The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-29 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS, August 28.
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the Woo]
sack at Five o'clock.
__ SUGAR DUTIES BILL.
.._ .

Earl GREY moved the second reading of this Bill,
the object of which was to alter the existing sugar
duties as they were settled in 1846. The measure,
which had been fully debated in the other House of
Parliament, arose out of the present condition of the
West India planters, and it was intended to extend the
period of protection to the sugar grower beyond the
time limited by the Act passed in that year. The Noble
Earl said at this late period of the session it was unne-
cessary that he should enter at length into the subject,
and proceeded to refer to dispatches from Sir Henry
Light, the Governor of British Guiana, and other docu-
ments, to show that undue extension of cultivation
under the stimulus of protecting duties had produced
an artificial competition for wages, and raised them to
an extravagant amount ; and contended that
such wages instead of promoting the real
welfare of the negro, had rather tended to his
demoralisation. It was proved also that such an extent
of cultivation arising from the system of mutual compe-
tition among each other by the planters, and stimulated
by protecting duties, had been carried on under
enormous charges which returned an ordinary and usual
mercantile profit, but altogether insufficient to preserve
the planters from ruin. The same observations applied
to the Mauritius, where the protection had been increased
more than sixfold in 25 years. There had been au in-
crease in the last two or three years in the Mauritius of
66 per cent.; and while this enormous increase was going
on—during the whole time from the year 1822 to the
present period—there had been constant complaints on
the part of the planters and merchants of that colony,
of extreme distress and embarrassment. He had no
doubt that such complaints were well grounded, and why
had they arisen? Simply from this circumstance: by
the existence of protecting duties in this country the
producers in the Mauritius were taught to expect that
they should obtain extraordinary profits, and therefore
capital was sent out from this country to a great amount,
and cultivation was pushed, not to a natural, bat a spe-
culative increase, by parties who calculated upon the
profit that would arise from the protecting duties which
existed. And in this manner wages had increased,
in spite of the enormous importation of labourers, to
the number of 890,000 within the last few years. The
demands for their services, however, were increasing in
more than an equal ratio. Employers were bidding
against each other, and by doing so were raising the
cost of production, and at the same time exceeding the
quantity which this market could carry off at the price
which they calculated on for their remuneration—and
the consequence was their ruin. This increase had been
going on not only in the Mauritius, but in Malacca, Sin-
gapore, India, and elsewhere, and it had been carried on
principally by borrowed capital, the merchants at home
trading to a great extent upon credit. He did not, how-
ever, blame these parties, but the two Houses of Parlia-
ment, for having fostered this unnatural system, which
could lead to no other result.—(Hear, hear.) With
reference to the prospects of the future, there was
no reason for despondency. There was no ground
for assuming that slave labour was cheaper than
free labour. He believed, on the contrary, the reverse to
be true. He admitted, and deeply deplored, the extreme
severity of the existing distress of so many respect-
able parties; but he saw the prospect of improvement in
the tuture. The Noble Earl then referred to v ri a ous
documents, in order to show that free labour was cheaper
than slave labour in the Mauritius. In referring to tthe
subject in February last he had said that when things
were placed on a mere natural footing wages would
fall, and his prediction had partially been realised; but
they had decreased less in the colonies, where the
highest amount had been paid for labour, than in others
where the remuneration bad been more moderate—thus
moving the bad policy of the system to which he had
referred. In Demerara, for instance, the negroes had
strenuously resisted a reduction of their wages; but in
Barbadoes, Antigua, and some of those colonies which
possessed greater natural advantages, and where wages
had not been forced up to such au extraordinary height,
the reduction had been effected most amicably. The
Noble Earl read extracts from various dispatches to
prove these facts, and also to show that the reduction of
wages had brought more labour into the market. Im-
provements in the cultivation and manufacture of
sugar had been carried on more vigorously than before
Sir H. Light stated that from an experiment which had
been tried in Demerara, it had been proved that by good
drainage the land would produce one hundred per cent.
more than by the old system of cultivation, and Lord
Harris stated that in Trinidad experiments had been
tried in the manufacture of sugar, and that by Dr.
Mitchell's process the quantity of raw material, which
ordinarily produced sugar to the value of 365., would,
without additional expense, produce sugar to the value