The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-03 00:00:00

THE EMANCIPATION OF THE NEGROES.

But whatever may be the faults of this system, and what-
ever may be the sins which the Colonists may be disposed to
lay at the door of the Colonial Office, it is not justly charge-
able with the evils resulting from the emancipation of the
negro population. The " pressure from without" carried
this measure; which, founded on no sound principle of co-
lonial policy, and carried through, not by the dictates of a
sober judgment, but by the fervour and heat of sectarian zeal,
has been followed out (as it will not be surprising to reason-
able minds to learn) with much danger and risk to the pros-
perity and happiness of the very people whom it was intended
to serve and benefit. The Emancipation Question was car-
ried through with too much intemperate feeling to admit of
that patient and discriminating consideration which was ne-
cessary to raise a naked uneducated barbarian to the condi-
tion of a well-clothed, comfort-understanding christian la-
bourer. Time was not allowed to the planter to prepare for
the mighty change, had he been ever so well disposed to do
so ; at the same time I am free to confess that a West Indian
temper, goaded and provoked by incessant interference and
attack, was not in the best frame to prepare the proper means
of amelioration and improvement. Much was done by the
planter, for which he obtained neither credit nor advantage ;
for whilst the least meastire of change was of necessity a pre-
sent and immediate charge upon his income, it was out of all
question to calculate how far he might hope to receive any
satisfaction himself from his exertions. The benefit, there-
fore, was clearly upon the side of those who did nothing, and
if very little was done, compared with what ought, and might
have been done to prepare for such a portentous change of
condition, it was a natural consequence of the intemperance
with which " this free," as the negroes call it, was hurried
on to its hasty and ill-considered conclusion. With the clear
and discriminating judgment of a great statesman, Mr. Can-
ning had early laid down the principle, that the only safe sys-
tem of emancipation was to direct it through the instrumen-
tality of the planters. The plan pursued was to carry the
measure in spite of them. lam one of those who, looking
back upon the past, may very reasonably regret that we did
not immediately set forward, from the date of the resolutions
of the House of Commons on the subject of Slavery in 1823,
to'prepare for the inevitable change, which from that mo-
ment awaited the slave population of our colonies ; but un-
less the measures of amelioration had been prepared and
acted upon in unison with a large portion of the proprietary
body, we should have done little good ; nobody could foresee
what preparatory steps would be advisable ; and a treatment
of the people by any individual landowner in advance of the
adjoining properties, has always met with an unsatisfactory
as well as a most ungrateful return, in consequence of the
standard of feeling all around being below that of those so
partially benefitted on any one property. No greater exam-
ple of this truth can be quoted than what the History of the
Estates of Codrington College can produce. Bishop Porteus,
writing in 1784, just half a century previous to the act for
abolishing slavery, thus describes the endeavours of the trus-
tees to benefit the negroes on that estate : " This society has
repeatedly and earnestly enjoined their managers and agents
in Barbadoes to treat their slaves with lenity and tenderness.
They have for many years maintained a Catechist in Orders
on the plantation, whose sole business it is to train up the
negroes in the principles of religion, and to perform divine
service for their benefit on the Lord's day. And that the
slaves may have leisure to attend this and other religious
duties, the society has humanely given them the afternoon of
Saturday for cultivating their own land, and attending to
their own family affairs." Religious education and the Sa-
turday holyday was therefore given up to the slave on this
property fifty years ago, yet I could not -learn that the Cod-
rington Estate is better off at the present day than its neigh-
bours in the island of Barbadoes, nor that the negroes have
evinced a better result from this good preparation for the
change, than those, among whom no such ameliorations had
been introduced ; nor did I find that they worked with more
steadiness and fidelity than their neighbours. I write this
with some despondency for the future success of the great
experiment through the West Indies ; but I believe it to be
principally owing to what I have already stated,—namely,
that no material benefit is at any time derived from being
in advance of the general feeling that is entertained on any
subject.

(To be continued.)

POPULATION FOR THE COLONIES.

(From the Colonial Gazette.)

