The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-11-23 00:00:00

ebt Etbtrpool RptanbarD,

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TUESDAY MORNING, NOV. 23, 1847.

IT is impossible to peruse the address, which has
just been presented by the Jamaica House of As-
sembly to his Excellency the Governor, or to
glance over a recent file of West India papers,
without being impressed with a feeling of deep
commiseration for the sufferings of one of the
most cruelly persecuted, and yet, still, one of the
most loyal, classes of her Majesty's subjects. At
the same time, the conviction is strengthened by
every arrival from these colonies that, whilst to all
persecution there must be a limit, viz.—the power
of the persecuted to endure further,—that limit has
now arrived. The House distinctly, yet respect-
fully, impress this fact upon his Excellency, in the
address before us. Not only must the planters
cease to cultivate their property, unless placed in a
position to import with a profit into the British
markets, but they must cease, from utter inability,
to contribute to the local burthens, and to support
the machinery of the Government.
We intlipated, in our last, our fears that the con-
cession made by the Colonial Secretary to the
planters, of permission to supply themselves with
labourers from Africa, had come too late; and that,
unaided by some measure of protection, temporary
or otherwise, the impoverished West India body
would find themselves unable to avail themselves
of the boon thus offered. Upon this subject the
address of the House of Assembly comes at a
timely season, and speaks very decidedly in the
following passage :
" In our struggle to continue cultivation since the
period of emancipation, we have anxiously sought assist-
ance by immigration from various quarters, and especially
from Africa; but the time has now passed when immigra-
tion can much avail. Unless attended with other and
instant remedial measures, the cultivation of our staples
must be abandoned, . and the great body of the emanci-
=pated people themselves must cease to find employment.
" We are anxious now, as we have ever been, to pro-
vide a revenue, to support the institutions of the colony,
and to maintain the peace and order of society. Acting
in this spirit, we shall continue the Revenue Laws to the
end of the ensuing year, in the hope that ere the ter-
mination of that period, adequate relief will be afforded
by the parent Government.
We regret, however, to feel ourselves compelled to
state to your excellency, that the raising of such revenue
must bear oppressively on a suffering people. The amount
will certainly fall short of that of former years, and can-
not possibly be sustained beyond the period stated. So
far as our declining resources will permit, we beg to assure
your excellency of our readiness to attend to the several
objects to which you have specifically alluded, and also to
such messages as your excellency was pleased to submit
to our consideration."
We have no doubt that, by that flippant Libe-
ralism which has ever set itself in hostility against
the interests of our Colonists, and by the spurious
humanity mongers, to allay whose outcry against
slavery, the British West Indies received the first
blow which has finally prostrated them, this inti-
mation of the planters will be treated as a mere
brutum fulmen. In the eyes of these men, whose
sympathies are only with the emancipated negroes,
it will appear as an immaterial question whether or
not the sugar cultivation is continued in Jamaica.
The sacrifice of a few millions worth of the pro-
perty of their fellow-subjects, and the destruction
of the British West India body will be regarded
rather With gratification than otherwise. But, the
result of such cessation of cultivation—the inabi-
lity of this body to contribute further to the local
burthens of the Colony—involves a further ques-
tion, which, if they have ever been sincere in their
desire to promote the permanent amelioration of
tho condition, and the ultimate civilization of the
African race, cannot be lightly regarded by them.
A great portion of the local imposts with which
the planter is burthened, is devoted to the admi-
nistration of justice, and the preservation of order
within the Colony. Roads have to be kept in re-
pair ; a police and prisons to be maintained ;
churches and schoolhouses for the religious and
secular teaching of the emancipated negro popula-
tion, to be supported. Withdraw the contributions
now paid [for these objects, and for the general
government of the Colony, by the impoverished
planters of Jamaica, and the whole negro popula-
tion, from the effect of whose increasing civilization
so much was anticipated, must inevitably fall back
into a condition little better than their original
barbarism. The great experiment of emancipation,
which was to have proved the possibility of the
cultivation of the tropics by free labour, will have
received its last crushing blow, amidst the trium-
phant exultation of the abettors of slavery through-
