The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-05-31 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

The Rev. Henry Carpenter begs to acknowledge the receipt
of a letter signed " A Friend," with an enclosure of £5
for the Church Missionary Society ; and to express thanks
on the part of the society as well for the gift as for the
Christian feeling with which the writer regards the labours
of the society in seeking the salvation of the heathen.
We have received a communication recommending Dr.
Gouthwaite as the fittest person to be appointed physician
to the Infirmary, in the place of the late Dr. Baird, on the
ground that he is one of the oldest medical officers at-
tached to any of the public charities. With every respect
for the claims of Dr. Gouthwaite upon the trustees of the
Infirmary, we feel that we cannot interfere.
" Viator" complains that a coachmaker's shop in Roe-street
is being taken down without the slightest provision being
made for the safety of the public by fencing off a portion
of the flag-way and street. If this be so, it is a clear in-
fraction of the law, and doubtless-the proper authorities
will put the law into execution.

Vic Eibtrpool &tanDatli.

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 31, 1842.

The public, and especially those interested in the
welfare of our colonial possessions, will be gratified to
notice that at length the impudent domination of the
Romish priesthood in the colony of Newfoundland is
to be put down, and the legislative functions of its As-
sembly restored to the hands of the respectable inha-
bitants. For the laSt ten years, under a constitution
framed upon the most approved whig-radical pattern,
the colony in question has been a perfect hotbed of
turbulence and misrule. Priestly tyranny has ridden
rough-shod oveAndte feelings, and the personal liberties
even, of those of its population who were not prepared
to prostrate themselves at the feet of the Dagon of
Popery—to feed it with offerings, and fill with incense
its drunken ear. By that constitution, the property,
the peace, and the prosperity of the colony, were virtu-
ally handed over to the rabble mob, who exercised the
legislative functions, and distributed Lynch law at the
dictation of the eleves of Maynooth. To such a pitch,
in fact, had the monstrous insolence of the Rordish
faetion risen, that the late whig governor reported last
year to a whig colonial secretary, the absolute impossi-
bility of again calling the assembly together under such
a constitution as the existing one !

We have given, in full, in our parliamentary sum-
mary, the speech of the colonial secretary, Lord Stan-
ley, on Thursday night, in introducing an amended
constitution for this colony, to the details of which we
beg to direct the attention of our readers. Under the
existing Whig constitution, the House of Assembly, it
will be seen, consisted of " low and, to a certain ex-
tent, uneducated persons. Some of them could not
write their names, and others had been returned who
were menial servants, and asked leave of their masters
to take their seats in the house !" Such a house, we
need scarcely say, has throughout its legislative exist-
ence, been the mere registering tool of the Romish
hierarchy, by whose influence over the consciences of
the wretched paupers who compose the majority of the
constituency, and by the system of terrorism which
they instituted to deter the respectable inhabitants from
any expression of opinion, its members were returned.

The bill proposed by Lord Stanley, with a view of
remedying this state of things, so disastrous to the
prosperity and the peace of the colony, has been read a
first and second time; and with the exception of a few
despairing howls from the learned member for Cork,
as the organ of the Popish party in the House of Com-
mons, is not, we are confident, fated to receive any
material opposition. The day is gone by when that
beggarman could dictate terms to a British government ;
and whiggery, even, is at this moment too delighted at
its escape from the hug of the great dragon—too happy
at its present immunity from the sweep of his tail—to
be anxious once more to fraternize with him in so
hopeless a cause as the defence of that rank Popish
job, the Whig constitution, which delivered over the
colony of Newfoundland to the tender mercies and the
discretion of its Romish priesthood.

The state of society in our West India Colonies, it
is well known, is one which has been formed upon the
superlative pattern, favoured by those pious and en-
lightened people the anti-slavery party. The emanci-
pated population of these colonies were to exhibit to
the world an example of the high state of usefulness
and refinement of which the negro character was capa-
ble; and we may fairly conclude that the condition of
that population at the present moment, developed as it
has been by the aid of all the appliances which a Whig
stipendiary magistracy, Whig teachers and sectarian
preachers could bring to- the task, is one which the
pseudo-philanthropists of the anti-slavery party will
scarcely be inclined to treat as any other than the de-
velopement of the real character of that race.

Let us examine, then, what is the state of society in
British Guiana, as exhibited by the last accounts from
that colony. It is well known that within the last two
or three years the staple production of British Guiana,
as well as that of the whole of our West India Colonies,
has been rapidly decreasing, owing to the disinclination,
evinced by the emancipated labourers, to that continu-
ous labour required in sugar cultivation. We could
give here a dozen of instances in which estates, once

flourishing and valuable, have been reduced by this
. .

want of continuous labour to comparative desolation
and worthlessness ; but the following, from the Guiana
Times of the 6th April, must suffice.
" On the 23rd ult., Plantation Enfield, in the county of
13crbice, advertised for months previously in the colony
newspapers, and in the gazettes of London and Amster-
dam, a plantation, which, in 1829, had been purchased for
£22,000 sterling, of which the new sugar machinery alone
had cost £3,000, and on which there were claims to the
amount of £15,000, was knocked down, at open execution
sale, before a large concourse of planters and merchants,
for 8,200 dollars, scarcely £2,000 sterling, not the original
cost of the new machinery alone. The poor gentleman, its
late proprietor, had been worth, we are told. £15,000 when
he became connected with it. He sank his all in it."
The county of Berbice, be it remarked, has been

held up by the anti-slavery people as the pattern county
of British Guiana. The price of labour here has never
ranged so high as in other portions of the colony. No
turn-out has taken place. The price of sugar, coffee,
&c., in the home market has been unprecedentedly
high ; and yet, owing to the difficulty of procuring
continuous labour, cultivation of the staples is so un-
profitable, even in this pattern county, that an estate
valued at £30,000 a few years ago, will now produce
no more than £2OOO !

But here, it may be said, may have been expensive
management, embezzlement by agents, and other evils
of the absentee system, so common in the West Indies.
Show us a plantation, of which there are now so many,
the absolute property of emancipated negro proprietors !
These estates, we reply, furnish none of the staple pro-
ducts ! Their proprietors content themselves with the
production of provisions merely—yams, plaintains, &c.
—and the British West Indies, in such hands, must
shortly cease to be exporting colonies at all, and neces-
sarily cease, at the same time, to be importing colo-
nies." The Guiana Times, of the 13th April, informs
us that, of the
many freeholders, scattered up and
down the three counties, the utmost that can be said
is this, that they work with more or less assiduity as
jobbers, on neighbouring plantations, where, notwith-
standing, their exertions, however praiseworthy, are
so far from making up for the natural indolence of the
vast
majority of their brethren, that every district of
the country exhibits a constant decay of productive
power." And again, with respect to the larger free-
holders—the purchasers of entire properties—from
whom, if from any set of proprietors, it will be said,
we ought to expect the maintenance of the old staple
products, the same authority says, that, " to a motion
for a return of the quantity of exportable produce
grown on the freeholds of such persons, the answer
would be—Nil."

The Guiana Times continues, in his publication of
the same date, to remark upon the prospects of the
rising generation ; and we would call the serious at-
tention of the real philanthropists of Great Britain to
this passage :

" A very few years, at the furthest, will see the colony
cleared of the present race of official men. They, the truly-
censurable absentees, will have retired to another country,
loaded with the wealth levied by forced contributions on the
betray. We wonder whether
icto
emvmerusntirtiykewshtohseein,to cause
theywhat a state of society they will leave