The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-08-10 00:00:00

A CONVERSION FROM FREE TRADE

SIX YEARS AGO the Whig government of Lord
JOHN RUSSELL inflicted the crowning blow upon
our West Indian colonies, by admitting the slave-
grown Sugar of foreign countries into free compe-
tition in our markets with the produce of free labour.
We then openly declared to the world that our
professions of sympathy with the oppressed negro
race had been all along a sham. Our philanthropy
was not of that stern kind which would bear up
against the imposition of a penny extra upon a
pound of sugar or of treacle; and the once voluble
spouters in conventicles, who had pictured the
unhappy black as exclaiming, "Am I not a man
and a brother ?" discovered that they could swallow
the foreign commodity, though raised beneath the
lash of the Cuban and Brazilian driver. The
London. Times was amongst the foremost to de-
nounce protection to the West Indian body, denuded
though they had been of their labour by the hypo-
critical pretences of the British public ; and that
organ has at length had to confess that the experi-
ment thus tried has been ruinous to the West

Indian sugar planter, and to the negro himself,
the object of our sympathising care.
In his publication of Wednesday last, speaking
of the condition of Jamaica, our contemporary
says :

" The average produce of sugar from the island for the
five years ending 1843 was 42,453 hogsheads, and the value
£1,213,214 ; the average produce for the five years ending
1851 was 41,678 hogsheads, with a value only of £808,238,
showing an inconsiderable diminution in supply, but a
most material reduction in price. In fact, whereas the
hogs`r.ead of sugar for the 20 years previous to 1843
usually realised £2O, its yield since 1846 has descended to
£l3, exhibiting a depreciation of more than one-third.
Nor is the other side of the sheet less remarkable, for the
substitution of paid work for slave labonr, especially under
the influence of a legislation determined wholly by the
presumed interests of the labourer to the prejudice of his
employer, has naturally augmented the costs of produc-
tion, so that when, as appears in a recent " Statement of
Facts relative to the Island of Jamaica," we find it de-
declared that sugar has been lately exported at a positive
loss, there seems nothing absolutely incredible in the
assertion. The truth is, that the question, always suffi-
ciently complicated, has been now embarrassed by the
introduction of a new element. Beet-root sugar, under
the stimulus of protective duties, is in such compulsory
demand on the continent that foreign sugars are almost
superseded. The amount, therefore, of this commodity
heretofore absorbed by European markets is thrown into
the English ports, and, added to the imports from our
eastern possessions, is producing extraordinary lowness of
prices. At these prices it is said to be very questionable
whether any cultivator can realise a profit, and it is
argued, from obvious reasons, that in this race of insol-
vency the slaveowner, with a capital already sunk, will
outlast the free producer, and eventually secure for him-
self that very monopoly of the British markets which
our own colonists were made to surrender. Thus much
for the prospective fate, not only of the West Indian
planter, but the home consumer."

Thus above £400,000 per annum the proprietors of
Jamaica alone have surrendered, to appease the
clamour of the Free-trade party for cheap sugar.
And the result to the poor negro has been equally
disastrous. We were told that the British sugar
colonies were to be the paradise of the race. Civili-
zation and Christianity were from them to be at
length introduced into Africa itself, and the great
problem to be thus solved which has perplexed the
humane amongst mankind for ages past. Upon
this feature of the subject the Times candidly
admits its disappointment :

" From all the information which reaches us, no less
than from the visible probabilities of the case, we are
constrained to believe that these hopes have been falsified.
The negro has not acquired with his freedom any habits
of industry or morality. His independence is little better
than that of an uncaptured brute. Having accepted few
of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of
its necessities ; and the wants of his nature are so easily
satisfied, that at the current rate of wages he is called
upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. The
blacks, therefore, instead of becoming intelligent hus-
bandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it i 3
now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in
the island will come the failure of its resources for
instructing or controlling its population. So imminent
does this consummation appear, that memorials have
been signed by classes of colonial society hitherto stand-
ing aloof from politics, and not only the bench and the
bar, but the bishop, clergy, and ministers of all denomi-
nations in the island, without exception, have recorded
their convictions that, in the absence of timely relief, the
religious and educational institutions of the island must
be abandoned, and the masses of the population retro-
grade to barbarism."

What will be the course taken by the Times, in the
event of its being proposed to adopt a protective
policy towards our sugar colonies, we shall not
attempt to prophecy. Were our contemporary
consistent, his powerful advocacy ought to be
enlisted on the side of protection to the produce of
free labour in those colonies.

ACCIDENT IN REGENT-ROAD, YESTERDAY.—Yester-
day a man named Hamilton, who was a hair-dresser in
Waterloo-road, was run over by a cart. He was removed
to the Northern Hospital, but died soon after. The de-
ceased was said to be intoxicated at the time of the acci-
dent.

SELF-ADHERING TEETH.—The principle of self-adhe-
sion practised by Messrs. Cooper and Co., of this town,
whose advertisement appears in our columns this day,
will remove one of the greatest objections felt by the
public to artificial teeth, namely,—the effect of the ordi-
nary metallic plate upon the voice and palate. The
operation of fixing them is also painless.
SCOTTISH NATIONAL FETE.—This grand national fete
was held on Thursday in Lord Holland's park, and the
weather was on the present occasion moet propitious. The
stands were well filled, and the assemblage of company,
including the vast numbers of time who had taken
tickets to view the entertainment outside the barrier,
must have amounted to :even or eight thousand persons.