The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-05-14 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY-14, 1833.

Ministers seem resolved to precipitate the country head-
long to destruction. They are not content that it should
linger on and perish piecemeal ; they.are determined to
have a general conflagration and a sanguinary catastrophe.
The plan for emancipating the slave labourers of the
West Indies came out on Friday last, and will be found
in another part of this day's STANDARD. It is a scheme
of robbery—of wilful and direct robbery—of confiscation
as palpable and unequivocal as is to be found in the his-
tory of the world.
It is no consolation to be told that such a measure can
never pass into a law merely because it is impracticable.
The evil is committed by its promulgation. When the
packet which sails to-morrow shall have conveyed the
scheme to Jamaica and the other slave colonies, the lighted
torch will be raised, and a wild uproar of savage rebel-
lion be the inevitable consequences. Exasperation on
the one hand, and inebriated joy on the other—fear and
excess—resistance and retaliation—revenge and plunder
—will cause scenes of devastation and suffering, and ul
timate destitution, such as were not exceeded by those of
St. Domingo in the time of the French convention.
All-children under
.six years of age are to be declared
free.

The slave, is to work for his master only 41 days
out of the six ; the remaining time to.be at his own dis-
posal, or he may claim labour for it from his master, and
fixed wages. Every slave is to be valued, and his price
paid by instalments ; and so long as these instalments are
regularly paid, the slave will be held to be absolutely
free. The power of corporal punishment is to be taken
altogether from the master and vested in the magistrate.
The labourer is either to have one-fourth of the day, or
one-fourth of the week, to himself, as shall be settled by
contract.

In order to carry these wild views into effect, it is pro-
posed that a loan of fifteen millions sterling shall be made
to the colonial planter and proprietor, but how this loan
is to be appropriated nothing is yet explained, nor is it
stated whether the mortgagee is to take any benefit un-
der the loan_

The.most absurd part of the plan is, that the slave is to
pay the pric6 of his freedom out of his labour, which la-
bour, in the first instance, is taken from the owner. This
is like paying a man a hundred pounds for an acre of free-
hold land;. but allowing the purchaser to pick the pocket
of the seller of a pound a week until the stipulated price
is paid. Such folly, or rather such wickedness, was never
heard of before.

But how are the fifteen millions to be raised ? Mini-
sters do not condescend to favour us with any informa-
tion on this point. Lord Althorp is reduced to srtch
straits that he' cannot afford to reduce two millions of
taxes—rather than part with this sum he threatens to
break up the administration—and yet the noble lord and
his colleagues propose to borrow fifteen millions in order
to liberate and demoralize the happy and well-fed blacks of
the West Indies. Now, the question is, could the colonies
raise this large sum at present with all the advantages of
slave labour well secured ? We contend that they could
How, then, is the money to be raised and the in-
terest paid, by a community of persons who, bad and em-
barrassed as they are at present, will be placed in a much
worse situation by the contemplated measure, under which
they are to be deprived of one-fourth of the slave's labour ?
No explanation is given.
In the contemplated loan, ministers must have it in view
to saddle the interest of the loan upon, the mother coun-
try. Are the people of England prepared to bear this
new and unnecessary burthen ? Suppose the money is
borrowed at 6 per cent., and we do not see how it can be
borrowed at much less, this would impose upon us addi-
tional taxes of £900,000. Are we prepared for this ?
We shall see.

Nothing is said in the ministerial.plan about aged and
infirm negroes. What is to be done for them? The
young blood is to be let loose, but the son who is allowed
to purchase his own freedom is not compelled to provide
for his parents.
On the whole it is a monstrous piece of folly, the effects
of which will be dreadful, and of which we predict the
people of this country will heartily repent when it is too
late. Yesterday an extraordinary meeting of the West
India interest in Liverpool, the fullest indeed ever held
here, took place, at which the greatest dissatisfaction was
expressed, and the ministerial plan universally condemn-
ed. No resolutions, however, were passed, as the meet-
ing had a perfect reliance on the judgment of their depu-
ties at present in London.

FROIL the very first moment that we saw the Times
newspaper espousing the cause of the unfortunate Sir
John Cam Hobhouse, formerly secretary at war, lately.
secretary fur Ireland, and now nobody, we gave him up
as a lost man. Those who have watched the career of
that factietia journal with any attention cannot have failed
to obsv-ve, that it never advocates a good measure with-
out injuring it, and never supports an individual whom
it does hot degrade or destroy. Let us glance at a few
instances.in illustration.

It supported Hobhouse at Bath, and reviled his oppo-
nent Roebuck in the mOst scurrilous terms ;--zßoebuck
was returned, and Hobhouse rejected. lt furiously as-
sailed Mr. Lyall in the London contest, and represented
Mr. Alderman Venables as the fittest of all possible per-
sons to represent the reformers of the capital ; but Ve-
nables was kicked out, and Lyall returned by a very large
majority. It fought: poor Mr. Babbage against Mr. Ser-
geant Spankie in the Finsbury district, bUt the lawyer
floored the philosopher to the unbOunded sorrow of
Printing-house-square. It embraced the cause of Squire,
now Lord Western, in. lissexi-and ruined- him •in double
quick time. It supp,irted Mr: Murray, the vvhig candidate
for Marylebone, with great-zeal and fury, in opposition to
Sir Samuel Whalley, who came off victorious, leaving
Mr. Murray, the Times, Burdett,,Ebrington, and.all the
ministerial hacks, in a lamentable and unexpected mi •
nority. Captain Berkeley :vas among those who had
the misfortune to be praised and bedaubed by the Times