The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-08 00:00:00

erne sasperted that he (Lord Santtee) ;had been elected
by venal :freemen. lie hoped .that thisletyould be the last
time such assertions would be made by Hon. Members in that
House. The Hop. Member for Manchester had said that he
(Lord Sandon) was not the representative of the mercantile
interests of Liverpool. He ( Lord Sandon) thought he might
appeal to the addresses that had been presented to him on
that subject, in order to refute the assertion. He thought the
Hon. Gentleman had been compelled to the adoption of the
course he had pursued, in consequence of the impossibility
of answering the speeeh of his Right Hon. Friend, the Presi-
dent of the Board of Trade. A speech more exhausting the
subject he had never heard.—( Hear, hear.) '1 he Hon. Gen-
tleman had said that the manufacturers of Manchester had
stated that they looked to an alteration in the sugar duties in
order to open the markets of the world to this country. He
thought that when the subject was well considered it would be
thought by the manufacturers of Manchester not to be a boon
worth scrambling for. The Hon. Gentleman had chal-
lenged him to go down to Liverpool and advocate the
principles which he supported .in that House. lie should
hive no hesitation in (loing so, feeling convinced that the
coarse of conduct he had adopted would meet with the appro-
bation of his constituents. He did not believe as had been
asserted that the people of England had changed their opi
nions upon the question of slavery and the slave trade. The
Members of that House might have changed their opinions
upon the subject but the people had, pot. If they appealed to
the people. they would find that they would not sacrifice every
principle of justice to pounds, shillings, and pence. It was
asserted that the course the Ministers were pursuing was cal-
culated to increase the price of that essential article of life—
sugar. Now, what was the fact? Why, ever since the
debate that was raised by the Noble Lord the Member for
the City of London, the price ef sugar hest been continually
falling. There was no doubt that the market of Brazil was a
very great and important one, but he was sure that when
the Government of Brazil imposed duties on cotton
and other manufactures of this country, the *manufac-
turers of Manchester would not be so eager to cultivate
relations of amity with the people of Brazil. With
respect to the estimate he had given of the quantity. of
sugar that would be supplied from the colonies, he never in- ;
tended to calculate exactly. No man could do that. But
he was justified in what he had asserted by the fact, that the
price of sugar had been filling ever since. He contended
that for supplying the labeur, market of the West Indies, the
choice lay between the immigration into these islands of free
white labourers, or the negroes from Africa. A great impedi-
ment in the way of the supply of sugar was, the continual dis-
cussion of this question, which produced a feeling of uncer-
tainty. He repeated that he believed the honest abhorrence
the people had for slavery was not at all diminished, and con-
cluded by declaring that he meld have no fear of being charged
by his constituents with either hypocrisy or neglect of the com-
mercial interests of the country.
Mr. BRIGHT rose, and said,. from the speeches he had
heard that night from the Right Hon. the President of the
Board of Trade, and from the Noble Lord who had just sat
down, he should have thought that gentleinen on that side of
the House were specially interested either in the condition of
the population,of some portions of Afrizla, or in the affairs •f
the Brazilian empire. He should not have been aware, from
any speech on that aide of the House, that they were engaged
in any discuss:on on the real merits of the operation of the
question on the great body of the consemers.of this country.—
( Hear, hear.) Nothing was more politic in a case so despe-
rately bad as this, than that Hon. Gentlemen should try to
ride off on some other scent—( Hear, hear)—and the largest
portioe of the speech of the Right Hon. President of the Board
of Trade, who was a Member of the Cabinet, was spent in dis-
cussing the slavery view of the quest ion, although it was notorious
that he was himself one of a family which, perhaps more than any
other, was in firmer times implicated in all that was most dis-
graceful in the system of slavery.—( Cries of " Oh, oh" from the
Ministerial benches.) He meant not to make any charge as to
particular acts.—(Oh, oh, and cheers.) He spoke only of
slavery as a system.--( Oh, oh.) He did not believe that those
connected with the Right Hon. Gentleman ever did anything
but what every man who kept slaves was necessitated to do.—
