The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-10-18 00:00:00

Vottrp.

THE WOODLAND.

BY THE LATE ROBERT NICOLL.

(From Tait's Magazine)
The Woodland wild!—wilt thou go with me
Where the squirrel is perched on his oaken tree—
Where the yellow fern doth wave its head—
Where the hand of night the dew hath laid—
And the winds, that wander to and fro,
Kiss the brown leaflets as they go—
Where the morning sun peeps in so mild
To the dark green nooks of the woodland wild?
The woodland wild !—where the dun deer roam,
And the song-birds build them a happy home—
Where the grass is green, and the turf, so sweet,
Seems shorn by the tread of fairy feet—
Where the daylight comes, so richly dim,
And the cushat's coo seems a hermit's hymn,
The care-worn heart might be self-beguiled
To forget its woes in the woodland wild!
The woodland wild !—where the hazels grow,
Where the ladye-broom doth its branches throw—
Where the god-built sky is in patches seen
Through the roof of leaves. There aye hath been
The home of those wild and fairy flowers
That gladden all Nature's life and our's.
As they bloom by the stream—that prattling child—
That wanders along through the woodland wild !
The woodland wild !—if thy heart be pure,
If thy faith in the right be firm and sure,
Go wander the woodland paths within,
And the love of nature woo and win ;
- Drink of the cup of beauty there,
Where the breath of Omnipotence scents the air;
For the Father of beauty in love hath smiled
On the sweet green bowers of the woodland wild !
The woodland wild !—long, long ago
I have buried myself its leaves below,
And dreamed of its beauteous tenants all—
'Tis the linnet's home and the fairies' hall !
'Tis the spot where the wondrous monk of old
- His hermitage reared in the pleasant wold ;
. By its door a cry#tal springlet boiled
For the pilgrim to drink in the woodland wild!
The woodland wild !—what pleasant stories
Make sunlight over its olden glories—
Of Robin Hood, and his bowmen bold—
The raids they made, and the tales they told.
In winter, in spring, and in summer time,
The glorious forests are aye in prime ;
For glad thoughts for ever are round them piled,
Ttiose grassy glades in the woodland wild !
The woodland wild !—make haste—make haste
Away with me and its gladness taste ;
We will wander beside each gashing stream
Where flowers in the water reflected gleam ;
We will follow its paths, and pluck its flowers
And lie on its grass in the evening hours,
Till the dying sunlight, soft and mild,
Warns us away from the woodland wild ;

STATE OF BRITISH GUIANA.

(From the Guiana Chronicle, of Sept. 2.)

