The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-30 00:00:00

FREE •LABOUR IN THE COLONIES.

On Saturday a very numerously attended meeting of
merchants, bankers, and others, of the city of London,
anxious to uphold the system of free labour in the British
colonial possessions, and to prevent this country from be-
coming dependent for its supply of sugar and coffee upon
the extension of cultivation by means of slavery and the
slave trade, was held in the large upper room of the Lon-
don Tavern, Bishopsgate-street. The spacious room was
crowded and Mr. Thomas Baring, M.P. was called on to
preside. Among the movers and seconders of the res Au-
tions were Mr. S. Gurney, Mr. W. Cotton, Sir E. N.
Buxton, Sir H. Sykes Thornton, Mr. Alderman Thomp-
son, Mr. Masterman, Mr. R. D. Mangles, M.P., Mr.
J. Gurney Hoare, Sir C. Price, and Mr. C. Barclay. Mr.
Bright, M.P., addressed the meeting amidst great inter-
ruption, and contended that sugar like every thing else
should be brought under the operation of free trade.
The first resolution was to the effect that, " whilst it is
desirable to obtain an abundant and cheap supply of sugar
and coffee, the system of free labour which had been ob-
tained at so great a sacrifice ought to be maintained."
The other resolutions which were carried unanimously
were the following :
" That it appears from the evidence of the Select Com-
mittee on Sugar and Coffee Planting appointed by the
House of Commons in February last, and from the pub-
lished despatches of the governors of Her Majesty's
tropical possessions, that the competit'on consequent
upon the act of 1846, between the forced and unrequited
labour of slaws in Cuba an:. Brazil, and the paid labour
of our emancipated negroes' has already brought the
British colonies, which had been previously struggling
with the difficulties of their new position, to the brink of
ruin, and endangered the existence of those civil and
religious institutions on which the future welfare and
progress of their inhabitants depend."
" That the inhuman traffic in slaves, which in the years
1844 and 1845 had been more effectually checked than at
any antecedent period, has—according to the evidence
given before the committee by Lord Palmerston, Her
Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs—actually
doubled in amount dnring the last two years."
" That to stimulate, on the other hand the demand for
slaves in Cuba and Brazil, by enhancing the value of the
products of their labour, and on the other hand to make
a show of checking the supply of slaves from Africa to
those countries by armed intervention, is en inconsistency
which impugns either the honesty or the common sense of
the people of this country, and renders their policy a
matter of suspicion to foreign powers."
"That unless the Sugar Duties Act of 1846. be prompt-
ly and materially altered it is manifest that the production
of the British possessions will greatly decline—that we
shall speedily become dependent for our supplies of Sugar
upon slave-trading countries, and that the consumer must
pay an increased price, at least until additional slaves can
be transported from Africa to extend cultivation in Cuba
and Brazil.
"'That the interests and honour of the British empire
are alike concerned in averting the destruction of the
agriculture and trade of the colonies, and in securing the
full success of the great experiment of emancipation ;
the failure of which would indefinitely postpone the abo-
lition of slavery throughout the world."
" That this meeting, while it would most strongly de-
precate any system of immigration which might lead to a
renewal of the African slave trade by a payment in money
or otherwise for a supply of labourers from that continent,
and while it would be opposed to any enactment in the
colonies which may be incomp ,tible with freedom and the
act of emancipation, is nevertheless of opinion that, in
order to enable the British colonies to compete successfully
with the slave-trading countries, it is highly desirable that
her Majesty's government should give prompt encourage-
ment to the introduction of suitable free labourers under
proper supervision ; that just relations should be main-
tained between employer and labourer to secure to both
the benefits of freedom and industry; and that every local
improvement' which can tend to reduce the cost of pro-
duction should be prompted by generous assistance on the
part of the mother country."
Here are a few facts from the speech delivered by Mr.
Samuel Gurney :
" Since 1846 a great change had taken place on the sub-
ject of the slave-trade. Up to that time the slave-trade
had been checked by the British and other governments ;
and the Brazils and Spain, not by treaty, but by acts,
would have abandoned the traffic if their sugar had been
admitted to this country at that time. The government
of this country had thrown away, then, a goldn opportu-
nity, but not, he hoped, so completely as not to be able to
get it hack. He would read them a few statistics of the
slave-trade in recent years. In 1845 the number of slaves
that crossed the Atlantic was estimated at 45,000. In 1847
the number was 60,000, by official reports, but by private
and well-authenticated accounts it was 70.000. He would
wish them to consider well what the slave-trade really was.
He would mention one or two cases, by way of elucidation.
One of our admirals, within the present month, had written
to his government that he had a slaver in tow of 60 tons
burden, with 317 individuals on board. The system of
packing those individuals was such as to make them almost
a solid mass of human corruption. Some few remained
alive. He knew cases in which nine out of ten of the per-
sons composing cargoes of slaves died on the voyage. If
such vessels of 60 tons were employed to transport the
60,000 slaves in 1847, the meeting might form some calcu-
lation as to the amount of deaths. He only told half the
evils of the slave-trade when he mentioned the horrors
and deaths during the Atlantic voyage. What if he told
them of the wars and cruelties excercised in Africa—
of the ruin committed in that country to get possession of
those unfortunate individuals—if he told them all they
would see that for every 70,000 exported from Africa an
equal number had been destroyed. He believed that the
consfy vcn se of the African slave trade, as now carried on,
was at least 1,000 deaths a-day."