(Cheers and Oh, oh.) But the Right lion. Gentleman was
now also a member of the Cabinet, supported by a party
who were the special supporters, , in that House and the
country, of slavery and the slave trade, as long as the
people of this country permitted them to exist at all.—
( Cheers.) The Noble Lord the Member for Liverpool had
spoken of the strong opinion of his constituents on this ques-
tion. While the Hon. Member for Manchester was speaking
he saw the Hon. Member for Evesham (Mr. Borthwick) sit-
ting by the side of the Noble Lord. He recollected the time
when that Hon. Gentleman was in Liverpool lecturing in fa-
vour of slavery, and the only party by whom that lion. Gen-
tleman was supported in delivering his lectures in favour of
slavery, was the very party that returned the Noble Lord to
this House. He had asserted elsewhere, and he was prepared to
repeat it here, that their plea of an abhorrence of slavery,
coining from that side of the House, was a dishonest plea. It
was a p'ea that was made to seize hold of certain opinions
which once did exist, and which were now supposed to exist, but
which was never used so long as they had any other on which
they could hang their support of this question. But it was a
plea that would avail them no longer. He knew that the Anti-
Slavery Society did send some representations to the Govern-
ment against the proposal to reduce the duty on foreign
sugar. But he knew, also, that in that represen-
tation it was not supported by the Anti-Slavery Societies
in the provinces—( Hear, hear) —and it was in the provinces
that the real strength of the Society existed.—( Hear, hear. )
The Societies in Glasgow, in Manchester, in Liverpool, in
Birmingham, at Hitchin, at Devizes, and in several other
p„ laces had seceded from the Anti• Slavery Society on that
' very ground. They dissented with it on this question, and
the Society, from that fatal error, had fallen into a state of
complete helpleshiess. He knew this from experience, and
"from information he had collected, and he had as good a
right to speak on the point as any man, for he
had visited every borough in England within the
last twelve or eighteen months.—(oh, oh, and ironical
cheers from the Ministerial benches.) The anti-slavery cry,
raised with respect to the question of free trade, or the sugar
question, would not hinder the return of any Member of Par-
liament who might come forward as a free trade candidate.
( Hear, hear.) But he should like to ask Hon. Gentlemen op
posite why they raised this question of national morality ?
Was it their duty to look after the morality of Brazil? Was it
not their dot to look after the prosperity of their
own country ?—( Hear, hear.) Were they sent to
• Parliament that they might take under their specia
patronage, every population of every portion of the earth, ex-
cept that of the country in which they themselves lived?—
, (Cheers.) He declared he could not express the disgust and
amazement—(Oh! oh!)—with which he had listened to the
1 speeches of the gentlemen opposite, in which they had spoken
of the people of Africa, of Brazil, of every people of the world,
except their own poor, except the famishing population of their
own manufacturing districts.--( Cheers.) Who was it that en-
tertained these scruples about 'the introduction of Brazilian
sugar? It was not the poor, it was the rich only—( Hear)—
and they could have enough at whatever price it might
, come in—( Cheers)—or, if there was only a supply of
4,000,000 cwts., with an increase of several millions of the
population, it mattered nothing to Noble Lords in another
place, to Hon. Members in this, to rich merchants, or bankers,
or the clergy ; all these classes would be served out of this
short supply before the poor of the population could come in
for their share. If the Noble Lord the Member for Liverpool,
and the President 41 the Board of ETrade, had scruples
on this matter, how had they any right, by reason
of their conscientious scruples, to deny to five-sixths
of the working classes of this country that supply of sugar,
which their own industry might purchase them, if it were not
w and system which they upheld.—(Cheers.)
consume slave-grown sugar. Let there be freedom of eon-
fiofr any this
man infamhoauds
any scruples on the matter, he ought not to
science on the question ; but let them not seek to impose
shackles on the conscience of other men, especially of men who
were not represented in that House, and who were the
weakest and most defenceless of the people, and
who, under the least ordinary circumstances, never
got more than the commonest necessaries of life.-•-(Cheers.)
• Treaties had been spoken of between this country and Brazil ;
suppose Brazil would allow their goods to come in without any
duties at all, what effect would that have on the sugar question?
