The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-19 00:00:00

oottre,

[ORIGINAL,]
ON BEING ASKED BY
OMAN ' GENT
LOVE? MLEAN, " WHAT
IS WS "

Oh, ask me not in words to tell
What is a woman's love ! •
But look around, where'er ye dwell,
In courtly hall or lowly cell,
Each will confess its magic spell,

Its witchery will proive.

Go to the court, where splendour shines,
In varied joys around ;
Go to the hut, where misery pines,
And see how.woman's love entwines,
In viewless bonds, in shapeless signs,
A halm for ev'ry wound.

"Ds this which lights the monarch's brow;
Alone could he be blest?
The streams that wealth and power bestow
Unheeded fall, and joyless flow,
Unless a woman's fondness throw
Its sunshine o'er their breast.
The love of woman ne'er was told ! •
Can empty words impart
Such faith, such love, unbought by gold,
Nor e'en by worst of wrongs made cold,
When shrin'd within the inmost fold
Of faithful woman's heart?
It is to hope through worst despair ;
To love while others hate ;
To smile through many a fallirr, tear;
The hour of irclverse skieS to cheer ;
The object of her love more dear,
In sorrow's darkest fate.

--
And what is hope's most brilliant flow'r,
Unless she twine the braid ?
Nay, what was Eden's rosiest bow'r,
Till woman's smile beguil'd each hour,
Gracing th' abode of peace and pow'r,
With blossoms that ne'er fade ?
The richest treasure that Heav'n bestows,
In mercy from above;

The source whence truest rapture flows,
The purest bliss that mortal knows,
The star with softest light that glows,
Is this--a woman's love !

THE MINISTERS. AND THE WEST INDIES.

(From the John Bull.)
Till within these few days we had no idea of what a
dear darling little duck of a man Lord John is. To
continue this most expressive ladies' phraseology, he is
such a tweet thing, quite a jewel ! We had thought
that his lordship was more inclined to the modern fee-
losophy in vogue among the utilitarians than to the new
lights, and had feared that he was to be classed among
the degenerate rather than the regenerate. But from
certain words and opinions which have lately fallen
from his pen, there can be little doubt that he is about
to join brother Knibb, and has received a powerful call
to go and wrestle in behalf of the black peasantry of
our British plantations. It is delightfUl to witness the
unction with which he consigns the trade and com-
merce of the West Indies to utter perdition—he, pious
soul, thinking nothing of the loss, but giving loose to
his holy joy at the prospect of the sable elysium which
will reign when the sugar cane and its toils shall be for-
gotten, and labour be an unremembered word.
The " call" is announced in a despatch from his
lordship to the Governor of British Guiana, dated the
15th of February last ; and which despatch ought to
be received as a sweet song sung in Zion, a word of
consolation to the saints. Lord John begins the can-
ticle figuradvely, setting forth the deficiency in last
year's crops in Demerara only to have been almost a
million, and then proceeds to show that this is the
result of a natural cause. It is, humanely observes the
singer, the consequence of emancipation; and he urges
that the planters, " with little reason, expected that the
negroes were, at all events, to carry on the cultivation
of sugar." Warming with his theme, he subjoins,
it is not to be expected that men who can subsist in
comfort without hard labour, will continue to devote
themselves to it" Turning from the lyric to the de-
scriptive, he then draws a beautiful picture of a negro
family living a life of listless ease on the produce of
their little plot of ground, forgetting in his enthusiasm
the state of the planter and his family all the while :
" A few acres of ground will produce provisions for a
family, with some surplus to sell at market, and bring
home manufactured goods ; the negroes who earn high
wages, buy or hire plots of land, and refuse to let their
daily labour for hire. There is nothing in this singular
or culpable." Rising then to a loftier flight, his lord-
ship says or sings :
" Nor, were the damage to end here, would tl:e British
Government have any cause to feel disappointment. Carry-
ing into effect the religious and benevolent views of the na-
tion at large, it was their object to convert slaves into free-
men ; 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. On this, the principal question of all, there is, I
am happy to say, no room for doubt. None of the most in-
veterate opponents to our recent measures of emancipation
allege that the negroes have turned robbers, or plunderers,
or blood-thirsty insurgents. What appears from their state-
ment is, that they have become shopkeepers, and petty traders
and hucksters, and small freeholders—A BLESSED CHANGE,
whief, Providence has enabled us to accomplish."
P.m* ..er Knibh, brother Knibb, you have a formiS
• h-re. We had no notion that. his lordship
at at' expo-ition ; and should like much
~.„I.iendam at one of his field •preachings. There
is a vein of tenderness in his style, which marks him
a, a brother calculated to be powerful among the sis-
. The " coal-black roses" will flock to his private
tatious, and gather unto his love-feasts. In a
-ivisyquent verse, his lordship, we perceive, speaks
toi etully of " an advance in numbers" among the
black population—" under th institution of marriage."
Stich being his choice of subjects, Lord John may be
assured that he will never lack hearers !

