The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-25 00:00:00

SUMMARY !.VIEW OF. THE PRESENT
STATE of the ANTI-SLAVERY QUESTION.
EFFECTS OF BOUNTIES AND PROTECTING DUTIES.

(From the Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter.)
The sanguine hope which the parliamentary
resolutions of the 15th of May, 1823, justly
excited that early, effectual, and decisive measures
would be taken to ameliorate the condition ofthe
slave population of the British Colonies, and to
raise them to " a participation in those civil
rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other
classes of his Majesty's subjects," has been most
painfully disappointed by the result. Year after
year has passed away without the adoption of
those effectual and decisive measures for this
purpose, to which the Government and the Par-
liament were then solemnly pledged. No ade-
quate remedy has yet been provided for the great
and acknowledged evils of. slavery. Five years
have been wasted in fruitless negociations with
the men who conceive themselves interested in
upholding those evils, and the prospect of their
removal seems, at the present moment, as dis-
tant as when the pledges in question were first
given.
In none of the Colonies have adequate means
of education or instruction as yet been provided
for the slaves. In none of them but two, Bar-
badoes and Tobago, has an end been put to
Sunday markets.; without, however, appointing any
other market day for the slaves. Sunday labour
has been no where precluded by giving equivalent
time in lieu of Sunday to the slave, who is still
forced to toil either for his master or fox his own
subsistence and that of his family during seven
days of the week. The testimony, of slaves is
not yet admitted in the King's Courts to any
beneficial purpose. The sacred institution .of
marriage, though with some nominal recognition
of it, is still almost entirely neglected. Families
are still allowed to be separated, by all but
judicial sales, except in St. Lucia. The
power of redeeming themselves by the fruits
of their own industry at a fair appraisement, as
well as the real and effective rights of property,
are still generally withheld from the slaves ;
while little or nothing has yet been done to pre-
vent the abuse of the master's power of punish-
ment. The practice of flogging females, and the
use of the cart whip in the geld are obstinately
retained in all the chartered colonies ; while in
none of them have independent and impartial
guardians been appointed to watch over the exe-
cution of the laws for the protection of the slaves.
The presumption of law is still, except in the
Colonies of Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Grenada,
in favour of the slavery, and against the freedom
of all who have not a white skin, And in all
the colonies, the administration of justice is most
defective ; while the laws themselveS are harsh,
oppressive, and unequal,. denying to the slaves
even the common rights of humanity, and to the
free people, whether black or coloured, any fair
participation in the civil and political privileges
of British subjects.
This injurious policy commenced in 1815, in
favour of West Indian sugar, and has since been
made to embrace, by an unhappy partiality, the
only slave Colony possessed by his Majesty to
the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, the
Mauritius, while the sugar grown by free labour,
in all other parts of the British dominions, is
loaded with additional duties for the sole benefit
of those who hold 825,000 of their fellow-sub-1
jects in cruel bondage "frk. •
Such a course of proceeding is wholl).incon-,i
sistent with those principles of, sound ,c,omrner-,
cial policy which have been recommended- from.
the Throne, and recognized and sanctioned • by
Parliament, It is both unjust and oppressive
towards more than 80 millions of our Asiatic
fellow subjects, whose interests are sacrificed to a
few hundreds of West Indian and Mauritius
sugar planters. It is attended with serious in-.
jury to the British commercial and shipping in-
terests connected with our eastern empire ; and
it is highly prejudicial to the whole population
of the United kingdom. •
The extensive distress which has prevailed
among the labouring classes of this country, is
admitted to have arisen from a want of adequate
employment ; and for this evil some effectual
remedy is now anxiously sought by Parliament,
in emigration, or in some other expedient equally
costly. But what remedy is likely to be more
easy and effectual for alleviating its pressure,
than that of obtaining a Beer vent for the pro-
ducts of British industry among the swarming
population of His Majesty's Asiatic dominions ?
This obvious and practicable source of relief,
however, is in no small measure precluded by,
our refusing to admit the produce of those domi-
nions into the markets of Great Britain, on fair
and equal terms.
If the proposed changes in the sugar duties
have been correctly stated to the public, and
should pass into a law, their effect can only be
still more to favour, at the expellee of the British
public, the interests of the growers of that ar-
ticle by slave labour, to the injury of all his Ma-
esty's subjects who raise it by their own free
labour.

The bonus thus given to the growers of sugar
by slaves, will amount to a very large sum.—
Even on the existing scale of duties and draw-
backs, it is moderately estimated at more than
750,000/. ; and if the former boundaries shall
be restored, it will amount to above 1,200,0001.,
indepeOpntly of the sum annually expended in
the naval, military, and cilil establishments of
our slave colonies, and which is calculated to
amount to about two millions sterling.
But whether the sum which is to be divided
annually among the growers of sttgar by slave
labour be 750,0001., or 1,200,0001., to such an
appropriation of. their money the people of this
country will ever entertain objections of the
gravest kind ; nor will they perceive any essential
difference between 4 Parliamentary vote of that
sum to the growers of sugar by slave labour, and
a fiscal arrangement which shall secure to them
the same amount in some other way; for under
whatever complexity of arrangement the trans-
aptiCM may be disguised, its real effect is the
same. _

That the factitious rise in the price of sugar,
for example, which is caused by monopoly, or
by bounties tending to enhance the planter's
profits, instead of being beneficial, is most in-
jurious to the slave, may be established not only
by reasoning, but 'by facts drawn• from the offi-
cial documents furnished to Parliament by the
colonists themselves.

Of these facts, one of the most striking is the
increased waste of slave life which occurs -in
every .colony where the superior fertility of the
soil increases the profits of slave labour, and
adds to the quantity of the article on which the
bounty operates.
The Bahamas, from the poverty of the soil,

The misery and the mortality of the slaves in the
Mauritius, we believe greatly to surpass what takes place
in any of our other. Slave Colonies. This has partly arisen
from the extraordinary cheapness with which, from its vi-
rinity to the slave market, the waste of the human sunk
can there be repaired.