out the world. The oasis of the wilderness, from
whoseprosperity was to have gone forth an example
and a voice which would strike the fetters from the
slave in every land—the free soil, upon which was
to have been nurtured in Christianity and enlight-
enment a race of pioneers, before whose missionary
labours barbarism, in their own vast continent,
would have fallen prostrate—must become a barren
waste, and a stumbling block, for ever, before the
feet of the philanthropist who seeks to carry the
blessings of civilization to the negro race. Well
had it been then for Africa—well for the sacred
cause of humanity—had England never officiously
put her hand to a work which she had neither the
virtue nor the steadfastness to carry out !
But, if we were even warranted in presuming
that the Jamaica planters exaggerate the difficul-
ties of their position, and that, under ordinary
circumstances, they might have been enabled to
avail themselves of the tardy concession made to
them, it is clear, from the last advices received,
that temporary circumstances, caused by the ope-
ration of the seasons upon Colonial agriculture,
utterly forbid our entertaining any such hope,
unless some aid, more potent and immediate than
the permission to import free labourers from Africa,
be afforded them. We quote the following remarks
upon this part of the question from the Jamaica
Despatch of the 23d October ; and we entreat, in
behalf of them, the dispassionate attention of every
lover of justice, irrespective of his political lean-
ings :
The disastrous results of this, the first year of free-
trade, have had their due effect upon a people unprepared
and unable to meet the losses which they have entailed.
With energies paralysed by annual revenues, and blunted
by the obstinate infliction of an imperial policy against
which they had in vain protested, it was impossible that
the planters of Jamaica could any longer keep their ground
against difficulties which were only aggravated the more
they complained and remonstrated. With all their capital
exhausted, without credit at home or abroad, with a de-
creasing market and increasing expenditure, it would be
little better than madness to continue cultivation, as
heretofore. An abundant harvest has resulted in increased
losses, whilst an almost universal drought has destroyed all
prospect, even where prices uninfluened by external causes,
of a profitable harvest for the year 1848. These combined
influences have led to the very general determination of
suspending cultivation. Drought has prevented the estab-
lishment of a spring plant, and necessity has withheld the
putting in of a fall plant. The crop of nevt year, there-
fore, will be confined generally to the taking off of such
canes as remain on the ground, and future years will see
a decreasing production until export shall cease alto-
gether, unless meanwhile the cloud shall have passed from
before the eyes of our rulers, and we shall be deemed once
more worthy the protection of the mother country.
" It is confessed, on authority which Government at
least cannot dispute, that we have a strong case' for re-
lief. We are not so mealy-mouthed as to be afraid to
pronounce the word upon which alone our existence de-
pends, and to which the strong case which is admitted
irresistibly entitles us. If British people in England are
sensitive on subjects which form the hobby' of the mo-
ment, British people in Jamaica are not less sensitive on
the subject of those inherent rights which affect their
permanent welfare. It is protection, and protection only,
which can save us : not that we dream of restoration of
the prohibitory system, but that a distinctive duty equal
to the difference between the relative position of the
Foreign and the British colonies must be imposed upon
the foreign article as the only alternative between colonial
production and a colonial wilderness.
" We are quite alive to the difficulty in which ministers
have placed themselves ; but we are in no degree respon-
sible for it. If, in defiance of our remonstrances and our
protests, they have placed themselves, with the view of
obtaining a momentary popularity, in a position which
leaves them no alternative but to allow these colonies and
their institutions to fall into irretrievable decay, or to
change their whole policy with respect to them, they, and
they only, are responsible. The session of 1848 must de-
cide for them this important question. Half measures
will no longer do. We must be placed in a position to
compete effectually with the foreigner, or we must sink.
Partial redress will be as bad as no redress at all. A loss
of one pound upon a ton of sugar will as effectually put
a stop to cultivation as a loss of six pounds. The remedy,
therefore, must be a sovereign one, or the time of parlia-
ment will be wasted."
We can add nothing to such evidence as this,
coming, as it does, from parties perfectly conver-
sant with the condition of the Colonies for which
we have to legislate. We leave it, therefore, for
the present, without comment, for the consideration
44 our readers,

