The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-11 00:00:00

:‘ AM.

LONDON:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1842.

The pre.ent policy of the Bread-taxers is to

turn public attention from their iniquity to some
other and less flagrant wickedness. Accordingly
we find the Tory Journals are now bitterly de-
nouncing the evils of the manufacturing system.
Day after day they dwell on the enormities of
employing women and children in the mills, and
on setting them to work instead of their hus-
bands and fathers. We have no recollection
that these subjects received any particular share
of the attention of the Bread-taxers till they re-
quired them as a sort of screen for their own
job. On the contrary, as long as the increase of
factories took away the superfluous hands from
their land, and increased its value, their avarice
administered an opiate to their humanity.
But now, when the factories no longer take
away their superfluous hands, and the manu-
facturers are driven by their own necessities to
question the bread-tax, every severity or cruelty
ever heard of in a factory, is remembered, and
magnified, in order, if possible, to conceal from
the public the misdeeds of the Bread-taxers.
On this account too the reports of the noto-
rious Short Time Committee have been paraded
before the public, and it has been attempted to
show, on the authority of these self-constituted
representatives of the working classes, that an
improvement of the factory system would be
more serviceable to the people than the repeal
of the Bread-tax. An extension of tradepac-
cording to the Committee, would only increase
work, without adding to wages. To turn public
attention from the Bread-tax, too, the Tory
Journals dwell with emphasis on the injury
which has been inflicted on the working classes
by excessive speculation and excessive issues of
paper-money.

To the same end a letter has appeared in a
Tory Journal, written from Dantzic, giving
some account of the discoveries already made
by one of Sir R. PEEL'S missionaries, who has
found out for his employer that bread is as dear,
and meatalmost as dear, in Dantzicas in England.
lie has found out also that the workmen are
nearly as heavily taxed abroad as at home, and
that the distress is not owing to the Bread-tax,
but to the large proportion of our people who are
employed. in manufactures. The sufferings of the
people ale, in fact, to be traced by Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S hired missionaries to nature, the Legis-
lature is to be exonerated, and the system that
crushes the nation to the earth is to be continued.
That such information would be supplied we
anticipated, and we are not surprised at the use
now made of it. We are convinced, however,
by the present exertions of the Tories, that they
begin to be alarmed, and they would not
trouble themselves to up this counter-

" Has the great experiment of negro emanci-
pation succeeded ?" is an important question, on
which the Immigration and Agricultural Society
of Trinidad has undertaken to throw light. Mr.
W. HARDING BURNLEY, its President, has just
published the result of its investigations. We
are not much surprised, however, that the ques-
tion should still remain in doubt and obscurity,
when, as Mr. BURNLEY says, seventeen Gover-
nors are writing and forwarding despatches by
every packet, while numerous journals, hun-
dreds of letters, and many ocular wit-
nesses, are continually bearing testimony
to the fact, on one side or the other.
What darkening of counsel by many words,
particularly as parties are still arrayed against
each other, and the angry feelings occa-
sioned by the struggle to effect emancipation
have not yet died away ! Nevertheless, it is a
most interesting question, and we are grateful to
Mr. BURNLEY for supplying us with much infor-
mation, and an opportunity to say a few words
on the subject.
For what was the experiment made ? To be-
nefit the sugar planters ? No. To enable them
to heap up fortunes ? No. To extend the culti-
vation of sugar colonies ? Not even that. It
was made to benefit the negroes, to promote
their happiness, freedom, and civilization. We
must consider the object of emancipation before
we can answer the question, has it succeeded ?
and we must inquire of the emancipated slave,
not of his master. We only get indications of
its influence on the condition of the former slaves
from the complaints of their masters, and those
indications seem to us to prove that the great ex-
periment has been eminently successful.
Seven years have passed away since slavery
was abolished, and what were the objections
made to the abolition ? That the slaves would
be riotous in their freedom—would not work—
would not obey the laws—and would throw off the
dominion of the planters. Have any of these
fears, these predictions, been realised ? Where
is the colony that has run into disorder, or gone
out of cultivation, or been given up wholly to
the former slaves? What West Indian pro-
prietor has been ruined by it? We have heard
of none ; but we find many proofs that the
negroes have been benefited.
Mr.BURNLEY complains, for example, that they
are not subject, in Trinidad, to as stringent a
system as the labourers of Englandrthough here
a rigorous climate calls for continuous exertion,
while in the tropics nature invites to indolence,
and the absolute wants of life are few. This

means that the negroes are not condemned and
compelled to work for the capitalist and the
planter in Trinidad, as the labourers of England
are compelled to work : even the Tories now corn-

plain of this. In Trinidad there has been a
continual rise in wages for the last three years, to
attract labourers from the neighbouring islands;
and a similar rise would be a great blessing to the
toil-worn people of England. Mr.BuaNLEy's com-

plaint of this is a testimony to the benefit which
emancipation has conferred on the negroes. -
_ _

