The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-08 00:00:00

distub it." If the facts were as the oble ord
had r
stated them, he (Earl Grey) admitteNd that L
the
Government would deserve the censure the Noble
Lord had passed upon them ; but if the Noble
Lord had consulted Hansard, he would have
found that the facts were utterly different. Last year
the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that there were
some difficulties in the excise with respect to the ad-
mission of molasses for distillers, but that the Excise
were then engaged in inquiries on the subject, and be
expressed his hope and belief that the result of those
inestifries would bp, that molasses might be admitted,
and if so he pledged himself this session to effect it.
Those inquiries had now been prosecuted and completed,
and it had been found that means not open to abuse or
fraud might be adopted for the introduction of molasses
for distilleries, and accordingly that would be done.
The inquiries respecting its admission for the use of
brewers were not completed, and therefore that matter
would of necessity stand over. With regard to the rum
duties the matter was much the same, but that whole
question would properly be discussed in the Committee
appointed by the other House of Parliament, before
which both the foreign and British distillers might be
heard, and the duties made to bear alike upon both.
Such were the measures which the Government contem-
plated for the relief of the West India colonies. The
Noble Lord said they were insufficient, and that without
protection their colonies would tall into ruin. He (Earl
Grey) should be wanting in candour if he pretended that
the measures which any Government or stely Parliament
could adopt would have any great or material effect in
allaying the distress, or of raising the colonies from
their present position. What had protection done when
the Noble Lord was responsible at the Colonial-office?
Notwithstanding protection complaints of distress for
five years reached this country. And in 1844 the Go-
vernment with which the Noble Lord was connected
completely and successfully;broke in upon the protection
given to colonial against slave-grown sugar. Ile (Earl
Grey) was surprised that the Noble Lord could keep his
countenance when he told the House that the measures
of 1844 did not practically expose the colonies to corn-
,petition with slave-grown sugars. The Right Hon.
Baronet the author of; that measure said, in January,
1816, before the present Act was thought of, that the
amount of free labour brought into competition with
British colonial sugar had not at all equalled their ex
pectations. lie conceived that statement of Sir R.
reel put an end to all confusion on the subject, and
made it perfectly idle to attempt to make any dis-
tinction between sugar the produce of free and of slave
labour. Ho admitted that it did not lie in the power of
any Government or Parliament, in any measures they
could adopt, to make any branch of industry prosperous.
That must depend on other circumstances, and on indi-
vidaal enterprise, energy, and skill—(Hear, hear)—and
thdt being so, the fact proved a justification fur her
llajesay'a Government, as well as for the Noble Lord.
Ile thought they were bad friends of the West Indies
who told them that they had nothing to do but despair,
and that slave labour was essentially and necessarily
ckeaper than free labour. He denied it upon the highest
authority, for there was no distinguished writer or phi-
losopher, ancient or modern, who did not assert that
slave labour in the end was the more costly of the two.
Such was the opinion of Ilume, Dr. Franklin, and
a host of other writers ; and ho must say that
nothing had happened to shako his conviction
in that truth. He firmly believed that an all-wise
Providence had decreed that. that which was morally
d not in the end be profitable. But he
wrong could
went further, and appealed to experience, which
would be found to prove that free labour, alien not
encumbered with protection, but with things left to
their natural course, had invariably gained the victory.
In America, the slave states were unab!o to compete
with the free-labour states in any one articlJ which
the climate of those free states enabled them to grow.
the same might be said of the free labour of the East
Indies, as applied to the article of indigo; and as applied to
sugar, ho believed that if it had been encouraged
sooner, it IN onld, in the long run, have rendered emancipa-
tion in the West Indies unnecessary, by the voluntary
abandonment of slave labour. lie was in a position
to show that, even at the present moment, fee.o labour
in the West Indies was cheaper than slave labour im-
mediately precious to emancipation. The Noble Earl,
in support of this view, quoted Dr. Jay, of Ja-
maica, who stated that piece-work, before eman-
cipation, averaged from 41. 103. to 51. Bs. the
acre, and now only from 21. 143. to 31. 2s. Her
Majesty's Government had been told that they ought
not to quote what was not official authority; but this
evidence of Dr. Jay was 'corroborated by a dispatch of
Major Graham, of the 7th April last, so far as stating
that free labour was not dearer than slave labour. Look-
ing to these circumstances, he (Turd Grey) did Hot
despair of the West India colonies. He did not look foe
their prosperity in any measures that Parliament could
adopt, but in a change in the state of society. Such a
change was already going on in Jamaica. Ile had re-
cently received a memorial from the western part of that
island, in which the memorialists said that they had in-
vested capital in the land to the extent of 142,0001., and
that with one exception they had purchased or leased
their property since the Emancipation Act. That
showed what a change was going on there in the state of
society; and he believed that in the course of a few
years more they would see the soil of Jamaica culti-
vated by resident landlords, by holders or lessees of the
land. So far from the prospects of Jamaica being
bad at the present moment, be was aware of no part
of the British dominions which offered so favourable
an opportunity for the investment of capital. He be-
lieved that a man of science, or five or six such men in-
tending to act in concert, going to Jamaica, not despising
local experience, but availing themselves of all the aid
they could get from it, applying those great principles of
science on which all cultivation must mainly depend,
having recourse to irrigation and those other means
which, in foreign colonies, had been adopted with so
much success—applying their capital in this manner, he
firmly believed they would have a fairer prospect of re-
alising a fortune than in any other mode open to them
in the British dominions. But it was not to be expected
that a manufacture of so peculiar a nature could be
profitably carried on by agents who had not that free-
dom of action, or that constant incentive to action, self-
interest which belonged only to proprietors, The Noble
Earl having pointed to what had been accomplished in
the growth of beet-root sugar in France, concluded by
appealing to their ;Lordships whether he had not fairly
proved that the distress of the West Indian colonies was
not attributable to legislation in her Majesty's Govern-
ment.—(Hear.)
