The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-01 00:00:00

THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE WEST INDIES.

(From, the Jamaica Despatch,, Nov. 15 )
We cordially agree in the expediency of the amendment
to the address proposed by Mr. Geddes and adopted by
the House. It is a mere waste of words to protest any
longer against "unequal competition," or to assure the
Government that we never can hope for permanent ins
provement so long as that competition is perpetua',ed.
The Government has told us over and over again that if
we cannot make way against competition we must Fur-
-1 render unconditionally, and it is much to be feared that
no Administration, of any politics, cares very seriously
.whether that consummation results or not. Our only
hope rests in improved consumption, and in bringing up
production to as high a standard as passible in aid of
the consuming power. We owe it to ourselves, however,
to leave no effort untried to induce the Government to
alleviate an inevitable competition by preventing that
ready access to the coast of Africa for slaves which is
now conceded to Spain with the apparent consent a'
Great Britain. It is bad enough, after all the sacrifice
which the proprietary classes in the West Indies have
been compelled to make to the humane principles which
were supposed to have dictated the Emancipation Act
of 1833, to be compelled to submit to a competition in
our markets with the produce of slavery still upheld
in foreign colonies. It is the climax, however, not
simply of injustice, but of dishonesty, to insist on our
competing, not merely with slavery, but with slavery
recruited unceasingly by illicit importations from
the coast of Africa, at the very time when the virtuous
humanity of the British Government interferes to prevent
British colonial planters from redeeming a single slave in
the slave barracoons, in order to snake a free man and a
British subject of him in these colonies. We can conceive
nothing more wantonly or wickedly perver:e than this.
The most respectable and responsible gentlemen in
London connected with West Indian property have
asked to be permitted to resort to the coast of Africa
for the purpose of redeeming the slaves in the barra-
coons, and bringing them to Jamaica, British Guiana,
and other West India islands, as free labourers. They
have offered to become bound in any penalty not to
deal with these people otherwise than as free men, to
be governed by the stringent rules of the Passengers
Act in the manner of transportation, to submit to any
Government inspection, and to be bound in the colonies
by the most stringent laws for the protection of the
emigrant African. But the Government will not con.
sent. No, it would be unbecoming the British Go.
vernment, that has taken the lead in defence of Africa,
to give, even inferentially, a countenance to a domes-
tic Africaq slave trade. We speak upon this point
with some little authority, because we happen to
have had some insight into official views on this
question. When Sir John Pakington was Colonial
Minister he was invoked urgently—we being wit-
nesses--to permit the Jamaica proprietors, and of
course proprietors of the other West Indian colonies,
to go to the African coast and outbid the Spanish slave-
carriers. We—the writer of these remarks—propounded
personally, and in writing, the same suggestion to Sir
John Pakington's successor, the Duke of Newcastle.
The answer was the same in both cases. No permission
could be given, under any regulations whatever, to resort
to Africa for free labour ; and the argument was this—
the free emigrants would in fact be nothing but slave.,
who would have to be purchased ; to buy there for free.
dom would be to native slave makers quite as great an
incentive to intestine wars as if they were bought for
foreign slavery ; and therefore, as the policy of the Bri-
tish Government was supereminently humane, and was
directed to the extinction of slave-making in Africa, it
was deemed impossible to permit those who had already
been made slaves, and only awaited their ulterior fate
in the barracoons of the African coast, to be redeemed
from slavery by purchasing them from their owners
as free men. The effect is very apparent. The
" humane" Government which forbids Englishmen going
to the coast of Africa and having poor unfortunate
Africans who are already slaves out of the barracoons in
order to bring them over to Jamaica, and make free men
and Christians of them, stands qaietly by while New
York merchants under charter from Spanish speculators
send clipper ships to the coast, carry off from the barra-
coons the very slaves whom we are forbidden to emanci-
pate, and land them on the coast of Cuba, where they
fetch 800 dollars a-head, while some five British gunboats
lie at Greytown, whose officers smoke Havannah cigars
from sunrise to sundown, with nothing else to do, and
not a single British ship on the station is permitted to
make an effort to rescue one single slave from the doom
which awaits him, and which the British Government,
from its peculiar and special humanity, has assigned to
him beyond all hope of redemption.
We had a slave crew in Kingston a few days ago.
Yes ; start not, virtuous reader The fact is so. They
were here ; and, as Providence always directs events fur
good, they spent their ill-gotten ounces like slave-traders !
We could summon witnesses that would attest the
fact. Good we almost ejaculated, why is not King-
ston Havannah ? or why do these tempting ounces come
only once, to show us why it is that Havannah is a
F,econd Paris, and Jamaica another phase of—Pande-
moniuua 1
Search where you will, there is on the face of ne na-
tional escochema a scar so indelible as that which defaces
the public character of Great Britain on this single ques-
tion. She is the public impersonation of the Pis-Stave-
trade Dog in the Manger. She will not put down the
slave trade herself—although she takes credit all over the
world for having done so—nor will she permit others,
who could do so at 1-50th part of the public cost at pre-
sent paid, to put it down effectually by outbidding the
slaver, and making the slaves free men. We do notask for
access to the coast of Africa, whether or no. We know as
well as anyone that so long as a market for slaves exists on
the coast so long will there be slaves made internally and
brought to the coast for sale. What we do insist is that,
unless the British Government resolves on such measures
as shall prevent this traffic for the purpose of enslaving
these wretched creatures in Cuba, it is gross hypocrisy
to call it by no worse name, to interdict the Jamaica
proprietor from bidding for the same poor creature,
under Government inspection, too, in order to make him
a free man and a Protestant Christian iu this good coun-
try. No sane person will believe that humanity dictates
any such distinction.- There have been 20,000 African
slaves, for instance, landed in Caba this year. We will
not venture to imagine how many per cent. on this num-
ber have died a wretched death between the Mozambique
and the Isle of Pines within the same period. We will
conceive simply that these 20,000 slaves, who have been
safely landed as slaves, and have realised to their guilty
owners some $BOO each, had been, by the humane sane•
tion of the British Government, rescued from the slave
barracoons by the agents of the Messrs. Davidson, of
Mr. Alexander Stewart, of Messrs. Boddington and Co.,
of Messrs. Hawthorn and Sneddon, Manning and An-
derton, or Cottam and Morton, and landed here in Ja-
maica from well-aired passenger ships furnished according
to statute, and provided with every necessary that the
law insists on. We put it to philanthropist., and espe-
cially to that body of individuals who would appear
especially to claim this nomenclature—the British Go-
vernment—we put it to them, whether humanity is best
consulted in things as they are, or in things as they
might be. Put down the African slave by all means—
that is to say, prevent the intestine wars which supply
the trails if you can. You will never, however, put it
down so long as New York merchants can find an in-
terest in fitting out slavers for the coast on account of
Spanish jobbers, and so le :as, pretending to spend
1,500,0001. of the public money yearly in suppressing
the trade, you allow it to proceed without obstruction,
when a blockade of the ports of Cuba, which would be
justified by the open infraction of her treaties by Spain,
would stop it for ever in two months.