by those per-
sons through whose hands the articles passed in
the way of trade. It had been clearly shown that
many of the calculations made in the Committee
on the Import Duties were greatly exaggerated.
They knew how petitions were got up, and how fre-
quently people appended their names to them without
knowing what they contained. He thought it would be
much better to discard the petitions on both sides, but
the President of the Board of Trade had do right to
make use of that petition as his pet argument, after
knoi,,,ing that many of those who had signed it had re-
pu'diatcd it. To give any benefit to the consumer a
much greeter reduction must take place in the amount
of duty, and if 'that took place, he could readily imagine
that such a reduction might lead to an increase of the
revenue.—("Hear, hear," from Mr. Hume.) He himself
had voted in a minority for reducing the Sugar Duties.
That motion had been resisted by Lord Althorp and Mr.
Poulett Thompson, on the ground that they had made
other; reductions, and that they had only a surplus
of 400,000/. Now we have a deficiency, and therefore,
if it was dangerous to try the experiment then, it must
be still more dangerous now. Why if they wished to
adopt the recommendation of the Committee of the Im-
port Duties, why did they not at once adopt the sugges-
tion of Mr. INl`Gregor, and propose a reduction of the
duty on colonial sugar to 155., and on foreign sugar to
30s. ?. •
An Hox. MEstnErt—Would you do it ?
Sir G. CLERK would certainly not do it, and he
would tell them why ; because' instead of a surplus, they
now had a deficiency. Gentlemen who contended that.
a reduction of duty always immediately led to such an
increased consumption as to lead to an increase of re-
venue had furnished a test to go by—the Post-office.
The same argument had been used at the time of the re-
duction of the duty on the postage. The principle was
fully carried out. The reduction did not take place by
halves. A twopenny rate had been repudiated, the low-
est rate had been adopted ; and what had been the con-
sequence ? In the quarter before the reduction of
the duty on postage, the postage revenue amounted to
1,600,000/. ; in the quarter ending sth July, 1840, it
a nounted to 100,000/. ; in the quarter ending 10th Oct.,
1840 it amounted to 123,000/. ; in the quarter ending
sth January, 1841, it amounted to 98,000/. ; and in the
quarter ending sth April, 1841, it had fallen to 93,000/.
In Ireland there had been a positive loss upon the
postage. It had been stated that 6,000/. had been re-
ceived from the Post-office revenue in that country, but
when the accounts came to be investigated, what turned
out' to,he the fact ?—why, that in the beginning of the
year the- 'Post-office in St. Martin's-le-Grand had been
obliged to lend the Irish Post-office 27,000/., and that
at the end of the year the Irish Post-office had paid
6,000/. of the debt back again. Gentlemen on the oppo-
site side, when alluding to the deficiency in the revenue,
had said that the Members on his (Sir G. Clerk's) side of
the House were equally culpable with the Government,
because they had supported propositions for an increase
of expenditure. Let it be remembered, however, that
one-half of the deficiency was to be attributed to the de-
ficiency in the Post-office revenue, against any alteration
of which as a measure of finance the Government
had received nothing but remonstrances from his side
"I. the House. Another cause of the deficiency
was to be attributed to the state of our
relitions with China. Had Hon. Gentlemen on his side
of the House approved of our policy with regard to that
country ? On the contrary, they had last year, lie was
sorry to say, ineffectually brought forward a motion on
that subject, expressly attributing the unfortunate state
of our relations with that country to the neglect of the
Foreign Secretary in not furnishing our superintendent
there with the necessary instructions to guide him in his
intercourse with the Chinese authorities under the altered
atate of affairs consequent upon their throwing open the
bade. He had always supported an increase in the Na-
val establishments of the country, and had always con-
tended that they ought to be kept in an efficient state.
