The Sun.
London, England, 1848-06-27 00:00:00

rove his charge or to withdraw it. Toe Noble Lord
fled entrusted hit retraction to the 11 )n. Member for
Bucks and the Hon. Baronet, and therefore he (Sir G.
Grey) would put that matter aside. The real question
was the charge which had been made on Friday night,
and now a new series of charges were brought forward.
The Noble Lord and the Hon. Member had spent the
interval in ransacking Hansard for speeches, or rather
scraps of speeches, imputed to Lord Grey in the other
House of Parliament to support charges of neglecting
to lay certain papers before a Committee. He appealed
to every honourable man in that House whether there
was not a difference between accidental omission and
fraudulent suppression, as charged by the Noble Lord.
The charge had been brought forward recklessly, for
the purpose of injuring the character of his Hon. Friend
(Mr. Hawes).
Lord G. BENTINCK replied with some warmth, and
reminded the Government that there was ample time to
have produced the dispatch to the Committee, after the
fact of its not having been received was known. He
would not retract the charge which he had preferred
against the Government, a charge involving a grave and
serious offence deeply injurious to the best interests of
het transmarine possessions of the Crown.
Mr. CHARTERIS was obliged to understand that the
Nohle Lord had withdrawn his charge against the Un-
der-Colonial Secretary, but he certainly had not done
it in the handsomest manner.
Mr. NE WDEGATE did not see why his Noble
Friend should be called upon to withdraw a charge
which in reality he had never made.
The motion for adjournment was then withdrawn.
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH SPAIN.
In answer to a question from Mr. OSBORNE,
Lord PALMERSTON said that the only medium of
communication between the Government of this country
and that of Spain was their respective Consuls ; and, as
regarded the Quadruple Treaty, it had been established
for a particular purpose for maintaining the indepen-
dence of the Spanish crown and the Spanish people; bat
if it were not so all he could say was that the British
Government would never be a party, by treaty or no
treaty, to enslave any nation on the face of the earth.—
(" Hear," and laughter.)
SUGAR DUTIES—ADJOURNED DEBATE.
Mr. G. THOMPSON resumed the debate, and con-
tended that there had been no breach of contract with
the West India body ; the full compensation had been
paid, and West India property, so far from having de-
teriorated had increased in value since 1834. He con-
demned the practice of importing coolies into the West
Indies as unprofitable and demoralising. His opinion
was that the system of immigration had been a failure,
and that if carried out extensively it would only create
a slave trade under false colours, and injure materially
the interests of the colonies, both in their social and
moral condition. The Hen. Gentleman then referred to
the apprenticeship system established at the period of
the emancipation of the slave, and contended that as
early as 1835 there were numerous complaints of the
cruelties practised against their apprentices by the plan-
ters in the West India islands. The Marquis of Sligo,
formerly a governor of Jamaica, and himself connected
by property with the colonial interest, on his return home
published a pamphlet, which fully justified all the repre-
sentations which had been previously made in the
Imperial Parliament respecting those cruelties; and the
Earl of Mulgrave took a similar course. He admitted
that the planters had a fair claim to relief if it could
be given consistently with the principles of the basis
of our commercial legislation, and with the rights,
interests, and future prospects of the negro. But the
House ought to be careful how it sanctioned immigra-
tion by private individuals, or encouraged grantsof money
for promoting that object. Missionaries in Jamaica
had complained of the system, and of the iniquitous
manner in which the emigrants were entrapped to leave
their own country, and abandoned and left to starve
when no longer of use to those whom they served. If it
was wrong to consume slave-grown sugar it was equally
wrong to consume slave-grown cotton and tobacco. If
Hon. Gentlemen produced slave-grown produce alto-
gether he would know how to deal with the question.
But the vision of those who sought protection for the
West India interest seemed to be circumscribed within
the dimensions of a hogshead.—(Laughter.) In advo-
cating protection they were only hiding their selfishness
behind a cloak of humanity.—(Hear, hear.) He was
as strongly opposed to slavery as any man, but he could
not vote with those who called upon him to support
discriminatory duties; nor did he think they could be
at best more than a temporary advantage to the
interest which it was sought to relieve by them;
while advancing money was only like giving pecu-
niary aid to a man already very much embarrassed,
who grasped at a straw but eventually sank. The fate of
those islands was sealed. They could not compete with
Cuba and Brazil. It was a question of extent of terri-
tory and cultivation, and he confessed he hoped to see
the day when there would be no absentees from the es-
tates. He lamented that the Government had made any
concession, or that they had departed from the principle
laid down by the Bill of 1846. If their principle afforded
a large measure of relief to gentlemen opposite, it would
have some recommendation, but it did not. It was, in
fact, a change without an advantage. It was a retrograde
step on their part, without conferring any benefit on
those for whose distress they expressed their sympathy.
He could not, therefore, support a vote of money, be-
cause its tendency would be to diminish the wages of
those who had a right to the full value of their industry;
nor could he on the other hand support protection, be-
cause it would be a gross injustice to the people of this
country, who were such large consumers of sugar. He
must, consequently, vote against both propositions.