• „ -
13 :It our readers mos; be marvelling what all this
means. It is soon explained. Governor Light had
applied to Lord John Russell for information as to the
measures which Government proposed to adopt in or-
der to facilitate the immigration of labourers into Bri-
tish Guiana; and thereupon Lord John forwards him
the despatch from which we have culled the foregoing
flowers of rhetoric. The answer, in point of fact,
amounts to this : that all measures which have been
proposed, or which are likely to be proposed, for the
introduction of labourers into the West Indies, will
prove failures, and that it is of no consequence if they
do. "Itis an important," remarks his lordship, with
a lack-a-daisical air, "hut still A SECONDARY QUES-
TION, to consider how- we can maintain the natural
prosperity of, our West India colonies, promote the
cultivation of products for which the climate is adapt-
ed, and keep up, if not increase, the' consumption of
British manufactures." The coolness of this is equal
to anything Lord Palmerston has done : to go beyond
the ,latter is impossible.
So, here is a British minister declaring that the pro-
sperity of important colonies and the consumption of
British manufactures are SECONDARY to the security
of indolence, ease, and enjoyment to the African race.
Hear his lordship speak again :
" Let me, then, look at this question largely." (Oh !my
lord, Oh !) "It is stated—l take it only for illustration—
that the wages of a day labourer are, in Guiana, is 6d per
day, and in Hindostan not more than 2d. When you should
have removed to Guiana a large number of labourers, they-
are.still to be free labourers ; the soil is fertile, the climate
invites to indolence; the African race loves ease and enjoy-
ment, at least as much as any other; you have still no cer-
tainty-for your sugar crop. In the mean time, it is a mere
matter of calculation to the capitalist what sugar will cost
him to raise in Hindostan, to bring to England, and to clear
of duty ; and whether, all this done, he can compete success-
fully with the Demerara planter. If he can, the sugar busi-
ness will rise in Bengal, and the Coolie remain at home ; the
plantation will be found for the labourer, and not the
labourer to the plantation. Changes in commeroe as great
as this took place when woollen manufacturers came from
Saxony to England, and fabrics of silk went from the East
to France."
-Of all the cants that ever were canted in this cant-
ing world, save us from the cant of the politico-econo..
mist 1

BRITISH GUIANA.

(From the Guiana Chronicle.)
-We believe we can now put forth the statement, without
fear of contradiction, that brighter.prospects'never dawned on
this province, than are now presented to the mind's eye of
our proprietary body. The labouring population of the
colony, it is. true, do not work as sedulously and regularly as
they did in the day of coercion ; nay, we will go farther, and
any, that they evince much laziness and fickleness in their
various employments as well the labourer in the field, as the
domestic servant.
Will this indolence and unsteadiness continue? We do
not think it. Let them but behold the work which they
reject, or indolently spin out, eagerly grasped at, and in-
dustriously performed by, the rival workman from another
land, and a different and opposite mode of action will be soon
adopted. No sooner did the American immigrants arrive in
Trinidad, than, from sheer shame, the former sluggard in the
field, became the active rival of the new corner.
The same beneficial result may be anticipated here. We
are now in the daily receipt of numerous labourers from Bar-
bados,—and in constant expectation of the negro population
of the United States. The accession of these, independent
of their own exertions, will soon bring our peasantry to their
senses. A year and a half of transition has gone by—the new
freeman must now he taught that something more than mere
vegetation is ex ected from him.
Under all circumstances, • this country is now likely to be-
come one of the first sugar-growing colonies attached to the
British Crown. Of boundless extent and inconceivable fer-
tility, a full supply of labour can make it what no other de-
pendency of England can become. In the other West lndia
possessions, not only is great labour required in the produc-
tion of the staple commodities, but even with hands they can.
not ining their produce to perfection, without the artificial
accession of manure. there, no such auxiliary is required;
the land of this province almost spontaneously produces the
cane, and the labour of the peasant is only necessary for keep-
ing it el:Auk; during its growth, and cutting it down when
fit for the mill. We speak not, of course, of the drainage ;
but in this department, an improvement, likely to save much
e‘ :1 t noilival labour, has been effected.
t,,.1 at the addition to our population—at the
• t sty ,if our soil—at the improvements hourly made
• in machinery—we are fully borne out in asserting, that a
great „ea my awaits this splendid province.

COUNTY AND POLICE ItATES.—By the new bill recently
iiitroauced into the House of Commons by Lord J. Russell
,d Mr. Fox Maule, " for the further amendments of the
ria idg to the relief of the poor in England," it appears
• iohition to tile enormous power already vested in the
board of guardians of unions and parishes, under the poor-
- law-anienduient act, they are by the 26th section to have the
pad ment of " all county rates and borough rates, and all rates
wade in cities, boroughs, and towns, or in liberties and fran-
cnis,s, in nature of county rates, and all police rates," and
they " shall have the -same powers, authorities, and reme-
dies.' as overseers, " for obtaining contributions from parishes
I ‘.. the rehei of the. poor, and all precepts and warrants of
J,lsriees far the levyin2-, collecting, and paying of county rates
ex °wet rete• aforesaid."