THE question—" what is to be done with Irish-
men in Ireland," has perplexed every successive
administration for the last fifty years. One states-
man after another has undertaken the task of
repressing the turbulence and ameliorating the
political and social condition of the population of
that singular country. Each has boasted of the
efficacy of his own particular nostrum. Coercion,
persuasion, the removal of civil and religious dis-
abilities, Arms Acts, and Corporation Acts, have
been tried in turn ; and all have alike failed in
producing either social regeneration or peace.—
Strike high, or strike low, threaten or coax, adopt
an energetic or a lax policy, the cry has still come
from the great body of the Irish people, that we
were in error—that the doctor for the time being
did not understand his patient's ailments. Begin
at what end we might of the social scale—at the
landlord's end or the peasant's—the priest's or the
layman's—we were still told that we had begun at
the wrong end ; arid we have not, as. yet, after all
our experience, arrived at any very satisfactory
conclusion as to where wa ought to have begun, or
in what direction ournext effort must be made.
One of the most striking features which present
themselves to us in this Irish difficulty, is the fact
of the continually changing character of the evil
to be surmounted. The patient is at one moment
raging in fever, and in the next wasting in atrophy
or in apparently a hopelessly lethargic state. Now
he is clamouring for Repeal—for a native Parlia-
ment in Dublin, and release from all connection
with the Saxon, He proclaims his perfect health
and strength, and demands to be permitted to
walk alone. In another year we find him sullen
and idle, demanding from the same Saxon the
food which he sturdily refuse:l-to raise for himself.
Yesterday his complaint was a political one; to-day
it is a social one—a complaint of empty cupboards
and clean swept barn yards, dear meal, and rotted
potatoes. To-morrow we may find it turned into
a religious one; and so on to the end of the chapter,
if it is ever to have an end. Dobubtless, we shall,
by-and-by, be enlightened with respect to the na-
ture of the Russell specific. But, we must confess
that we have little confidence in the result of any
prescription, from such a quarter, at all calculated
to assuage the aggravated symptoms of the present
Irish malady.. We may again be asked to feed a
people who will not work ; but we have little hope
of those firm and stringent measures which can
alone render life and property secure 'in that coun-
try—the effectual muzzling of such priestly incen-
diaries as Archdeacon Laffan, and the wresting of
murderous weapons from the hands of a peasantry
who only wield them for the purpoae of assassi-
nation.

