The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-09-25 00:00:00

PRESNT STATCEOLINTIISE WEST INDIA

(From the Times.)
The present state of the British West India Colonies is a
subject that engages the attention of every British statesman
and philanthropist. A great experiment is in 'progress, and
it is not to be denied that difficulties have arisen, and that
evils are threatened which were not anticipated, or against
which, if anticipated, adequate provision has not been made.
We cannot profess ourselves satisfied with the views we find
expressed on this subject, either in or out of parliament ; nor,
on the otherhand, have we any new theories or plans of our
own to recommend. In the existing state of information
and opinion, however, some good may be done by placing
the subject fairly before the public, and by looking with a
steadfast eye at the good that has been done, the mistakes
that have been committed, and the dangers that are to be
avoided.

What, then, are those views of this important question
that excite apprehension in the minds of reflecting men ?
When we have formed a clear conception of the dangers that
have been incurred, and of the evils that are threatened, we
shall be the better qualified to trace them back to their causes,
and to look forward for their remedies.

1. The first evil is one which immediately affects the peo-
ple of this country, viz., the diminished production and high
price of West India sugar. According to an official return
of the exports from the West Indies, the quantity of sugar
in 1832 was 4,151,368 cwt. ; in 1834 it was 3,843,976 cwt.,
and in 1839 it was 2,822,872 cwt., making a decrease from
1834 of 1,021,104 cwt., and from 1832 of 1,328,496 cwt.
From the Mauritius the quantity has increased from 527,000
cwt. in 1832 to 612,000 cwt. in 1839. On the whole, the
supply has diminished, and the consequence is that the
price has risen to the extent of 10s. or 12s. per hun-
dred-weight. the price of the best sugar being about 70s.
Of this price 245. consists of duty, which makes the price in
bond 465., while the price in bond of similar quality in
continental markets in March of the present year was only
255. making a difference of 21s. per hundred weight against
the British consumer, and in favour of the continental con-
sumer, independent of the duty. Of this difference about
one-half may be considered the effect of the colonial mono-
poly of the British market, and the other moiety the effect
of the act of emancipation ; so that after England has paid
£20,000,000. sterling to purchase the freedom of 800,000
slaves in the West Indies, she finds that she has still to pay
to the sugar-grower 21s. upon every hundred weight of sugar
she consumes beyond what the same article would cost in the
continental markets—an excess in the aggregate, calculated
upon the present quantity of sugar imported from the West
Indies, amounting to little short of three millions sterling, of
which one-half may be placed to the account of the act of
emancipation. That this is an enormous evil there can be no
doubt. It is making the people of England pay a second
time for the freedom of the slave, and for this purpose taxing
not only their pockets, but their comforts, since sugar has
ceased to be a luxury, and must be regarded as a necessary of
life to every family in the kingdom, however poor or humble.
It might have been expected that the men who possess the
powers of government, and who are responsible for the con-
duct of public affairs, would not have allowed parliament to
separate without calling attention to this subject ; but the
fact is, that they possess without exercising those powers.
They are subject to the dictation either of their political op-
ponents or of their pretended friends, and when they receive
no impulse in a right or in a wrong direction from either of
these sources, the via inertice, in them as in brute matter, is
all powerful, and they stand stock still and do nothing. It
is this do-nothing policy they have adopted in regard to the
present state of the sugar trade which imperatively demands
attention. They have not only applied no remedy to the
existing evil, but they have not even condescended to take it
into consideration..