PerhapS there never was a closer coincidence of sentiment
among intelligent men, generally holding different political
views, than is now observable in this Colony, on the subject
of its condition and prospects. It is not pretended that there
is any violence on the part of the peasantry, or, indeed, that
they are more wicked than other human beings would be, si-
milarly circumstanced. Having no want unsupplied, no il-
legal or harsh restraint placed upon them, it would be strange
that they should exhibit insubordination, or very glaring
symptoms of discontent. What all persons capable of form-
ing an opinion agree upon, is this, that the cultivation of the
country has been going back, with awful celerity, since the
Ist of August, last year, and, if a vast addition be not made,
without delay, to our labouring population, must, at no dis-
tant era, be entirely given up.
• Our crop, as the official returns show, has diminished and
is diminishing, with the regularity of a geometrical series.
Every fraction, periodically announced, must be divided
again, by another fraction, to find the result for the succeed-
ing period. Ten thousand five hundred and thirty three
Arigsheads, measured the decrease on the first six months of
1839 as compared with the first six of 1838, on one article,—
sigar alone. Twenty thousand hogsheads of sugar will not
nearly cover the decrease on this whole year, as compared
with only ordinary years nnder the coercive system. And
that it will amount to much more, in 1840, is clear to every
one who knows how desperately our planters have wrought to
take their ripe canes off and turn them into sugar, neglecting
the processes necessary fdr future cultivation. It was lamen-
table to see the first-rate ships in the river, waiting for five
or six months, for cargoes of produce, and then taking away
sand. Our mercantile navy has dwindled down to a miserable
show of idle, light, vessels. Nor shall we be less surprised,
than gratified to ascertain, that the present panic among the
merchants of Water-street is owing entirely to the shutting
op of the dollars in the office of the receiver-general, for the
redemption of the joe notes, and not partially to a social dis-
order, more deeply seated, and more difficult to cure. From
the retention in the colony, as wages of the money that used
to
,enrich the absentee, they who supply, for colonial con-
sumPtion, the comforts and luxuries of life, will enjoy for a
while segaudy sort of prosperity. But it is as deceptive as
it is gaudy : for the blast that overthrows the planter, will
not long spare the merchant and the artizan.
It is not that there is a strike among the labourers, a secret
combination, an open determination not to work. That
might be overcome. The plan of our peasantry, who,
although we acquit them of the charge of collusion, are
astonishingly unanimous in their mode of procedure, is, to
perform just so much labour, that the planter cannot ab-
ruptly dispense with their services, but so little, that all his
operations are retarded and disturbed. A rustic goes to a
proprietor and finds employment at once, being not even
asked for a certificate of character. For a day or two, per-
for a week, he works tolerably well : he receives money,
aad it allowed the use of a house ; and the very acquisitions
whirls were designed as an encouragement to industry, hold
omit a lard to indolence. It is very easy to blame the planter
for not turning him off at once, or making him pay hard-
money rent for his cottage. The thing can never be ac-
complished but by unanimity : and how shall any set of pro-
prietors be unanimous, each of whom is himself in so des-
*Tee a condition, that his outlay for labour is limited only
by the length of his purse, and, i►► the case of those who have
to do With the mortgagee and money-lender, is irrespective
even of that ?
Among all our negro peasants, there is a strong disinclina-
tion to field labour. It is to be mastered in no other way
than by operating upon their necessities, appetites, or pas-
slims. As to endeavouring to reason them or preach them
into the culture of the cane and cotton pieces, that is com-
pletely out of the question. Not one of them will adhere to
the tillage of the soil, one moment after he thinks he can do
better. The most sober of them are field labourers only until
they can purchase, with their easily-earned money, from some
proptietor abandoning his estate, a cottage and a provision
ground of their own, which shall render them thenceforth,
quite independent of both cotton and sugar.
For thirty miles or more along the coast to the eastward of
the Demerara River, the road, in former times, lay between
rich cotton-pieces, that flourished both towards the sea-
shore, and towards the interior. The road is still there, but
it now runs through a country little better than a desert.
The cotton-pieces are given up to nature, and the regular
inequalities of the banks of courida and black sedge are all
that remain to show where the hand of man was. But that
desert is being fast peopled. Cottages are rising with extra-
ordinary rapidity and frequency, built by retired agricultural
labourers, who, in twelve months, have amassed enough of
money to become, actually, proprietors or tenants of patches
of ground, on which they support themselves, and as many
more as they choose to admit into their society. Time, in-
stead of diminishing an evil like this, is continually aggra-
vating it. Yet it cannot be disputed, that the present good
prices of the staples at home, now compensate the planter, in
some degree, for the smallness of his manufacture. If things
go-on upon the existing• system, the mother country, for a
year or trio, will suffer in a heavier ratio than her colonies.
Brat great and well-founded alarms prevail, lest the protective
system be suddenly exploded, and foreign sugars introduced
on the same terms as those of the British settlements.

