The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-07 00:00:00

CULTURE OF SUGAR BY FREE LABOUR.

(From the Anti- Slavery Monthly Repo-ter for Sept.)
We are anxious, before we close this number,
to-advert to another topic, on which the Colonial
pamphleteers.and journalists have laboured hard
during the last month, to work on the public
mind. We allude to the culture of sugar by
free labour. A writer of the name of Saints-
bury, has stept forward among the rest, and re-
peated the exploded fallacies of the late Mr.
Marryat, as well as those of Mr. Macqueen, on
the subject of the sugar imported hither from the
East Indies, which they hardily affirm to be the
produce of slave labour, and not the produce of
free labour. Our readers of the present day are,
perhaps, not aware that this controversy was
conclusively settled in 1823. The late Mr.
Marryat then employed his able pen in endea-
vouring to establish this point ; and the present
race of writers have, in fact, done little more
than, with far less of talent and acuteness, to
produce again his refuted arguments, and to
fortify them with his disproved statements. The
refutation and disproof may both be found in a
pamphlet published by Hatchard, entitled, " A
Letter to W. W. Whitmore, Esq , M.P." This
pamphlet was deemed decisive at the time. The
facts of the case are precisely the same now as
they were then, and the letter to Mr. Whit-
more is just as complete a reply to Mr. Saints-
bury's positions as it was to those of Mr. Mar-
ryat. A sheet, extracted from this pamphlet,
has been published by the Anti-Slavery Society,
and to that we must refer our readers. It will
there be• seen, that not only is there no instance
in which the husbandry of the Bengal provinces,
from which alone we derive our sugar, is con-
ducted by slaves; but we have it pointed out to.
us clearly, and in every instance, by whom the
labour is perfbrined, namely, by the family of
the Ryot or farmer, and by labourers hired by
him as they are wanted, and whose rate of
wages are distinctly given in the official docu-
ments on the subject.
The whole effect on the public mind produced
by Mr. Saintsbury and others, proceeds from
their wilful and deliberate misrepresentation of
the documents to which they refer. They quote,
as applicable to Bengal, passages which have
a reference only to the Malabar coast. The
existence of slavery, for instance, in some re-
cently ceded districts on the Malabar side of
India, is made to prove that sugar is culti-
vated by slaves in Bengal. The voluminous
collections of documents, printed by the East
India Company in 1823, furnishes the most
decisive and irrefragable proofs—(every page is
full of them)—that the whole of the agricul-
ture of the Bengal provinces is conducted by
free labour. On this fact there can be no con-
troversy with an honest reader of these docu-
ments. But, in order to overthrow this mass
of testimony, what do such writers as Mr. Saints-
bury do ? They resort to statements which
refer to quite another pat t of the world, and ap-
ply them to Bengal ; and they hope to evade
detection, because Malabar and Bengal are both
in Asia or in India. They might with equal
conclusiveness prove that corn is grown in. Great
Britain by slave labour, because there happen to
be slaves in Russia. The only sugar, however,
which we receive from India comes from Ben-
gal. Malabar imports sitar from abroad for its
own consumption. The proof of all this may
be seen in the pamphlet to which we have re-
ferred,
and which points in every case to the
page of the authentic work which it cites.
There is also another pamphlet, published in
.1824, which is equally conclusive on this point •
as the letter to Mr. Whitmore. It is entitled,
"'East India Sugar, or an Inquiry respecting
the means of improving the quality and reducing
the cost of sugar raised by free labour in the
East Indies."

But if there were no such pamphlets in ex-
istence, the statements of Sir Edward Hyde
East and Mr. Hume in the House of Com-
mons on the Ist of March, 1826, would of
themselves be sufficient to refute every syllable
published by Mr. Saintsbury, or a thousand
such writers. Sir E. H. East is a large Jamaica
proprietor, who had filled for years the situation
of Chief Justice of Bengal. Be denied, in the
most explicit terms, that slavery was recognised
by law as a condition of society in Bengal ; and
Mr. Hume added, that he had been much in
Bengal, and from what he knew of society there,
he would undertake confidently to say, that there
were no agricultural slaves there. (See Vol. I.
No. 10, p. 105.)

Let a single extract more on this subject suf-
fice for the present. It is taken from the letter
to Mr. Whitmore already referred to. The
letter writer quotes the testimony of the Bengal
Board of Trade, on the 7th of August, 1792,
to the following effect, as contained in the first
Appendix to the East India Company's great
volume, printed in 1823, lip. 51 to 60. "In
this country (Bengal) the cultivator is either
the immediate proprietor of the ground, or he
hires it, as in Europe, of the proprietor, and uses
his discretion in cultivating what he thinks best
adapted to the nature of the soil or the demand
of the market. One field produces sugar, the
next wheat, rice, or cotton. The husbandman
is nourished and clothed from his own ground ;
or if he thinks it more his interest to sell the
whole of his own produce, supplies himself and
family with the necessaries of life from his
neighbours on the next public market." Con-
trasting their state with that of slaves in the
West Indies, it is added, " The Bengal pea-
santry are freemen."--" The Bengal peasant is
actuated by the ordinary
,wants and desires of
mankind. His family assist his labour and
Soothe his toil, and the sharp eye of personal
interest guides his judgment." This statement
is followed by a great variety of Reports from
the presidents and collectors in the different pro-
vincas of Bengal, and extending through more
than 200 closely printed-folio pages. The ex-
istence of slavery as a condition of society in
Bengal, is not once alluded to in any one of
these Reports, although they give us a variety
of minute and detailed calculations of the cost of
raising sugar. In short, there is no more allu-
sion to slave labour, as forming a constituent
part of the charge of cultivating sugar, than there
n trouble
would be to slave labour in an estimate of the
cost of growing corn in the county of York.
Slaves are never mentioned ; and the only sub-
labour of the farmer's household.
theed
at,
is the'
of
stitute for hired labour
ourselvesever
hinted
conUftuntinNgve the may
a yelaboratespare mis-statements of our ad-
versaries on this question. The controversy is
fast tending to its termination. The march of
events will scarcely leave room much longer,
either for misrepresentation or misapprehension.
The facilities already given in Bengal by Lord
W. Bentinck, to the investment of British capital
and the developement of British skill in the cul-
tivation of the soil ; the almost certainty that those
fiscal regulations which have hitherto depressed
the growth of sugar in Bengal, and prevented