The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-11-16 00:00:00

£5B 16 6
91 0 4

no concession injurious to the interests of the
British consumer. It was for a clear stage and no
favour that we interceded. The parliament of
Great Britain, in deference to the feeling of horror
—real or affected—which was professed by a large
mass of the people towards the existence of slavery
in these colonies, thought proper to emancipate the
negro labourers by whom the cultivation of the
sugar cane and of other tropical products was
carried on. The planter was told that, with free-
men as his labourers, he would be enabled to com-
pete successfully with the slave states of the world;
that free labour would be found the cheapest
labour; and that, as the result of its adoption in
our colonies, the slave would cease to be dragged
from his home or to be held in bondage. But the
men who uttered these predictions were theorists,
taking the negro character from the representations
of interested men, or flippant tourists, or from a still
worse authority—the mendacious statements of
such authorities as the Anti-Slavery Reporter. The
experienced planter knew better. He was aware of
the natural indolence of the negro ; that, left to
himself, he would perform the minimum quantity-
of work required to enable him to purchase cloth-
ing and implements, a few weeks in the year suf-
ficing to enable him to raise food in that prolific
clime. The correctness of these conclusions was
soon apparent. Field labourers were speedily not
to be procured, the emancipated negro only work-
ing when he pleased and for what wages he pleased.
The canes grew, and ripened; but the planter was
condemned to see them rotting in the ground, for
want of the hands to reap them, which he could
not procure. In this emergency he implored of the
home government, since he was to restrict himself
to free labour, to enable him to secure the neces-
sary supply, by encouraging voluntary immigration
of the African race from their own continent to
share in the blessings of that freedom and civilisa-
tion which theorists and the exclusively humane
boasted that they had ensured for the population of
this black paradise.
How was this reasonable prayer answered ? By
an outcry from every quarter of the empire in which
a coterie of sentimentalists, or a platform orator,
with the necessary quantity of tears and simulated
groans for the fate of " the unhappy negro race,"
could be found. The project was regarded as an
attempt to restore the system of slavery by a side
wind ;as a kind of legitimatized slave trade. Visi-
ons of crimps, of horrid slave-captains, and of de-
coys were held up before the eyes of the tender-
hearted public. Missionaries and the agents of the
anti-'West Indian interests in those colonies wrote
home doleful predictions to congenial parties in the
mother country; and meddling whig magistrates—
the perpetual blisters With which the government
of the day had saddled the unfortunate planters, as
an acompaniment to the emancipation act—de-
nounced the measure as an encroachment upon the
right of the free negro to work when he pleased,
and to set his own price upon his work. The re-
sult was a resolute denial of the boon sought.
A succeeding administration opened its eyes
partially to the justice of the planter's claim, and to
the ruinous effect which was being produced upon
the former prosperity of the colonies by the scarcity
of labour existing. A half and-half measure was
devised, accompanied by checks and counter checks,
which rendered it almost totally unavailable to the
planter. A dribbling immigration was directed to
the colonies, of captured and liberated slaves, dis-
solute Kroomen from Sierra Leone, and Coolies
from East India, not a tenth part sufficient to sup-
ply the places of the negroes yearly withdrawing
from field labour to become squatters in the bush.
Side by side with this insufficient concession came
measures directed against the unfortunate pro-
prietors, already pressed to the earth with accumu-
lated expences of cultivation and local imposts.
The West India planter we were told then, as we
