The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-03 00:00:00

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(141' brtnin '

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1341

As Lord GEORGE BENTINCK. will, in all probability,
bring forward this evening, in the House of Com-
mons, the motion of which he has given notice, on
the subject of the depressed state of our sugar colo-
nies, it may perhaps be as well that we should con-
sider the causes which have led to that depression,
and the remedies which have been proposed for its
relief. The causes alleged by the West India colo-
nists themselves are the withdrawal of the protective
duty, and the scarcity of labour, and the remedies
proposed are a renewal of the protective duty and an
increase in the number of the labouring population.
The true cause of the sufferings of the West India
proprietors is not the removal of the protective duty, it
is the scarcity of labour and the scarcity of labour alone,
produced by the monopoly of the labour market enjoyed
by the emancipated black population; and the renewal
of the protective duty, so far from mitigating, would
materially increase the depression under which the
proprietors are labouring, inasmuch as the black
population, who possess the monopoly of the labour
market, would increase in their demands, demands
which the proprietors must satisfy, how exorbitant
soever they may be, or abandon the cultivation of
their estates, and thus the only effect of a renewal of
the protective duty would be to rob the industrious
and hard-working white labourer in England, who
works hard for twelve hours a day during six days in
the week for a miserable pittance of 10s., in order to
present the proceeds of the robbery to the
idle, indolent, black labourer in the West Indies,
who works seven hours a day three days in a week,
and who gets for that amount of work something
like thirty shillings, besides having a house and pro-
vision ground rent free. The cause, the whole and
sole cause, of the present depressed state of the West
India proprietors is the want of a sufficiency o
labourers, who for fair wages will cultivate their
estates. What they want to restore them to pros-
perity is a fair day's work for a fair day's wages; so long
as they are unable to obtain this so long will they be
in a depressed condition, notwithstanding all the
measures that may be adopted for their relief. With
this there is no doubt lout that they will be speedily
not only restored to prosperity, but that they will
again command, as of yore, the markets of the world,
for there cannot be a doubt but that free labour,
when it is really free, can compete advantageously
with slave labour under any circumstances.
The competition at present carrying on by our West
India colonies with Cuba and the Brazils, is not the
competition between free labour and slave labour, but
the competition between slave labour and no labour
at all. Various attempts have been made to procure
for our colonists an adequate supply of labour, but
every attempt at promoting immigration has
failed, partly from the physical incapacity of
the immigrants to battle with the climate,
but principally from the impediments and hinderanees
which have been placed in the way of immigration in
accordance with the groundless fears and unfounded
prejudices ofeertain very well-meaning but exceedingly
ill-informed persons, who imagine.that it is impossible
to propose any plan of immigration to the West
Indies which shall not be virtually a revival of the
slave trade.

So long as Mr. STEPHEN remained at the Colonial
Office the West Indians might well despair.
" Lasciate ogni sperensa voi the entrate" should have
been the motto over the door of the sanctum of this
gentleman, but at length the incubus is removed,
and we entertain hopes that Earl GIST and Mr.
HAwas will be more just to the 'West Indians than
their predecessors have been, and that they will
complete the great work of free trade, of which they
have ever, through evil report and through good
report, been the foremost champions, by giving to
our West Indian fellow-subjects free trade in
labour. It is evident, as is observed by a writer
in the number of Blackwood, just published
—" It is evident that the African alone is physi-
cally suited to undergo with ease and without dan-
ger the fatigue of field labour in the climates which
are suited for sugar cultivation." To Africa there-
fore must the West Indian proprietor look for the
immigrants who are to compete in the West Indian
labour market with the present black population of
the West Indies ; and the question therefore arises,
is there any part of Africa in which free labourers
can be found who will voluntarily emigrate to the
West Indies, and there give a fair day's work for a
fair day's wages ? That there is such a place
we know from a very high authority.
The late Reverend FRANCIS H. RANKIN, who
was for some years colonial chaplain at Gambia, in
his excellent work on Sierra Leone, published in
1837, thus describes the Kroomen, who are the gal-
legos, the labourers, the out-of-door servants, and the
cooks of the colony :—" The Kroo republic, upon the
grain coast, lies at the distance of about four hundred
miles from Sierra Leone. A Kroo answered my in-
quiry, why he had come so far in order to be cook to
an English gentleman in Free Town for two or three
and twenty shillings a month, by saying, White man
love work, Kroo man love work ; white man no slave,
Kroo man no slave ; where white man go,
there Kroo man must come.' " " One of the
most remarkable peculiarities of this sin-
gular people," observes Mr. RANKIN, "is their
detestation of slavery," so that here we should run
no danger whatever of having a slave trade in dis-
guise, the Kroos holding it in as great detestation as
the English themselves. "In seeking white men's
society, the Kroo has a steady view to the acquisition
of wealth," continues Mr. RANKIN ; and after de
scribing the course of Kroo life in Sierra Leone, he
thus concludes the history of the Kroo career :—" At
the age of forty he has generally succeeded in
amassing about thirty pounds, and has attained
the summit of earthly grandeur. He lays out
the useless coin in marketable articles, for his
native home is guiltless of a metallic currency,
and returns to live with his people as a gentleman.' "
The Kroomen, also, be it observed, are in constant
contact with English sailors, especially men-of• war's
men, whom they assist as supernumeraries. It is
evident, therefore, that the idea of a Kroo ever being
either kidnapped, cajoled, or coerced into being a slave
is chimerical in the extreme ; in fact, the slave trade
cannot exist without slavery, and as every man the
instant he touches British or British colonial ground
becomes ipso facto free, there can be no revival of the
slave trade, so far as the British colonies are concerned.
If the Kroomen are of advantage to Sierra Leone,
they would be of still greater advantage to Jamaica
and Demerara, and there is no reason in the world
why those colonies should be deprived of the advan-
tage from the labour of the Kroomen if the latter are
willing to sell it, or why the Kroomen should be
deprived of the advantage of selling their labour in
the dear market of Jamaica and Demerara, where the
demand for labour is great, instead of being confined
to the cheap market of Sierra Leone, where the de-