The deficiencies of the national revenue, great as they are,
and likely to increase, and the demands of the English people,
seem to justify a fear that the burden of the loss caused by
the emancipation, will be shifted from England to the West
Wins: that England must have, and will have, cheap sugar,
dough her colonies should be ruined. Already have the
clamours of the radical press, respecting foreign slave sugar,
and of the philanthropical press, respecting foreign free, and
the unaccountable silence of the conservative organs, diffused
general apprehension among our proprietary body. It must
be recollected, that it is not want of money-capital, that is
the caner of the present crisis. A man might come out with
the most copious supplies of money, yet he would, in the
present state of things, find little or nothing, of an agricultu-
ral kind, on which to employ it with profit. Hardly higher
wages can be afforded than what are now current. Now, we
cannot conceal from ourselves, that there are parts of the
world, in which, on account of the excess of population,
capital may at once be employed by our rivals to the best ad-
vantage. Therefore, we encounter a double risk : that of
being ruined by the frauds of the slave-holder, and that of
suffering from the new impetus given to free labour, elsewhere.
If the current of commercial prosperity set in towards the
East, it will be a very hard matter to bring it back into its
old channel. But it is idle to suppose, even for argument's
sake, that if foreign free sugars be admitted openly, the door
trillnet be thrown open to the clandestine admission of the
product of slave labour.
A clarions proof of the strong sense entertained by every
one_tey the imminence of the danger by which we are beset,
itifOrded by the readiness of all, to bury old differences,
rltllj AIWA In a common effort at self-preservation. The
itertitOt who is not to be blamed for the arrival of the crisis,
Ina who? oOrtainly, ought to have seen its sure approach
sooner, is willing to do what he can. Planters and merchants
lOU in expressing a conviction, that they must do some-
.. Wog. A public meeting, and a memorial, are still talked of,
atal we only want one or two active men to set them on foot.
414 It. has become a struggle for existence, all party feeling is
bud Aside. Them* arnmaterials for one f the strongest and
most affecting repreenstations to the home government and
the British people, tharan unhappy country laid before those
who could save it from destruction.
Lord Normanby's sentiments regarding the introduction
of Emigrants from the East, are generally known. but the
conjuncture is too urgent, to be satisfied by the opinion of a
ars?gle minister. Immigration may be conducted on a good
pnnciple, so as to benefit, incalculably, the two extremities
ofthe British Empire, giving the one that which it so much
wants, and which the other can so well spare it. In the
name of justice, and humane and wise policy : for the sake
of consistency and honour : on behalf of her expatriated sons,
the fruits of whose long toil are about to be wrested from
their grasp, of her merchants and her seamen, once the guar-
dians of her power and glory, of her artizans, who need a
large market for their wares, not dependent on the precarious
tenure of foreign caprice, of her negro subjects, about to lose
the blessings extorted for them by the wise and the good, let
mother-country be implored to rescue her West Indian pos-
sessions, from the peril which stares them on all sides. No-
thing but immigration can save us, immediate and to a vast
extent. We will enter into every solemn engagement, con-
sent to every stringent precaution, that humanity can sug-
gest : and we will support any machinery, however cumber-
some, that you may think necessary for the protection of the
stranger. If, then, England, with this opportunity of great-
ness and benevolence before her, neglect to avail herself of
it, she will deserve to perish ignominiously amid the curses
of her children, and to be remembered with the execrations
of the whole human family as a nation that was wilful, not
humane, and that struck her own light fetters from the limbs
of some thousands of slaves, that the avaricious and cruel
foreigner might torture the bones and sinews of many mil-
lions. These are no visionary speculations. Only a year of
of freedom has elapsed, and they are being realized, every
where, already, in Surinam, in Cayenne, in Martinique, in
Guadeloupe and Cuba, in Manilla and Brazil, in every place
in which row the staples, beginning to be neglected over tat
portion of the trophical West, which is sub' Great
Britain. ject to

The Earl and Countess of Wilton embarked on board their
yacht on Thursday last, at Devonport, and sailed the same
day for Lisbon, where it is the noble lord's intention to pass
a few days, and then to sail for Gibralter, and from thence
go to Naples, and then return, by Cadiz, to the French coast,
when they land, and go to Paris for the winter,