Nearly the whole of the communities that have been pro•
duced by colonization from modern Europe, exhibit one
common feature, which is described by either of the relative
and convertible terms " redundancy of land," or " scanti-
ness of population." The only exceptions to the rule are a
few small settlements whose inhabitants never had a greater
extent of unoccupied land at their disposal. Elsewhere,
universally more or less, population has always been deficient
in proportion to land, and remains so still. It follows that
in all these " new countries" property in land can be very
easily acquired—where, in one word, land is very cheap—
there it has ever been impossible to produce much wealth,
except by means of some kind of slavery. The reason is
sufficiently plain. Land being very cheap, nearly every head
of a family obtains land of his own ; and thus the whole la-
bour of the community is not only cut up into fractions no
larger than the number of hands in a family, but is employed
in-the very same occupation. Hence two evil consequences
in particular. Although the labour of a single family, when
employed on very feriile laud, returns a coarse abundance for
all the hands at work, it produces little more ; and when all
the members of a society work at the same occupation, and
of course produce the same things, they have no motive for
exchanging the products of their industry. In such a com-
munity, there is little combination of labour in each work, a
very small surplus produce, if any, over what keeps the pro-
ducers in a rude plenty, little or no divisions of employments,
scarcely any trade, and finally social monotony and stagna-
tion. Lord Durham draws the picture of such a community.
Speaking of the " country districts" of both the Canadas,
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, he tells of " a widely-
scattered population, poor and apparently unenterprising,
though handy and industrious, separated from each other by
tracts of intervening forest, without towns or markets,
almost without roads, living in mean houses, drawing little
more than a rude subsistence from ill-cultivated land, and
seemingly incapable of improving their condition."* This
description would serve for any colony of modern times, in
which some sort of slavery has not taken place. In the others,
the natural tendency of great cheapness of land to separate
labour and limit its productiveness, has been counteracted
by means of forcing a portion of society to work in combina-
tion. By means of slavery, and by this means only, most of
the colonies of modern Europe have been enabled to profit by
combination of labour and division of employments, and to
obtain a great surplus produce for exchange•witk other coun-
tries. From the plantation of Hispaniola, down to the pre-
sent hour, in New South Wales, colonial trade has been the
result of compulsory. labour. The surplus produce, the ex-
changable wealth of the first Spanish colonisers, of the plan-
ters of Virginia, of the cultivators of the West Indies, Spa-
nish, Danish, French, Dutch, and British, the producers of
the precious metals in South America, of the sugar and to-
bacco growers of Brazil, of the wool and wine producers, in
South Africa, and of the wool growers of Australia, has been
due to the labour of slaves, red, black, or white. Even those
colonies of America which repudiated slavery, have had their
kidnapped " indentured labourers," their " redemptioners,"
and " free niggers," whom, to the number of 400,000, and
down to the present day, they compel to work for hire by
virtually forbidding them to cultivate land on their own ac-
count—not to mention that, economically speaking, the Uni-
ted States, are to be viewed as one community ; that the
great market of the north for the sale of flour, pork, and salt
fish, is the slave states of the south ; that nearly the whole
foreign commerce of the United States depends on the vast
exchangeable produce raised in the south by the labour of
slaves ; and that if those slaves were set free to occupy and
cultivate land on their own account, the grass would soon
grow in the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.
How slavery in some form has been of advantage in modern
colonies, is only a question of degree as respects different
places. In those places where slavery in every form has
been shunned, the deficiency of population in proportion to
land is yet more obvious. And now that slavery has been
abolished throughout the British colonial possesions; that
strenuous efforts are made to rid the United States of the
moral curse of slavery ; that the colonies of Australasia are
deprived of their convict slaves ; that the universal abolition
of compulsory labour is demanded by a great preponderance
of opinion in the civilised parts of the earth, so that those
colonies which yet cultivate slavery tremble for their property
in man—now, indeed, that deficiency of population, which is
the characteristic feature of modern colonies, has come to
from a subject of the deepest practical importance to the
whole colonial world.