Some explanations having passed between Lord
Stanley and the Noble Earl,
The Bishop of OXFORD said he held in his hand a
petition from the Council and Assembly of,Barbadoes, the
prayer of which was very much the same as that read
by the Noble Lord opposite (Stanley), complaining of
the same disasters and pointing to the same cure. The
question was not a fiscal one. If it were he would have
left the consideration of it entirely to the lay Lords. It
involved much higher principles, and amongst them the
principle of protection; which, in this instance, he main-
tained ought not to be abolished. Surely that man
would be accounted insane who should propose to allow
the free introduction into our open markets of infected ,1
bales of goods, spreading terror and disease; or who
should propose to exchange firearms for some other com-
modity, beeause in doing so they would be selling in the
dearest, and buying in the cheapest market. In his opi-
nion the case which now occupied their attention was of
the same character. He conceived that affording pro- '
tection to the West India planter was only carrying
out our own principle of having nothing to do with
the slave trade, and that refusing that protection was a
gross breach of justice both to the planter and negro.
The petition pointed; out that the inhabitants of the
West India islands entered upon a vast experiment,
and risked their worldly goods upon the faith and pro-
mised co-operation of the mother country ; but by the
breach of that faith our West India sugar had not only
been brought into a state of general depression, but into
a ruinous competition with sugar which could be pro-
duced more cheaply. The Noble Earl had not answered
—because he could not—the argument of the Noble Lord
in asking this question—" It the general depression of
merchandise caused a sinking of the price of sugar, why
did the price of Cuba sugar rise at the same moment ?'
The Noble Earl told them that just as protecting duties
sank, the price of labour sank, and that therefore the
West India proprietors, looking to the effect of protect-
ingluties, gave preposterously high wages ; that, those
duties being removed, they would no longer be able to
pay such wages; that they would have to make their la-
bourers
"fork more, and give them sugar cheaper, but that
after all theycomfortably would_ have enough to enable them to live
That mode of reasoning amounted just to
this—that the West Indian proprietor should never
know anything of prosperity, and must always be kept
upon the vergeof
ruin,in order to make the
work as ho ought.black man
The Noble Earl told them that all
to
that was required ensure prosperity was, men of
capital, prudence, enterprise, and skill. Ile had heard
that so often, that he was compelled to doubt its effect; surely no men were batterf
tjudgesjudges of how money
many o
might be invested thanwho had masses
a
of capital lying idle for want of safe investment. Ile
as
thought that that was a practicals speechan swer to the theory
btaos e
pdr.
upon which the Noble Earl'
question was not merely one of protection
opeTrhtye
which had been proposed by the Minister a l
fo by Parliament. A greater security stillassented
hahad
been
given, namely, a pledge by the morals and religion of
England that she would thenceforth have nothing
morn
to do with the slave trade, for the wiping away ofwhich
stain such men as Pitt and Fox bad zealously Prepared
the way. Thus was England pledged by a bond
parchment agreement, and by an
strow-eer than any than the promise 6f any
obligation more binding
Minister, never more to have anything
et to do with
the accursed slave trade. And y was sae
the profits of the Cuba
now, in plain English, sharing
planter.—(Cheers from Lord Stanley and others.)
e It
if
was said that she was justified in doing so,
becaus,
she did not, other countries would. That was an argu-
ment which the people of England would not for a
moment endure to have urged upon Parliament, and his
answer to it was, " If evil is to be done, let us not be
the doors of it." It had been said with prophetic truth,
that the consequence of the present measure would be—
first, the ruin of the
growth of sugar in our own West
India islands, and then an outlet for the slave-grown
Sugar of Cuba and Brasil, not only to our own markets,
markets of the world Europe, t giving the monopoly of the
Peculiar attribute of sl a vslave-grown sugar. It was the
effect that object ; fore-grown sugar to be able to ;
increase of labour to b • how easy was it by a sudden
bring
down the price for a while,
until our own plantatlirlio:" were destroyed, and then
to raise the price again
dan ",,er of Competition byn when there was no further
w freewas labour? The Noble Bail
bad told thim that it
an old anti-slavery argu-
silent, that free labour was
and, therefore, that it was inconsistent
than slave labour, •
slavery man to [ay that our Nest
tsinsrt for an anti-
not compete with Cuba or Brazil. But a. colonies could
unintentionally misstated the argument, the
Noble Earl
, because it had