The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-01-05 00:00:00

THE FRUITS OF EMANCIPATION

(From the Guiana Times.)
Are not to be discussed minutely in a cursory notice, but
it may not be amiss to say a word or two respecting some of
them.

A petulant clamour is raised about the value of property
not having been depreciated. Why, of the recent exchanges
of properties, the majority are allowed to have been sacrificed
on one side, bargains on the other. Moreover, nothing is
more natural, than that men who have faith in the prospect
of extensive immigration, should purchase land, when they
can get it cheap, at a period when the extravagant price
given for sugar goes far to compensate for the loss of the
coercive power of the former slave owner.

What say the Produce Returns? The Governor perempto-
rily refuses to allow them to be divulged. He caused the
publication of one, a most fallacious one, some time back,
in which he compared the average of all the quarters of
1839, with the actual result of one good quarter of 1840.
We are as certain as that we now write, that this infamous
return will be quoted against the Colony, and we shall be
told that we have no right to complain, for we are doing
better than ever.

Governor M`Leod, we should imagine, will have no motive
for a concealment or perversion of the truth. He will, we
dare believe, unlock the custom-house records, shut up by
Mr Light. And yet the custom-house returns will not be
perfectly faithful, inasmuch as they will show no manner of
distinction between sugar, the produce of the 'ountry, and
foreign sugar, landed pro forma, from ships in the river,
and re-shipped as colonial produce.
It is truly distressing to have to record, that, besides the
encouragement given to foreign slavery, by the process to
which we have alluded, there is yet another premium held
out, the effects of .which cannot be less extensively pernici-
ous. On several estates in Demerara, you may purchase
refined foreign sugar cheaper than you can raw sugar, the
produce of the estate. Indeed, the extent to which refined
foreign sugar is in use among us, is very alarming.

As far as we are able to collect, our planters and merchants,
generally, do not deprecate, with much fervour, the idea of
a European war. It is justly remarked how great an advan-
tage the English colonies must possess over those of France,
and how probable it is, that we have only to lie to, off Mar-
tinique or Gaudaloupe, for a few hours, to empty those
islands of half their population. But a war must interrupt
immigration from distant parts, and break up the machinery
of the proposed packet system, from which we may antici-
pate so many beneficial results.
In general, but little regret is felt, at the transaction of
lair properties from the hands of absentees, to those of
resident, proprietors. The advantages arising to the mass of
the population are too obvious to require detail. Nor is it
denied that the retention in the colony, of the money laid
out in wages, causes the colonists, generally, to feel the
effects of _ernasicipation in 14,,1e5s ratio than some classes of
the inhabitants of the mother-country. Were estates to
fall, pretty extensively, into the possession of persons who
have approved themselves as attorneys or managers, and
were the colony to be allowed immigrants, we should soon
form a very opulent and flourishing community.

We need not add, that the labouring population still con-
tinue masters of the labour market, and can, possibly,
have nothing to complain of in their condition. It is very
mucb to be lamented, that no inquiry has been set on foot
respecting the falsehoods of certain parties in Barbados,
whose assertions, if believed, must be very prejudicial to us.
Perhaps, Governor M`Leod, may do something in this way.

THE POLISH ExiLEs.—Meantime, the children of Po-
land are wanderers over the earth ; or, if lingering on their
native soil, lingering there no longer as masters, but as
slaves. Theirs is a strange destiny,—the life of a criminal
without his guilt. Their gallantry and their honour have as
yet been rewarded with the felon's fate; and the cup they
have had to drain has, indeed, been a cup running over with'
bitterness. Their poverty has been mocked at in lands
where to be poor is to be criminal, and the nobleness of
soul which bid the patriot lay down his wealth at his coun-
try's altar has been forgotten. The fashion of the hour has
changed, and the woes of Poland are no longer sung in the
bowers of the fair ; whilst the politician exclaims, " Cat
un fait accompli," and, shrugging his shoulders, announces
the degrading doctrine that possession gives right. Even
the lawyer will allow, that no claim is barred which is
asserted within a period of twenty years ; and what year
elapses during which hundreds of Poland's children do not
assert her claims, and sign their appeal with their blood?
From time to time the throes of Poland, as she half rises
from her tomb, are felt over Europe; and each struggle to
assume her former erect position becomes more desperate
and prolonged. The serf and the noble are fast learning the
mighty lesson, that in their union lies their strength ; and,
like the giant form in the Castle of Otranto, we prophesy
that the spirit of Poland will yet dilate, till it burst the cere-
wents of its living tomb. Meantime, the Polish exile has a
high and noble mission : it is his lofty prerogative, as he
wanders a stranger, and perhaps in rags, to preach to the
world a mighty lesson of enduring faith,—a faith in the un-
dying nationality of a country which we vainly seek upon
the map,—a faith in the justice of a God to whom his blood
has so Jong vainly cried for succour,—a faith in the final
victory of that right which has been so often stricken to the
earth. Those who once preached a yet sublimer faith were
even more despised and afflicted than he; but the Polish ex-
ile, however miserable, he too is an apostle.—From Fraser's
Magazine for January.

HEIGHT OF CLOUDS.—The altitudepf clouds in the South
Sea, under the influence of the trade winds, was found, by
the officers of the Venus, to be between .900 and 1,400
metres (2,952 to 4,593 feet.)