The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-10 00:00:00

slaves they capture for adjudication to our own Colonies.
We have been the laughing-stock of the nations who are still
carrying on the slave trade, or doing otherwise. •Of all the
governments who have avowed loudly their desire to put
down the traffic in slaves, we alone have set to work in
honesty and good faith to carry out the principle. We have
captured thousands, and have in almost every case carried
them tbr adjudication to the colonies of other powers. I
sat- about four thousand of these poor people located at
Surinam, where they had, it is true, dwellings provided for
them ; but some very decided means would have been taken
to turn them to some profitable account, but for the presence
of the British Commissary Judge there, Mr. Samo, whose
vigilance and activity in more than one instance resisted the
attempt. Thousands have been carried into Cuba; which
colony, as well as the Spanish island of Porto Rico, are pros-
pering beyond all example or comparison with our own, from
the capital which is flowing there from Britain as well as
America, in consequence of the ample supply of labourers
with which various causes have combined to stock those
islands. In truth, it will be one of the consequences of any
indifference evinced by our rulers to supply an ample remu-
nerating population for the rich and luxuriant lands of our
Colonies, that British capital will go to enrich those of other
states, where a certain and large return awaits them ; whilst
.they mad• calculate, and perhaps not without.reason, that the
wants of Britain will shortly oblige her to seek for Colonial
produce from the very slave-labour which we have lavished
so.much treasure to put down. lam told that, notwithstand-
ing all the exertions of our navy, there are so many chances
in favour of a slaver evading a cruiser, and escaping from
them in a chase, or through the chicanery of the law, that
thousands of slaves continue to be imported year by year into
the Spanish colonies. I just missed seeing a large lot ex-
posed for sale in Porto Rico, but that the stock was exhausted,
and the spring importations had not yet arrived. If Britain
cannot evince the requisite vigour to stop the evils of the
slave trade for its own sake, and will not be-induced to any
exertion out of sympathy to the West Indian planter, she
must be roused to employ her thunders when the present
transition state of our Colonies has passed over, and the level
to which they have been ieduced has become apparent to the
meanest capacity.
SUPPLY OF LABOUR FOR AFRICA.

To talk of having recourse to any supply, under any form,
from the continent of Africa, will, I suppose, be deemed such
a heresy with the abolitionists, that they will think that no
-one but a Colonist lost to all sense of humanity could have
dared to recommend it. lam so convinced, however, that
it constitutes the only practical expedient for repairing the
gap in the resources of labour under the new system, that I
have only to implore them to divest their minds of prejudices
engendered by exaggerated ideas of a bygone condition of
slavery that can never again exist in our •colonies. Their
characteristic benevolence should not make them unjust,
even to the West Indian interest. As the mighty conquerors
of slavery, they have now full leisure, after the accomplish-
ment of their victory, to do it justice. For many years they
have viewed no side of the question but to condemn it.
Without denying its evils to their full extent, it has yet its
bright side •—it has been made, under Providence, the rugged
nurse to bring a savage and bloody race of barbarians within
the pale of civilisation, and in a few short years children of
African descent may be in a position, by the very instrumen-
tality of the institution of slavery, to carry hack to the land
of .their fathers that civilisation from which it has pleased
,God to estrange and alienate the inhabit: ts of that vast con-
tinent for so many ages. A cheerful, orderly, and Christian
people of African race are springing up in the British West
Indian Colonies : this is one of the results of slavery, but it
not used as an argument for its continuance, but in proof
that the assertions which have been hazarded in the heat of
the discussions against the system are triumphantly disproved
by. the present condition of the emancipated slaves. The
planters of the West Indies have been freely saddled with all
the vices of the system; and all that eloquence, poetry, and
satire could direct against slavery in the abstract,
has been poured upon the head of the devoted master,
as if he was a man altogether different from his fellow-sub-
jects, with an iron heart and a heavy hand, sworn to
the destruction of the slave he had purchased, both in body
and soul. The only alleviation to the slave's condition, which
those who cried down the master's authority could them-
selves introduce, was directed, through his influence, by
means of laws arbitrarily imposing upon him obligations and
expenses that in many cases were a mere idle demand upon
his purse, without any corresponding benefit to' the slaves.
The abolitionists cannot lay claim to have done one single
act of their own beyond persuasion and advice, either for the
religious, mental, or social amendment of the negro popula-
tion. The State has not expended one shilling in the cause ;
yet here we rind a people exposed to a test which has tried
the most civilised people of Europe—a sudden disruption of
old ties, old habits, • old duties ; and yet this people; re-
presented to have been so abominably treated by their
owners, have not been guilty (scarcely in a single instance)
of any act even of unkindness against those who have been
represented as their old oppressors. They continue to live
in the most friendly intercourse; and if they do not work
for. him, it is not from any old animosity or ill will, but be-
cause they have no inducement to work for anybody. At
whose cost, but in a very principal degree at that of the
planters, do we find the churches that adorn the landscape,
and the schools that we pass on the high Way ? Who has
reared those snug dwellings, in many of which you will find
a neat and clean bed, with many little comforts that could
never have belonged to that degraded condition which reams
of printed paper have represented to the people of England
to be that of the Creole race ? Let the truth be permitted to
be told, now at least that the object sought for has been ob-
tained. The planters, like British brothers, have had every
desire, and have been sedulously active, to advance the negro
condition as rapidly as the time permitted them, and it is
not just to suppose them indifferent to the welfare of a
people whom it has been their direct interest to benefit and
ameliorate. If one would do justice to the British planter,
go and visit the colonies of other European nations, and
make a fair comparison between them.

HOW IS THE CULTIVATION OF OUR COLONIAL LANDS TO

DE MAINTAINED