Mr. BERNAL honed the House would deal with the
question in a spirit of itni artiality and candour—looking
not merely to the interests of the proprietors, but to those
of the public at large. The West In lie interest had un-
fortunately to deal with dubious friends and open and
concealed adversaries. The opposition of the Hon.
Gentleman for the Tower Hamlets was certainly open
and avowed, and he had been the undeviating, he might
say without meaning disrespect, the rancorous adversary
of that interest for many years. But he scarcely ex-
pected that that Hon. Gentleman would have attempted
as he had done that evening, by a reference to the
cruelties of slavery and the mitigated cruelties of the
apprentice system, to revive the old West India debates
of that House. The Member for Westbury, speaking
of the beet-root sugar, declared that the Zollverein were
anxiously encouraging its production. Why, had they
not put a heavy duty upon it? Again, the Hon. Member
had held up Porto Rico as an example to the West
Indies, and had talked of the excellent roads in the
colony. Why, there was not a single carriage road in
that island. Again, the same Hon. Member said that
there were no less than 800 miles of railway in the island
of Cuba. Why it was true there were tramways, but the
railways on which there was anything like passenger traffic
were very limited in extent. The Hon. Member for
Kinsale told them the other night " that the truth must
be told." Would his Hon. Friend revert to a dispatch
of Sir C. Grey of the Bth of December last, showing
the number of estates abandoned since 1833 in Ja-
maica? Of the 640 sugar estates in that island, no less
than 142 had been given up; and the coffee plantations
abandoned were even in greater proportion. There
were sixteen gentlemen who had become proprietors in
Jamaica since the abolition of slavery, and every one
of them declared his inability to go on under the pre-
sent system. It was said the West Indians were a reck-
less, improvident set, and that they were so deeply
mortgaged that they could never hope to prosper. There
were many proprietors, however, within his own expe-
rience whose estates were quite clear of mortgage. His
own properties in Jamaica had never been encumbered
to the extent of one penny. Every claim had been met
—money bad been provided for every want. His es-
tates were under the charge of a free-trader—as free
as the Honourable Member for the West Riding. No
one who knew his (Mr. Bernal's) opinions would charge
him with bigoted views or with being insensible to
the advantages of new machinery and new plans. And
yet, under all these circumstances, " the fact must come
out"—his estates were losing concerns.—(Hear, hear.)
The Hon. Gentleman who spoke last was connected with
]ndia, and most probably that circumstance was the key
to his speech. The Hon" Member had talked of the la-
bour of the West Indies. It quite true, as he had
said, that the island of i wasarbadeasur and
parts of Jamaica
were well peopled; but other dcertain quar-
tars of Jamaica were sadly in want of labourers,
would never be prosperous until there was a regular and
n
w
d(
certain supply. The negro at present would only and
five days a week under any circumstances. The negro
labourers often kept horses and gigs, and some of their
horses were high bred. What would be thought of a
chew-bacon in this country who kept a horse worth 201.?
Who was it that had encouraged slave labour in our
West Indian colonies? The British Legislature. Yet
the West Indian planters did not desire the Legislature
to retrace its course as to emancipation; all that they
required was that the Legislature should aid them to
struggle against the difficulties in
been which, as a c
Ifonse-
quence of emancipation, they had placed. the
Government thought the colonies worth preserving
most
at all
ly their
—perhaps they did not—they must app
earnest consideration to the complaints of the Wet
India planters. What was the state of Jamaica at this
moment ? That estates one after another were being
abandoned ; that estates, forced to a sale, fetched next
to nothing, as an instance of vvhieh he could mention
the apparently incredible fact that an estate of 2,000
acres, well stocked with machinery, with 200 head of
cattle upon it, was sold for 2,0001; that another estate,
whose cultivation was continued, which had once pro-
duced 12,000/. a year, now produced scarcely 3001. a
year.—(Hear, hear.) On what ground was our West
India planter thus left to destruction ? On what prin-
ciple was he to be refused the same paternal protection
which the British farmer enjoyed ?—(Hear.) The Bri-
tish corn producer had the protection afforded him in the
home market, as against the Pomeranian corn grower,
of the freight and other charges which the latter had to
pay before he could bring his commodity to a sale in our
market ; but the West India sugar or coffee grower had
no similar protection as against the sugar or coffee
grower of Cuba or Brazil.—(Hear, hear.) As to the
duty, he admitted that as far as the scale of reduction
upon Muscovado sugar was concerned, the proposition
of the Government was better than that of the Right
Hon. Gentleman on the Opposition benches. He be-
lieved that if he were to go amongst his mercantile
friends and connexions he could not raise one shilling
upon his West Indian estates. Why, therefore, under
such circumstances as these were the West Indians to be
subjected to the charges so constantly made against
them of apathy and idleness, when they had not the
Means of cultivating properly their estates? He should
be sorry, in the year 1848, to find that England had so
far departed from the dictates of common sense as to
give up the West India colonies for worthless posses-
sions. For the reasons he had stated, and considering
that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had held firm to
his differential duty on rum, and had not listened to the
gay Lotharios from Ireland, he should vote for the pro
positions of the Government before the House.—(A burst
of laughter.)
Sir J. GRAHAM said that he had not joined in the