have lately been told, was a gouty ill-conditioned
old gentleman, grumbling in his counting-house
in the city over his decreasing income, whilst he
allows the bulk of the produce of his plantations
to he eat up with interest of mortgages, and dis-
honest overseers. He must be driven to reside
upon his property; to superintend personally his
manufacture ; to adopt new and improved modes
of cultivation : in short, to resort to those curative
efforts for the removal of existing evils, which no-
body seems to be so familiar with, and so feeble in
suggesting, as your politico-economical doctors—
ycur philosophers who can talk and write learnedly
upon every subject and matter under the sun, and
are perfectly familiar with everybody's business.
The sovereign remedy proposed was a little stimu-
lating competition ; and straightway the home
legislature invited the already half ruined West
Indians, in the language of the memorandum of
the acting committee of planters and proprietors,
to "compete with possessions of the East India
Company, enjoying the advantage of the cheapest
free labour in the world, their trade with foreign
nations being at the same time free from the re-
strictions imposed on the West India colonies."
After a few years of this unprofitable struggle they
were called upon further to compete with "every
country having the semblance of freedom, while
they were themselves prohibited from endeavouring
to procure an accession of suitable labourers;" and
at length the distinction between free labour and
slave labour is swept away altogether. The simu-
lated humanity and virtue of the nation have taken
flight; and we find that saints as well as sinners
can lick their lips after muscovado or molasses,
whether it has been produced by free British
subjects, or by slaves toiling beneath the lash of
the Cuban or Brazilian driver. We are at the climax
of our grand experiment ; and after all we find
ourselves only in possession, as the result of all the
sacrifices which we have made, of ruined colonies,
a free negro population relapsing into barbarism,
and the accursed traffic in human flesh carried on
with an increased vigour in every country, from
which we have made, and are incurring, such costly
sacrifices of life and treasure to drive it away.
At the last hour, and only when the British Go-
vernment is called upon to contemplate the prospect
of the abandonment of these noble colonies, the
prayer, which the planters of the West Indies have
been urging for the last ten years, is about to be
granted. It has been discovered at last, by the
employment of a Government steamer to cruise
along the shores of Africa upon which the slave
trade is not carried on, that immigration from that
country is only checked by the want of the means
of transit, and by the absurd restrictions which our
ill-timed philanthropy has imposed. A hardy race
of labourers is to be found on the Kroo Coast, fit-
ted for the climate of our colonies, and anxious to
exchange their present lot of semi-barbarism for
the civilized condition of the free labourerfof the
British West Indies; and the Colonial office has
issued permission to the proprietors of freight ships
for the purpose of transporting those labourers to
our colonial possessions. We hope that the con-
cession thus made does not come too late. We
much fear that it has; and trust that the legisla-
ture, now that the demands of our Colonists are
recognized as having been just, will take such steps
as will encourage and enable them to accept the
tardy boon granted. It must take some time to
enable the planters to secure the quantity of addi-
tional labour required ; and, in the mean time, it
must be borne in mind that their industry and en-
terprise are unremunerating. The Colonist has not
brought himself into this position by his own act.
His fate has been cruelly forced upon him ; and it
would be only wise and righteous in the legislature
of a great nation to extend towards those, whom
they have oppressed and ruined, a measure of fair
protection, until the means used to bring back
their forfeited prosperity have had time to produce
their anticipated fruits.