2. The second alleged evil is the present actual condition
and prospects of the West India colonies, arising out of the
operation of the Emancipation Act. It is difficult to form a
definite and consistent opinion on this subject from the con-
flicting assertions of planters and their friends, abolitionists
and their proteges, but an attempt to balance them may not
be wholly unsuccessful. On the one hand, the planters com-
plain that there is an inadequate supply of labour in conse-
quence of the withdrawal of women from the field, .and of
many of the men, who betake themselves to other occupa-
tions; that those who remain are irregular and desultory in
their habits, leaving work on the slightest pretence at their
own pleasure, and on an average not working more than three
days in the week, reckoning a day's work of 12 hours ; and
that the price of labour has greatly risen, varying from Bd.
and 9d. sterling per day in the old leeward colonies, to Is. 6d.
and even more in Jamaica, and as high as 4s. in Demerara
and Trinidad. In consequence of the want of labour, cattle
have been allowed to roam at large and destroy whole cane-
fields ; the canes haVe not been weeded, and the crops have
not been taken off during the proper months of the year, the
effect of which is to lessen and deteriorate the produce.
Through the same cause (the inadequate supplrof labour) the
negroes of the islands where wages are comparatively low are
attracted to those colonies where they are comparatively high,
the predicted result of which is, in the first place, the ruin of
the planters of the old windward and leeward islands, and the
abandonment of those colonies as places of trade, and ulti-
mately the ruin even of the planters in the colonies more fa-
voured by nature, since, although they can .afford to pay
higher wages than the proprietors in the old islands, they can-
not continue the wages they are now giving, except at the
present enormously high price of sugar. On the other band,
it is alleged that according to the above showing there is no
want of labourers, since even after the withdrawal of the
women the men perform all the work that is done by labour-
ing only three days in the week; that the want of labour
arises, not from the unwillingness of the negroes to work,
but from unwillingness of masters to afford them an ade-
quate remuneration for their labour, conformable to the en-
hanced value put by the masters themselves upon their
slaves at the period of emancipation, and recognised by the
compensation commission ; and that the masters have fur-
ther disgusted the negroes by the harsh arrangements and
restrictive laws that have been established, tending to give
them an undue controul over the persons, the comforts, and
the labour of the emancipated population, in violation f the
spirit of the emancipation act. There are some litigated
cases in which both parties are in the right and both are in
the wrong, and this is one of them ; and for proof we refer to
Sir Charles Metcalfe's speech delivered on proroguing the
Jamaica legislature on the llth of April last. That speech
establishes his claim to be considered an impartial umpire
between the labourers and employers of that island ; and
while it appears unquestionable that the former have evinced
extreme laxity and caprice in their engagements with the
latter, to the great injury of their property, it is equally clear
that the latter, with a view to the exaction of labour, have
imposed upon the labouring population terms of rent for
houses and grounds which are justly described as harassing
and vexatious. It was, and is, within the comictence of the
planters to remove this cause of bad feeling, and to concili-
ate the affections of the peasantry, which they have not
done ; while on the other hand it is undeniable • that the
negroes, in putting a high price upon their labour, in their
new state of freedom, are only doing that which all men
would do in similar circumstances, where the supply of la-
bour should be less than the demand. The fact, however,
still remains the same, that but for prompt and vigorous
measures of a salutary character the whole amount of British
capital in the West India colonies is passing through a slow
but certain process of deterioration. leading to utter annihi-
lation ; and we repeat, that it is in these circumstances of
danger to a vast national interest that ministers have con-
tinued quiescent and inactive, and have dismissed Parliament
without providing the means of safety, or even indicating the
way of escape.
3. Another evil arising out of the present state of the West
India colonies, is the influence which it must have in con-
firming slavery, and increasing the slave trade in other cam-
tries. It does not follow, as has been asserted, that every
hand abstracted front sugar cultivation iu our colonies with-
out a substitute, makes room for a fresh slave on a foreign
soil, because, if proper measures were adopted, it may make
room for a free man in British India : but there is at least a
danger that the slave will be substituted, and, in point of
fact, slavery and slave-grown produce are enormously on the
increase, it may be feared through the very means which
England has adopted to diminish their amount. In the Bra-
zils sugar estates increased from 1906 in 1835 to 2050 in
1838 ; the quantity of sugar exported from 400,000 cwt. in
1808 to 2,400,000 in 1837 ; and the number of slaves, from
2,100,000 in 1833 to 2,500,000 in 1839. The crops of Cuba
increase at the rate of about six per cent. yearly ; and if the
exports of that island were converted into muscovado sugar,
which is the process necessary to know the exact quantity
exported, the amount exported in 1839 was 4,550,000 cwt.—
rather more than all our sugar colonies, the Mauritius in-
cluded—while the slave population has been increased from
479,000 in 1830 to 600,000 in 1839. In 1836 Porto Rico ex-
ported 498,888 cwt., but the crop for 1840 was estimated at
1,000,000 cwt. Slave-grown sugar is even imported into the
British West Indies. Mr. Larpent, in Isis evidence (Parlia-
mentary paper, No. 43, session 1810), states, that " at this
moment a large quantity of refined sugars, about 10,000 tons,
Brazils, &c., is refined in this country, and is exported, a
similar quantity being returned again into bond; and this
refined sugar so exported is, though the produce of a foreign
country, admitted without duty into the West Indies, and
may be drunk in the tea of the West Indians, or otherwise
consumed." Even the high duty has not prevented the par-
tial introduction of foreign sugar for consumption in this
country. It is the continent of Europe and the United States
of America, however, that are principally supplied with the
slave-grown sugar of the Brazils, Cuba, and Porto Rico.
The increase of this slave-grown produce, of slavery, and the
slave trade, is clearly connected with a series of measures
that have been adopted for the suppression of the British
slave trade and the extinction of slavery in the British West
Indies, leading to the increased cost and the diminished pro-
duction of sugar in those colonies ; and now that that series
of measures is complete, and that we have washed our hands
of the stain of slavery, at least in our West Indian possessions,
we may pause and ask what effect our example is likely to
have upon other countries, and upon the general happiness of
mankind. It is not enough to say, with Lord John Russell,
that it was the object of the nation " to convert slaves into
freemen, to rescue their brethren of Africa from the lash of
compulsory toil, and establish them as Christian men on the
soil where they had been transported as chattels or beasts of
burden." This was an object, and there never was one I
which justice, humanity, and policy more fully Concurred to
approve and recommend ; but England occupies far too high
ground in the eye of the world in connexion with this sub-
ject to be permitted to view it in this single aspect, and to
test contented with having loosened the shackles of her own
slaves, if she have thereby riveted those of millions in other
countries, by affording the stimulus of increased gain to their
relentless taskmasters. By the position which as a nation
we have voluntarily assumed, we owe it to the world to pre-
vent, if possible, such a result, but the political pettifoggers
seem incapable of enlarging their vision to such a
voifewthoe
fdynaational responsibility.

