The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-27 00:00:00

ruitta 241114

LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1844.

From articles published in the Trinidad Standard,
and other colonial papers, we perceive, with regret,
that gloomy apprehensions are entertained by our
colonists with regard to the prospects that open to
them, in connexion with those reductions of the.
duties on foreign free-grown sugar and coffee, which
are to take efE.ct in the month of November next.
When Mr. Min.Es's proposition for a countervailing
reduction on the import duties on our own West
India sugars, &e., was under the consideration of the
Legislature, we discussed the general policy of the
Ministerial measure too largely to render it expe-
dient for us again to treat of it. But we cannot
shut our eyes to the grave consequences of
any legislation, however sound in principle, or
just to the fair claims of the British consumer,
which are to flow from an Act of the Imperial Legis-
lature in this instance, if the Trinidad Standard be
right, to our possessions in the West Indies. The
Trinidad journal certainly compresses a very serious
dilemma into the following observations:—" Allowing,
always, for his, perhaps, not yet established presump-
tion that, in order to enable our own colonial pro-
duce to compete in the English and other markets
with foreign produce, favoured by these reduced
rates of duty, it must absolutely be produced by our
planters at a cost considerably lest than that which it
now incurs." But here is the dilemma. The cost of
production has been already lowered to its minimum,
under the existing scale of protecting and discrimi-
nating duty. Reduce this scale of duty on
the competing of foreign produce, and it
will require, to realise any profit whatever
on the British, that the expense of producing
it should be materially lessened. But if the minimum
rate of remuneration for which the needful labour
can be got, in Trinidad, for example, has been
already established and acted upon, any less rate of
wages will fail to command that amount of labour
without which this produce cannot be raised at all.
Again, if under the present minimum rate of wages,
the crops realise prices which barely suffice to keep
the planters going, a higher scale of wages would so
absorb all profit, or rather, so certainly entail the loss
of the capital engaged in the transaction, that the
lands themselves will be allowed to run out of culti-
vation. This is shortly the argument of the colonists.
The Trinidad Standard says--
"It is to be presumed that hitherto the employers
have never given higher wages than they could possibly
help—that the rate of wages is reduced t.) the lowest
figure to which they could bring it under the existing
circumstances of the colony. how the proposed reduc-
tion of expenditure is to be effected, therefore, we cannot
conceive, unless it be made to hinge on the alternative of
abandonment of cultivation altogther, or some other co-
ercive measure. We fear that the painful alternative re-
ferred to will unhappily force itself upon nut a few from
the pressure of circumstances and the total impossibility
to withstand the ruinous competition to which they will
now be exposed."
Now, we agree with the City Correspondent of a
Morning Contemporary, that " it cannot he supposed
that Government would wittingly go the length of
converting her MAJESTY'S West India possessions into
barren and useless wastes. A due regard for the wel-
NE4P3, `9t.theliiiiancipatecl blacks is alone sufficient to

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