Mr. Alderman James Lawrence, the respected
chairman of the Markets Committee, has been of
late made the subject of several scurrilous articles
in the columns of a contemporary of Saturday.
The man who, like Mr. Lawrence, discharges the
duties reposed in him by the public, with the sole
view to the public welfare, is almost certain to in-
cur the displeasure of clamourous officials, men
who look only with a favourable eye on those mem-
bers of the Council who promise to increase their
emoluments. Mr. Lawrence is none of these, and
hence the splenetic effusions alluded to. Mr. Law-
rence has earned for himself, amongst men of all
parties, the character of one of the ablest, most im-
partial, and by far the most zealous and indefatig-
able member, not only of the Markets Committee,
but of the Watch Committee. The public suffered
a severe loss when his invaluable services were
withdrawn from the latter committee.

The selection made of four gentlemen from the
Council Chamber for the office of Alderman has
created vacancies in four of the wards—viz., Great
G Gorge, Podncy-street, Abercromby, and Cadlc-

street, the election of members for which will take
place on Wednesday next. One of these wards—
Castle-street—will inall probability he uncontested,
Mr. George Holt, to all appearance, being likely to
walk over the course. This ward, it will be remem-
bered, has always been in Whig hands, having been
very seldom contested by the Conservative party;
and it speaks something of the truly liberal feeling
of the Conservative majority in the Council, that
theyselected the late memberfor the ward, although
a Whig, but of very inobtrusive politics, for the
Alderman's chair, well knowing that another Whig
member would, as a matter of certainty, be returned
as his successor. We shall look in vain for a similar
tribute to genuine worth, irrespective of politics,
frOm the Whig-Radical faction. In the other three
wards a contest will take place.
In 'Great George Ward the candidates named are
Mr. Thomas Dover, on the Conservative interest,
and Mr. J. Rogers by the Whig party, who are put-
ting forward, however, a claim on behalf of their
candidate, and stating it boldly, in their can-
vass, that •an understanding has been come to
by influential persons in the ward, that he is
to be supported by men of both parties on
the no-politics principle. We entertain, ourselves,
a very poor opinion of the genuineness of Whig
professions with respect to their entertaining such
a principle. It is one of those garments, which
they are ready enough to put on when a point can
be gained by adopting it ; but which they ordinarily
throw away whenever the political weather warrants
them in venturing upon more decided clothing.
In the present case, no such understanding, as to
politics being laid aside, exists in the Ward;
and, if it did even exist, the Conservatives have as
good, and indeed an infinitely better, candidate
in hand than their opponents. Mr. Rogers is no
doubt a highly-respectable man. In what is Mr.
Dover inferior to him in this respect ? Take up the
question, as to which of the two is most likely to
strive for the economization of the funds of the
ratepayers, and Mr. Dover has the call over his
opponent. He is one of the largest ratepayers in
the town, He is possessed of great experience,
both in local affairs, and in the commerce of the
port; and is, besides, a man possessed of talent,
and willing and able to bestow a large amount of
his leisure upon the performance of the duties of
the position to which he-aspires.
We have no doubt that the burgesses will be
told, as of a fact to,his disparagement, that Mr.
Dover is a warehouse-owner; and the amour pro-
pre of the shopkeepers and tradesmen of the ward
will be flattered by their being reminded that Mr.
Rogers is a tradesman. Let us examine the perti-
nence of the objection to tip one and the recom-
mendation of the other. Mr. Dover, we grant, is
a warehouse-owner. He has contended against the
principle that the private property of his fellow
townsmen should be deteriorated, so long as they
pay rates, and thus decrease the burthens of the
shopkeeper and the householder, by the erection of
warehouses on the dock quays, managed by a public
body, and which warehouses pay no rates. He has
objected to the Dock Committee becoming' their
own porters, their own carters, their own coopers,
and thus carrying on various important businesses
within the borough, without contributing to the
general burthens.. This ought certainly not to be a
bar to Mr. Dover's claims upon the constituency of
the ward. Again, with respect to the claim of Mr.
Rogers, as a
.tradesman, is Mr. Dover any less ?
Is he not, besides, a large employer of tradesmen.
and of the operative and other classes, by whom
tradesmen and shopkeepers live ? This objection to
him cannot be held as valid by the enlightened
portion of the ward; and with every respect, there-
fore, to his opponent, we must urge the claim of
Mr. Dover as more allied with the general interests
of the burgesses of the ward than his are.
In Rodney-street Ward the candidates are Mr.
George Booker, Conservative, and Mr. Lewin, on
the Whig-Radical interest. With respect to the
fitness of the former gentleman, who, we may
mention, is a brother of the respected repre-
sentative of West Derby Ward, Mr. Josias Booker—
there can be no dispute. Mr. George Booker, as
a West India merchant of long standing, is pos-
sessed of great mercantile experience, combined
with an intimate knowledge of the local affairs of
the ward, in which he is a resident. What may be
Mr. Lewin's claims upon the Liberal electors, be-
yond his respectability and his politics, we are not
aware.

In Abercromby Ward, Mr. R. Cardwell Gardiner,
at the request of a numerous body of electors, an-
nounced himself a candidate a little after the va-
cancy occurred, and none can doubt his fitness for
the honour sought to be conferred upon him. We
believe that he has been frequently before so soli-
cited; and that he only consented to come forwitrd
in this instance on the understanding that no other
gentleman of his party was prepared to be put in
nomination.