The Temps asserts that a circular has been sent by Count
Nesse!rode to all Russian diplomatic residents forbidding
them to viser the passport of the Marquis de Crony Chanel,
in case of his wishing to proceed to Russia.
• The iron steamers Phlegethon' Capt. Cleveland, R.N ,
and Proserpine, Capt. Hough, R.N., put into Fahnouth on
Monday evening, in company, last from Southampton. Both
vessels are armed, and fully manned ; but their destination is
unknown. They were to proceed, with sealed orders, on
Wednesday last. The Ilarnpshire Advertiser adds—there
can be but little doubt of their being destined for the Chinese
seas.—Mr. Davis, in his valuable work on China, says, " A
river
. Tartars. wonaer with the celestials, however certain its results, will be
of long duration," and Nve apprehend the Queen and
the .es;,of Tartarus have gone to look out for squalls
P , shortly
amonggThe Pluto,
of her kindred, for,:ntne same destination.
THE leted is et pee e here, commissioned by the owners
t d • steamer, just com-
pleted,
TRAFALG.
buildingforward state,
and to be mounted
in Woolwich —iThis splendid and magnificent vessel,
guns, is now in a
woodwork as to admit .::. with 120
eceiving the priming and first coat
d state, being so far finished in the
finished, almost all that is
of paint on the. upper deck.r The first deck is also nearly
large iron joints fur requiredconnect to complete it being the
Connecting jiee main beams and sides to
each other. The supports of
equally
chaste appearance, and consist o
q 3
a 3 very handsomely turned
pillars of the best African oak, e f upper deck have a very
rich in effect as if they
were constructed of the best Spanish mahogany.
The second
ports of the first
l
deck is also progressing fast, and the
sup
perspective, deck, a range of similar pillars as those
same valuable material, present a beautiful
e it, and of the
r
be-
ing placed in one line along the whole length
The Trafalgar is altogether in such a forward statetitiheasthsihpel
might be launched immediately ; but if this were the case,
she would have to be sent to Chatham to be fitted, as there
is no dock in Woolwich yard capable of receiving her, It is
on this account alone that there are only 30 shipwrights at
present employed upon her, and she will be launched at the
end of the month of February, 1841, the moment the dock
preparing for her reception is ready.