The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-30 00:00:00

less accommodation from our Bank, and stave

off a crisis a year or two longer, even with our
ricketty old Bank Act. All this is, however, to
be given up by them for the profitable, exciting,
and pleasant amusement of negro-hunting. Mid-
night forages, village burnings, killing women,
babes, and old men, and seizing the saleable per•
sons and hurrying them off to the slave barra-
coons, is to be again the order of the day. Eng-
land is to aid in turning Africans into demons,
and for what ? because Jamaica planters are
perverse and thriftless.

We believe that after all the complaints from
Jamaica, the chief complainer of our former
slave colonies, the real fault lies not
with the negroes, but with their masters.
When the twenty millions was paid the island
was bankrupt. The smallest fraction of the
money went there, the GLADSTONES and other
English mortgagees or proprietors pocketed the
money by tens and hundred of thousands, and
the island was left penniless. Its lands had been
ruinously exhausted by the improvident cultiva-
tion of slavery—indeed, as OLMSTED shows in the
United States, slave cultivation always leaves the
land exhausted, the greater part of Virginia
itself being now like a primeval forest ; and

it is no wonder if Jamaica became the
same. The estates were abandoned, first,
because they were too worn out to be cultivated,
except by considerable outlay, and next because the
money which England voted under the idea of
supplying a labour-fund in Jamaica was all ab-
sorbed in England. Added to this, the planters
had too much pride to pay the negroes decent
wages. They could not brook the sight of an inde-
pendent peasantry where they had been accustomed
to flog them at pleasure, and they both mulcte3
the slave in wages and in taxes on imported
provisions. QUASHES very naturally took to
squatting, finding he could grow enough to eat,
and to buy all the clothing needed with the ther-
mometer at 100 deg. or more in the shade—he
' very naturally took care of himself, and left his
close•fisted and tyrannical old master to do the
same.

From the accounts of intelligent Americans, as
well as Englishmen, who have visited the Island,
we believe that nothing is wanted now but a fair
amount of capital and skill, to make Jamaica
really " the gem of the Antilles." At present it
has a perverted and antiquated Government, no
capital, no enterprise, tools of the rudest descrip-
tion ; vegetation there responds to irrigation as
it does in India, and indeed everywhere in the
tropics ; but, though we hear of droughts, we
never hear of attempts to preserve the water of
the deluging tropical rains. The real want is
money and brains. Labourers are already there,
and cheap enough if made the best of ; what is
wanted is not kidnappers of fresh negroes, but
men who have the sense to stimulate the industry
of the negroes already in the island.

The organ of " the hard calculators"—we shall
no longer term them " bullionists"—is displaying
intense disappointment at the failure of the designs
of the money-lending fraternity. It was too bad
that the panic was not permitted to take its
course, and properties sacrificed to the full extent
of the, wishes of these parties. It tells us that in
1847 Consols went down to 79. Here, then, was
an opportunity lost. The hard-fisted gentry might
have made nearly 10 per cent. more than they were
enabled to do. They could not loot (as the hor-
rible Sepoys term it) to the anticipated extent,
and those who hoarded their gold, who would not
purchase at the depreciated prices actually pro-
duced, lost the golden opportunity. The public
were relieved before there was a general sacrifice
of property and a transfer of trading capital to
the money-lenders. For once they " missed
their tip," or at least did not perform
the feat so cleverly as they had anticipated.

In one point respecting the Bank Charter Act,
mirabile dictu, we fully concur with the hard
calculator of Printing-house-square. We believe
that it would be far better that the act should be
entirely abrogated, than that it should be kept
up until it had produced misery and distress
amongst the trading and manufacturing in-
terests, and then be suspended just at the
moment that the Bank itself required as-
s.stance to save it from a very disreputable
failure. If based on sound principles, it would
have been good under any circumstances that
could arise, "for everything or nothing." Twice,
however, has it endangered the boasted principle
of convertibility—twice has it brought the Bank
tc the verge of closing its doors and refusing cash
paymeith. We cannot, therefore, be again sub-
jected to the false and frivolous pretences on
which it was originally introduced. It was not
merely to ensure convertibility at all times, but to
make money, or rather currency, scarce and dear,
to enable designing men to create a panic,
so that they might deprive others of their pro-
perty at little more than half its value. It, is, in

fact, the very antithesis of free trade, preventing
the operation of credit in the most important
point, and paralysing industry. We , have
always perceived that the object was to
introduce " a purely metallic currency," as
the Times is pleased to designate it. But
it was impossible to do so. The enormous amount
of taxation, the terrible burden of the public debt,
and the great amount of commercial transactions,
prevent the possibility of carrying out the

JOHN BULL, ,than be right with J ONATHAN, the
Times and RXPERTIIS, and with French merchants
and Emperors too.
There is another practical hitch. Lord PAL.
MERSTON is a perfect Joint BULL on this point. If
he have earnest convictions and sentiments on any
subject it is just on this one of the slave trade. He
would not mind a tussle with any Power to sustain
his anti-slavery reputation. His heart would be
in it, and while he is at the helm, EXPERTITS may
whistle for his purchased Africans, unless, indeed,
he were willing to ornament the yard-arm of some
of her Majesty's cruisers, or of their prizes. And
not only that, but any successor to Lord PALMER-
STON might as well quit office at once as bring in
a bill for the purchase of Africans, to be liberated
(if liberty it could be called), as indentured ap-
prentices to West India planters. No statesman
could be found hero who would compromise his
position for a moment by a step which would call
forth at once enthusiastic opposition-meetings in
every town in the kingdom. We feel ourselves,
therefore, quite safe against what we are told by
the oracle is the least of two evils.
Bat is it so ? There is another oracle to which
we all profane men, as professional politicians must
be, yet accord a decent respect, which tells us "not
to do evil that good may come," and pronounces
that " the damnation is just" of those who do.
Now it does look something like an evil to go to
the coast of Africa, to take them gay cotton
fabrics, gay beads, and the like, and, of course,
a fair proportion of powder and ball and mus-
kets, and inform the petty princes there that
all these will we give them if they will only give
us negroes in exchange. These chiefs are begin-
ning to grow us now vast quantities of palm oil
and other produce. They will be equally ready,
if we go the right way to work with them, to grow
us cotton, when we might want a few millions