When it had first been stated, from his side the House,
that the navy was in an inefficient state, the charge
"ad been denied, but it had since been admitted that
a considerable expenditure had become necessary
'n naval stores in consequence of a previous great defi-
ciency. He thought, looking to what had taken place
last autumn; that those who insisted on keeping up the
naval establishment in an efficient state were entitled to
the gratitude of the country. But even then, at the
time we had a large fleet in the Mediterranean, our own
shores had been -left unprotected. We had narrowly
escaped a great peril, and he hoped that no future Board
of Admiralty would so neglect their duty as to leave the
:shores of our own country so wholly unprotected. The
members of the Government appeared exceedingly an-
noyed that any one should suppose that the present mea-
sures had been proposed in consequence of their recent
defeats. Most certainly they had not held those opinions
last year, and it must have been obvious toevery one, from
the first day of the meeting of Parliament, that they stood no
chance whatever of carrying their Irish Qualification Bills.
Under these circumstances they had recourse to the
means to which they always resorted when they were
.hard pushed. In 1835, having managed to quarrel with
many of their supporters, in order to conciliate them,
and get amain their support, they were content to throw
overboard the Irish Church, finding that measure would
not succeed. The next difficulty they found themselves in
they threw out the bait of making the Ballot an open
question, and by that secured the support of the Hon.
Member for Sheffield ; and when subsequently they were
in the last extremity of danger, when they had even so
.far lost the confidence of the country as to bo obliged to
tender their resignations, they threw nut the bait of the
reduction of the Post-office duty. Their friends had
forced that measure upon them, had told them that they
.pould not give them their support unless the postage of
letters was reduced, and the ,Government, regardless of
„.the'injury, they were inflicting .on the• finances of the
, 'count:7, gave way, and with a deficient revenue consented
to the oduction required. They were now in a similar
situation, and hoped to extricate themselies by resorting
to similar n:eans, but, as the Secretary, at War had ac-
knowledged, Oiey had, in the present instance, gone too
far ; the bait wonld not take, because the country knew
e, they had no means' of carrying the measures they pro-
posed. He felt for and pitied, as sincerely as the Hon,
.. Member for Sheffield cold do, but he doubted if even
among the suffering inhab:tants of that town many could
be found in favour of the proposition of the Government.
Mr. WARD had presented a petition.
Sir GEORGE CLERK—The lion. Gentleman was
too old a member of that House not to know how easily
petitions of every sort could be got up.---(Loud ironical
Cheers from the Ministerial benches.) Tie objected to
the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—
: First, because it went to encourage slavery and the slave-
trade ; second, because the supply of sugar to be expected
from our own colonies would be fully equal to the de-
mand ; third, because as a financial measure it must fail ;
.und fourth, because the reduction proposed was so paltry
in itself that it could not by any possibility benefit the
consumers. For these reasons he should support the re-
solution of his Noble Friend.
Mr. WARD said that the Honourable Gentleman who
had just addressed the House had accused them of at-
tempting to widen the question, and he had also given
them a dissertation on free trade, of which he had pro-
fessed himself an ardent admirer, at the same time stat-
ing that the friction or disturbing causes must be
looked to. What he meant by that he (Mr. Ward)
was ut a loss to know. • The Right Hon. Gentleman
. then talked of all the subjects that had come before the
eouse for the last ten years ; he had talked of the Post-
office;:., the Report of the Import Duties Committee, in
short iabout everything but the real question before the
Rouse. \ He had talked about the 800,000/. lost by the
Post-office, but had completely forgotten to say one
word of the 800,0001. that had been lost by giving corn-
,rensation to the West India planters.—(Hear, hear.)
the Right Hon, Gentleman had then stated that the
present was not a commercial or financial question, but
it Was one that involved a great principle. lie was sorry
thatir his Right Hon. Friend the Member for the Tower
hamlets had fallen so easily into the trap that had been
,4141 by the Hon. Member for Liverpool—(Hear, hear)—
for by doing so, .he had sacrificed almost all the great
principles for which he had fought during a long poll-