Our especial concern is with the colonies of Britain, on
whose prosperity her own is essentially dependent. Where,
then, let us ask, in the whole colonial empire of Britain, is
there a sufficiency of people to insure the greatest produc-
tiveness of industry, or even, now that all sorts of slavery are
everywhere abolished, to prevent such a condition of society
as Lord Durham says that he beheld in the wilds of Canada?
Which is the British colony that does not call aloud for more
labour, more people—for a larger share than it has yet ob-
tained of the redundant population of other countries? These
questions lead at once to the important and interesting sub-
ject of Mr. Elliot's report.
A state paper on the subject of emigration would ill deserve
the name if it did not embrace a great variety of topics ; and
the reader will understand that the " agent-general for emi-
gration," when writing for the information of parliament and
the public, was bound to produce an elaborate and somewhat
voluminous work. The whole subject on which it was his
duty to furnish information may be divided into a number of

* Report, parl. paper, p. 75.

distinct parts. Some of these we shall now enumerate.
The British colonies in which the want of immigration is
most felt, are the West Indies both insular and continental,
especially the continental settlements and larger islands,
where population is most deficient in proportion to land.—
The inquirer will therefore e.93ect to find in the agent-ge-
neral's report, a full and particular account of the measures
which have been recently adopted or suggested, with a view
to increasing the population of the West Indies by means of
immigration. The motives and results of an attempt by
some of the planters to set on foot a system of immigration
from Malta and the south of Europe, forms a very interesting
topic. Then there is the vote of £400,000 by one of the set-
tlements of British Guiana, for defraying the cost of an immi-
gration of labourers, and the disallowance by the Colonial-
office of the ordinance of the Court of Policy for that purpose,
including a description of the circumstances which led the
colonists to adopt that measure, and the Colonial-office to
render it null and void. Mr. Burnley's and Sir Edward
Cust's plans for inducing free negroes inhabiting the United
States to settle in the West Indies, deserved attentive con-
sideration. The possibility of establishing a system of free
emigration from America to the West Indies, under the sole
management of the imperial government, so as absolutely to
prevent frauds having any tendency towards a revival of the
slave trade, though the colonies would defray the whole cost
of the operation, is a suggestion which merited ample notice
in Mr. Elliot's report. Nor would any one think the report
had been overloaded with matter on finding it to contain a
plan for securing the services of immigrants to the West
Indies as labourers for hire, by means of enhancing the price
of land throughout these colonies. Without some measure
of that kind, it would be idle to introduce labourers into the
West Indies, because if land remained as cheap, as easy of
acquisition as it is at present, the immigrants would not la-
bour for hire, but would occupy and cultivate land, each fa-
mily by itself and on its own account ; and the means of
surplus production for external commerce would be in no
way augmented. There is a valuable paper on this subject
extant in the Colonial-office ; it bears Laid Glenelg's signa-
ture, was produced before the House of Commons committee
on colonial lands in 1836, and seems to have been made for
Mr. Elliot's use while descanting on the economical condition
of the West Indies. It will be presumed that he has made
a good use of it—but we must proceed to other matter.

IMPORTANT IMPORMATION FOR THE SHARE-
HOLDERS OF THE SOUTHAMPTON DOCK
COMPANY.

(Second Sitting at Nisi Prius, at Guildhall, before 211 r,
Justice Erskine, and a Special Jury.)
_ THE SOUTHAMPTON DOCK COMPANY V. RICHARDS.