But we have- another Irish difficulty now forced
upon us, which presses nearer home upon those
who possess what has always been considered the
good fortune of residing on this side of the Irish
channel. We refer to the difficulty of arriving at
a solution of the question—" What is to be done
with Irishmen in England, and more particularly.
in Liverpool ?" For the last few years the inhabi-
tants of the large towns throughout England have
been endeavouring gradually to devise means of
cure for the local evils which have been caused by
the settlement amongst them of the labouring poor
of Ireland, and to protect the public health and
morals from being depreciated by the filthy and
turbulent habits which seem to be inherent in the
Irish character. Millions have been spent, and are
being spent, in enforcing cleanliness upon them ;
in ventilating and draining the filthy streets in
which they herd together. Ask, in any town that
you enter, to what quarter the exertions of the
authorities entrusted with its sanatory regulation
are especially to be directed, and the answer will
be—to the Irish quarter. Ask of the medical
officers of any of our hospitals, infirmaries,•or dis-
pensaries, amongst what class of the population
the greatest amount of disease, to be relieved at
the public cost, is to be found, and the answer will
be—amongst the Irish. Ask in our workhouses
what people contribute most abundantly to the
amount of pauperism to be maintained by the in-
dustrious English rate-payer, and the answer will
still be—the Irish. Amongst every branch of in-
dustry the overflow of Ireland's teeming and impro-
vident population has carried deprivation of comfort
for the labourer and the artizan, deterioration of
his social character, squalid habits, disease, and, as
the result, a low average duration of life.
With the evil thus forced upon us, however, we
might, ultimately, and at an inordinate expense, be
enabled to cope. We might repair our past neglect
of its rapid accumulation. But bow are we to deal
with the influx of confirmed vagabondism and
crime which we see at present systematically and
designedly directed to our shores ? How are we
to keep back the hordes of destitute and irreclaim-
ably vicious outcasts which the arrival of every
vessel from Ireland lands upon our quays, bringing
fever and filth in their train, and satisfied to seek
shelter in hovels condemned as unfit for human
habitation ? These people do not, as heretofore,
come amongst us to seek for remunerative employ-
ment. There is no prospect of such employment,
for some time to come, sufficient to provide for the
wants of our own industrious poor. They do not
even, directly, come to throw themselves upon our
parishes, and thus enable us to put in force the
provisions of the law, by sending them to their
own country. They seek, on the contrary, only an
alternation between mendicity or pilfering in our
streets, and confinement in our gaols as its punish-
ment. They have learned how to make their pre-
sence amongst us a permanent infliction ; and, if
they have not driven a coach-and-six through our
Acts of Parliament, designed to keep them at
home, they have found out what, to them, is a very
satisfactory mode of treading through their meshes
in their native brogues.
We cannot go the length to which some of the
members of our Select Vestry have gone, as will
be seen from the report elsewhere of the interview
of that body with the magistrates, on Thursday
last, in attributing the success of Irish imposition
to magisterial apathy in carrying out the existing
laws. We sympathise, certainly, with those who
have to administer the parish funds, and with those
who have to pay towards them. We see sufficiently
that the Vestry are utterly incapable of grappling
with the difficulty which is presented to them. It
is all very well to say—put in force the full rigour
of the Vagrant Act; apprehend and imprison every
person found begging in our streets ; punish se-
verely every case of theft committed to procure its
perpetrator a temporary asylum in our gaols. But
the answer to this is—where are we to find gaol
accommodation ?—where the means of affording a
sufficiently severe labour test, for the swarm of
incorrigible impostors with which we are daily in-
fested ? " Within a given space last year," as
stated by Mr. Rushton, at the meeting on Thurs-
day, " the summary convictions of Irish, for petty
thefts, amounted to 350 or 360. For the same
period this year, and since the passing of the act
for sending them back to Ireland, the number has
increased to 888." And, with regard to the efficacy
of the means used by the Sanatory Committee to
preserve the health of the town, under the visita-
tion to which-it is subjected, the evidence, amongst
others, of Mr. Earle, at the same meeting, is suffi-
ciently significant of the extent of the difficulty to
be surmounted, in the effort to prevent the influx
amongst our population of a people in whose esti-
mate of comfort dwellings, not regarded as fit for
English pigs to herd in, are considered as patterns
of commodiousness and comfort. This gentleman
stated that—
" There was a row of old houses at the corner of Pres-
cot-lane, which the Earl of Derby purchased. In that
row there was a great quantity of the poor Irish, and one
of them wrote a letter to a friend of his in Ireland to say
how delightfully he was accommodated, as there was even
a staircase in the house. The Earl of Derby purchased
three houses, and in a few hours pulled them down, and
those persons who had inhabited them must have sought
a place elsewhere. The houses were considered by them
as desirable residences, and they would never have left if
they had not been pulled down.

Most perfectly do we agree with the Vestry in
the propriety of the step taken in calling upon the
magistrates to aid them in securing for the town
some little more immunity than we now possess,
from a burthen which is fast becoming intolerable.
But there should be no recrimination between the
two bodies, as to non-performance of their respec-
tive shares of duty to mitigate its pressure. Both
of them are powerless for any material good, even
if united. The evil to be surmounted is one which
requires the attention of the Legislature of the
nationitself.. Our local bodies may remonstrate,
may state their case to the Legislature, and must,
in self protection, urge it, as one demanding imme-
diate consideration, unless our•tradesmen and the
rate-payers of the town are to be involved in ruin,
and our populationinoculated with crime and
disease. The demand which the people of Liver-
pool have to urge upon the consideration of the

Legislature is part and parcel of the Irish question,
the solution of which has baffled every successive
administration of late years ; and in its settlement
Liverpool, above all other towns, ought to have a
potential voice.