Mr. BURNLEY, however, in common with
other gentlemen in his sphere of life, fancies
that the negroes will not take care of themselves;
and, though they now marry, attend to their
dress, go to church, are not coerced by the plan-
ters—for, wanting their services, he is even afraid
to inform against therm,--he supposes that a time
will come when the planters will be ruined, and
when the labouring classes of Trinidad will be
in a state of helpless destitution. We have a
great suspicion of all such benevolent fears, and
Mr. BURNLEY does not disguise that they dic.
tate to him to subject the negro to the salutary
yoke of our civilization.

In truth, the condition of the labourers in Tri-
nidad seems one of freedom, and consequently
one of happiness. The planter can no longer
command them as if they were slaves; and when

he orders the steam in the engine-boiler to be
raised in the morning, lie is uncertain whether a

sufficient number of hands can be procured to

carry on the work of the day. But while the
negro does not work excessively in Trinidad, he
seems not to fall into poverty. He imitates his
former masters, and gambles for dollars, as if
he were opulent as well as free. On the whole,
we conclude that Mr. BURNLEY has satisfac-
torily proved, so far as the experiment has yet
gone, and looking to the object for which it was
made, not to enrich the planters, but to benefit
the negroes, that the great experiment of negro

emancipation has been eminently successful. -
Mr. BURNLEY and the Immigration Society of
Trinidad, suggest a curious mode of extending
the cultivation of sugar in Trinidad, extinguish-

ing the Slave-trade, and of reducing the wages of
the now independent labourers, the considera-
tion of which we must postpone till a future day.

There have been great meetings of the people
at Dundee and at Bolton; and at both the
decay of trade and the public distress were the
painful themes most dwelt on. We supply a
brief account of the former, which is remark-
able, because it was attended by several land-
owners, who go heartily along with their
manufacturing neighbours in demanding the
abolition of the Corn-laws. Such men may,
if any can, reconcile the people to sub-
mit to landowners' legislation some time
longer; hut we are afraid they are too few, and
not sufficiently numerous, to redeem the mass,
and revive in the minds of the people the senti-
ment of respectful obedience to the laws. The
reader will see that decay and distress are nearly
as great in Dundee and its neighbourhood as in
Manchester and Leeds.

In all Europe, according to the united testi-
mony of every traveller, there is no people so
generally poor as the Irish. In Ireland there
are few or no manufactures, and the Irish
coming over to England in swarms, settling in
all our manufacturing towns, have contributed
to beat down wages in England to the level of
wages in Ireland. When these facts are no-
torious, when the purely agricultural Irish are
not only extremely poor themselves, but the
cause of making the manufacturing English poor,
it really requires a front of brass in our
Tory write's to describe the manufactures
of England as the cause of our people's
distress. We do not accuse the Tory writers so

irritation, if they did not tremble for their
own monopoly. The Anti-Bread-taxers will not
suffer themselves to be deluded by the tactics of
the Tories; and, encouraged by the tricks and
subterfuges of their opponents, they will steadily
pursue their great object, and demand justice.
The working classes, too, we trust, will not suffer
the cunning Tories to divert them from obtain-
ing the abolition of the Bread-tax, which is the
master grievance, to get some little melioration of
the factory system. They will recollect that the
faults even of that system are to be traced to the
Bread-taxers, in whose hands exclusively, and
not in the hands of the millowners, has been the
power of making laws for the spinners and
weavers, and for the masters and workmen, as
well as for the agricultural labourers.
In truth, the Tories do not take much pains
to conceal their desire to delude and degrade
the working men of England. Their Dantzic
correspondent, or missionary, ascribes the dis-
tress of our people in part to the more numerous
wants of the English workmen. The Tories
blame the people for their extravagance, and
would make them, as has been recommended in
the Journal of the Working Glasses, to limit their
enjoyments, and lower their standard of subsist-
ence. If the working classes can be deceived
by this transparent trickery of the Tories, they
will completely prove the case of their opponents,
demonstrate that they are utterly destitute of
political discernment, and quite unworthy to be
entrusted with the franchise. Whatever may be
the faults and the oppression committed by the
millowners, let them be made answerable,
but let the people never forget that the
Bread-tax is a deliberate robbery, enacted with
all the solemn pomp of law by the Parliament,
and which can, and ought, to be abolished by the
Parliament.