The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-13 00:00:00

Cileniaff,

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1847.

The embarrassments which have accumulated over
the West Indian planters and proprietors have latterly
become CO remarkable as to justify the adoption of
some extreme measures of assistance from the
supreme Government. Something must be done im-
mediately towards the extrication of our colonial
agriculturists from their present difficulties. Under
any circumstances such an interference would hive
been requisite, but its necessity has been immeasur-
ably increased by the passing of the free-trade enact-
ment. The abolition of the protective system will
affect no class more stringently than the proprietors
of our West India sugar plantations. A momentous
experiment upon their fortunes is already commenced.
The gradual diminution of the discriminating duties
will be very speedily followed by their extinction, and
the broad principles of freedom of commerce will
thereupon find a new illustration in an unrestricted
competition between the Muscovado produced by free
labour and that produced by the labour of bondsmen.
It would be as outrageous to deny that this experi-
ment is momentous, in as far as our West Indian
colonists are concerned, as it would be to assert
that it is one not required by the exigencies
of natural justice. In applying the system of
abolition of protection to colonial agriculture, as
well as to the agriculture of the United Kingdom,
the Legislature only obeyed the dictates of an equi-
table impartiality. In endeavouring to place the
sugar-growers of Jamaica and the contiguous islands
upon an equality with those proprietors whose planta-
tions are cultivated by the hands of helots, the Le-
gislature will be only fulfilling one of its most para-
mount duties, a duty which :should have been per-
formeda immediately upon the declaration of the
Emancipation Act.
Toplace our colonial agriculturists in a position of
equality with the agriculturists of those countries in
which the devilish trade of slavery is not abolished,
there must be a combination of activity and pru-
dence. That activity,
however 'must in no manner
conduce to the entailmenti of any expenditure upon
t m
the Mother Country—
ust be rendered so far re-
munerative that the colonist, themselves shall expe-
rience no disquietude at the demofand of the payment,
by means of colonial taxation,
whatever;hat
prudenceexpense s
may be incurred in the undertaking.
as to must in like manner be of such a character
em-
power the Government to adventure upon
snrneof
com-
prehensive enterprise without the
endangerment
any disastrous failure. A scheme has recently been
propounded by the Noble Earl, the Secretary fur the
Colonial Department, which to our mind combines in
an admirable proportion these characteristics of ac.
tivity and prudence, while its ultimate operation
must, as far as human reason can conjecture, tend
to the ultimate restoration to prosperity of the pro-
prietors and merchants of our colonial possessions
in the West Indian .Archipelago.
explained in a dispatch penned by Earl GREY on the
30th ultimo, and transmitted from his official resi-
dence in Downing-street to his Excellency the Go-
vernor of Jamaica. After enlarging upon the benefits
which must inevitably accrue to our colonial agri-
culturists from "the introduction of improved methods
and implements of agriculture and processes of
manufacture," and upon the especial advisability of
fostering a better plan of education and industrial
training for the negro labourers, the Noble Earl at