Mr. KELLY (with whom was Mr. Dasent) stated that this
was an action in which he represented the interests of a body
of gentlemen associated under an adt of parliament, passed in
the late reign, for the purpose of forming extensive docks at
Southampton, a situation most admirably adapted to that
purpose, whether the interests of the trading community of
London, or those persons more immediately connected with
the town and country of Southampton, were taken into con-
sideration. The idea of establishing these docks, as was but
most reasonable, had been suggested by the passing of the
act for the formation of the Southampton Railway, for by the
establishment of proper docks at that place, in immediate
connexion with the railway, it was manifest that great ad-
vantages would accrue to the shipping and trading interests
of this country. Under these prospects the directors com-
menced their works, and in order to carry them on, it was
evident that those who had become proprietors of shares
should promptly pay up the calls upon those shares. It was
now more so than ever) for as the railway would be Completed
in the course of next year, the directors of the dock com-
pany were most anxious, in the discharge of the high duties
reposed in them by the great majority of the shareholders, to
push the progress, of their own works towards the;:. comple-
tion with the utmost celerity. By all who knew tin! situation
of Southampton and had lately visited that place, it would
be remembered that the terminus of the railway was within
a few yards of the proposed entrance to these docks, so that
the greatest facilities would. be afforded not only for the em-
barkation and landing of passengers, but also for the ready
and immediate transfer of goods for the purpose of being
taken up to London or vice versa, by the railway, thus avoid-
ing in the latter case the necessity of beating up or down the
channel, which Was admitted by all seafaring men to be by
far the most dangerous portion of the voyage to or from what-
ever part of the globe south of England the vessels might
be bound. These advantages were more expressly held out
to the American trade by the formation of these docks, and
therefore it became the duty, as it was the interest, of the
directors to finish these docks at the very earliest opportu-
nity. The defendant, however, bad opposed himself in every
possible way to the wishes of his brother proprietors; and
though there were now, 'and had been for some time past,
300 men at work night and day in this arduous undertaking,
he had up to the present time resisted the payment of the
first call of £2 10s. per share, which had been made so far
back as July, 1837. By this course the efforts of the directors
would be completely paralyzed unless an end was put to it
speedily ; and as the defendant still persisted in his opposi-
tion, the present action was actually forced on the directors
in order that he should be compelled to pay that which was
legally and honestly due from him. In order to prove this
case there would be very little difficulty indeed, for the act
under which the company was incorporated had prescribed a
very succinct and clear course of proceeding in such matters.
All that was necessary to prove, in the first place, was that
the defendant was proprietor of the shares in question,
amounting to forty, which would be done by the production
of the company's book ; secondly, it would be proved that
the call in question had been duly made ; and thirdly that
the proper notices thereof had been given, as required by the
act, in two London papers, and one " usually circulated in
Southampton." These were the three points which it was
incumbent on the plaintiffs to make out, and if that should
be done, then, under the direction of the learned judge, they
(the jury) would find for the amount sought to be recovered,
which wag £lOO on the call, and interest thereon at 5 per
cent. Under the plea of " never indebted" the defendant
could not possibly have any valid defence to this action ; and
though he was represented by a very learned and eloquent
gentleman, it was, in fact, an undefended action. Under these
circumstances it might bi a matter of surprise that the cause
should be tried by a special" jury at this unusual time ;.that
singularity, however, was easily explained, for the defendant
had himself applied to have the cause tried by a special jury,
which being opposed by the plaintiffs as involving delay, was
only granted by the learned judge before whom the applica-
tion was heard, on the condition that the trial should not be
postponed beyond this day.
William Bolger was then called, who stated that he was
the clerk of the company, and produced the documents allu-
ded to by the learned gentleman.
Mr. Serjeant TALFOURD, for the defendant, however,
closely cross-examined the witness, with the view of showing
that the forms and requisites of the act had not been com-
plied with, and objected to the admission of all three instru-
ments as each was proposed to be read • but
The Learned JUDGE having overruled each and every ob-
jection, the documents in question were read, and the case
for the plaintiffs was closed.
Mr. Serjeant TALEOURD then said, that under the present
state of the pleadings, he did not feel himself at liberty to
contest the case any longer. It was competent certainly to
him to address to the Jury such observations as he might
deem proper ; but, as he was not in a condition to follow
them up by any evidence, he thought that his proper course
would be not to occupy the time of the jury any longer. At
the same time he wished to understand from the learned
judge whether he would reserve to him leave to move the
court upon the objections taken by him to the admissibility
of the proof adduced by the plaintiffs, or whether he (the
learned judge) entertained so decided a view of them as to
induce him toerefuse such leave.

.....
Mr. Justice brisKINE : I certainly shall not give you leave
to move, for I feel so confident on the point that it would be
idle to do so. I admit that the most confident men are some-
times mistaken, but I entertain so very clear a view of the
matter, that 1 cannot allow you to think I have any doubts
on the subject, by reserving you leave to move.
Mr. Serjeant TALFOURD: Very well, my lord. I can only
say, further, that I hope my learned friend's brilliant state-
ment in his opening may be realized.
Mr. KELLY : I have no doubt of it.
Mr. Justice ERSKINL then shortly addressed the jury on
the nature of the case, telling them that, from the state in
which the pleadings left the cause, there could be but one
result—namely, that the verdict must be for the plaintiffs.
They bad heard all the requisites of the act complied with
under which the company was incorporated, and they were
entitled to recover the amount of the call.
The jury, accordingly: under the direction of the learned
judge, found for the plaintiffs a verdict of £lOO, the amount
of the call of July 180837, on the forty shares held by the
defendant, together with interest thereon, making, in all, a
verdict of £lll 10s.