They had had already almost an open market in Brazil—the
Brazilians had done everything they could for them in ad.
mitting their goods at duties of la and 18 per cent. ; they
had ,no Teasels to complain of them. Yet they feun4
}list, their; trade with' Braid 'had, , for ;ma years, been
diminishing. _ The
_good of the presentto, treaty they
had deprived, the country of, by sacrificing their: country to-a ,
class and selfish monopoly interest ; and whatever treaty they
might make in-future, unless they chose to lower the duties on
the sugar of Brazil, however advantageous it might seem upon
paper, the trade must be greatly crippled, and all who de-
pended on it must greatly suffer. The Right Hon. Gentle-
man alluded to the fact that the East Indies and the Mauritius
would not long, and did not then, greatly require protection,
but that the West Indies did require it, because labour was scarce,
and dear because of its scarcity. Why, the planters themselves
were themselves to blame for any scarcity of labour in the
West Indies. They were told that the climate of Jamaica
was favourable to the negro population, yet for many years it
did not increase but diminish ; and had the emancipatian been
delayed fifteen years longer, such was the brutality and sill-
treatment of the slaves by the planter that the negro population
would have been utterly exterminated. He thought this was
about the worst plea that could possibly be offered
by the West Indian planters in defence of the sys-
tem by which the people must be robbed and spoiled of not less '
than four or five millions annually, to support the monopoly in
which these planters had so direct an interest. But the quer-.
tion with regard to the consumers in this country was, that
there was not enough sugar for their supply, He bad heard no
remedy proposed for this; the people were ill supplied; the
consumption of Ireland was a trifle—that tof the agricultural
counties of England scarcely worth alluding to—and all that
was consumed in the country was well known to be deterio-
rated to a serious extent.—( Cries of " Hear, hear.") Every-
thing was striving to baffle the system they had built' up.
There was no incrcaee in the quantity of the sugar ; there was
an increase in all the dealers in it, and a decrease in the profits
they made ; some sold the article without any profit at all, and
in some places the grocers would not sell sugar to families
unless they purchased other articles from which a profit could
be made. The object of the sugar monopoly was precisely
the same as that of corn. It was to benefit the proprietors of
the West Indian isles, in the same manlier as the corn-
law was meant to benefit the proprietors of
land in England. The gentlemen opposite knew
this as well as he did. No man knew it better than the Right
Hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, unless it was the
Right Hon. Baronet who sat on his right hand—( Hear, hear)
—who propounded those principles years ago—(Cheers)—and
who, perhaps, taught him (Mr. Bright) the first lessons he
ever received in political economy.—(Laughter and cheers,
during which Sir J. Graham bowed to the lion. Member in
acknowledgment of the , reference.) The country, too, knew
that they supported a selfish interest, and however much
they might have deluded the people in time past,
there was now intelligence enough in the country
to put an end to this and every other monopoly, by which
they might fancy they profited.—(Oh, oh, and indications of
impatience.) He knew how difficult it was to convince any of
the Hon. Gentlemen opposite of the impolieyof the monopo-
lies either of sugar or corn. The Right Hon. Baronet, in his
speech on the Irish debate—(Question, question)—spoke of a
man, charged with riding over a piece of land while hunting,
being tried by a jury of fox-hunters. Ho was just in that con-
dition. They had galloped over his interests—( Oh, oh)
—they had trampled over the interests of 500 or 600 men
whom he employed in that trade, that greatly depended
on the Brazilian trade ; they had disregarded the vital inte-
rests of several hundreds of working men, by whose suffrages
he was permitted to speak in that House. He was here on his
own aceount and un theirs, to plead before a jury—not of fox--
hunters, but monopolists, and he was endeavouring to show
that his constituents were wronged by the system they sup..
ported. 'Who had denied it? The President of the Board of
Trade did not a say a word about it ; he knew a great
deal better. The Right Honourable Baronet at. the
head of the Government proficient as he was in
the art must have envied his President of 'the
Board of Trade the powers he possessed. He had never heard
so many words put together with so much smoothness, and se
entirely avoiding the question under discussion. And when
the Right Hon. Baronet got up himself, he would venture to
say that he would as studiously evade the question as he had
done. Why was it? Why had any class, eitheir in that COUII,
try or in the colonies, the right, or why did they assert the
power, to prevent the larger portion of the population -of
this country from having that supply of sugar
which their industry might purchase for them?
Now he asked sortie Hon. Gentleman on the opposite side to
tell them that. It was all very well for Hon. Gentlemen

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