The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-12-28 00:00:00

H E GOVERNMENT AND THE WEST INDIAN

PLANTERS.

We believe it is admitted on all hands that the London
.Times may be regarded as the organ most in the secrets
of Government, and the most frequently permitted to
foreshadow their policy.
.It is, therefore, gratifying to
find that, with respect to the proper policy of Government
towards our unfortunate Colonial fellow-countrymen, the
Times is completely at issue with those reckless free-tra-
ders who would off r up the British West Indies to the
national love of cheapness. The article containing the
views of our contemporary was addressed in reply to the
flippant remarks of Mr. Cobden, on the subject of West
Indian interests, delivered at the election for South Lan-
cashire last week. We quote the passage :
" Now it does to appear to us, with every reverence for
the principles of free rade, that if ever there was a body
of men harshly dealt with in the world, these men have
been the West Indian planters. They have been made
the subject of a compound experiment. In their persons
the world was to be edified with an exemplification of
sanctity in the suppression of the slave-trade, and the
commercial advantages of free-trade. The two principles
are utterly at variance. You cannot say to a British
sugar-grower, You must sell your produce at the same
rate as the rest of the world, and at the same time pay a
higher price for your labour.' What is the cost of a slave's
labour in the Brazils, all charges of transport and keep
included ? What must you pay for a freeman's labour in
Jamaica for the same time ? The price paid by the British
planter is just about double the cost incurred by his Bra-
zilian rival. Do you wish, then, to restore slavery ? God
forbid ! What we wish to effect is, to open the eyes of the
public to the glaring inconsistency ofendeavouring to turn
a sugar plantation under the Tropics, from which apt
labour is excluded for humanity's sake, into a free-trade
Paradise. The first conditions of the experiment are clearly
wanting, There can be but one result of such a proceeding.
The sugar islands will go out of cultivation. The land of
stars, slaves, and stripes lies at no great distance. American
sympathy will become strong as British interest grows
weak. The Antilles will be taken into cultivation again on
the slavery principle, and restored to their former degree
of productiveness. Free-trade will ruin colonists exposed
to competition so unequal, and slavery will follow
in the steps of free trade. Let not the men of buckskin
breeches and vegetable minds, the Tyrells, the Bucks. and
the Knightleys, conceive there is any admission in this as
affects their own corn and turnips. Sugar stands apart
from other produce, from the nature of the climates in
which it must be grown, as well as from the conditions
on which we have prescribed its cultivation. We have
always considered even a moderate degree of protection
to the 'West Indian colonists utterly indefensible on the
grounds of economic science. It was a tax levied on the
British empire for the suppression of slavery. England
voluntarily made herself poorer every year that the slave
trade might be put down. There was reason at least in
this method of carrying out her views. It was a very dif-
ferent principle from the maintenance of the Coffin Squa-
dron in the midst of the dark vegetation and foul mias-
mata at the mouth of an African river. Meanwhile, as it
appears to us, the result of our present West Indian po-
licy will be as follows :—the ruin of the planters; the
abandonment of the islands; the seizure of them by the
United States ; their renewed cultivation by a slave po-
pulation; and our own ultimate dependence on our for-
mer colonies for slave-grown sugar—a sad termination
of all our labours —the fruit of the expenditure of so
much blood and treasure."

We have expressed precisely the same views again and
again ; and we are especially gratified to find this great
free-trade organ at length discerning the proper light in
which to regard this important question.