The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-11-25 00:00:00

we shall be enabled to act effectually upon the de-
graded condition of the negro race in their own
benighted land.

And never, perhaps, were the instrumentalities for
the successful operation of such a policy more emi-
nently propitious than at the present moment. Ruin-
ous as is the condition of every portion of our West
Indian possessions, we see, nevertheless, in the last
advices received from them, the dawning of a brighter
era in their cultivation. Vast capitals, it is true, have
been swallowed up during the past few years. Bank-
ruptcy and insolvency have engulphed the property of
hundreds of once flourishing cultivators. But these,
visitations, even, have not resulted in unmixed evil.
With poverty waiting expectant at his door, the reso-
lute spirit of the British character has impelled the
planter at length to look his difficulties in the face,
and to enter upon a manly effort to retrieve past losses
and amend past mismanagement. The hope of better
things, to result from increased energy and increased
skill, has sprung up in him ; and, already, that hope
has not been all in vain. The cheering intelligence of
improved cropi has already reached us ; and, if the
fostering hand of the legislature be now held out,—if
the means ,of cultivation—labour—be now freely sup-
plied,—we may look forward to the revival, in the
British West Indies, of that prosperity which once
constituted these noble possessions the richest gem in
England's crown, and which alone can bring about
that consummation which we aimed at when we pro-
claimed, in the face of the world, the determination of
a united people that slavery Should no longer deform,
with its foul features, the fairest portion of the inha-
bited earth !

We have said that the encouragement to afford
immigration of labourers to the West Indies,—to ren-
der those fertile possessions the stepping-stone_ of the
degraded African from the darkness of barbarism to
the full light of freedom and civilisation—was never
greater than at the present moment. We say more.
The DUTY of the British Parliament and of the phi-
lanthropist—the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY Of such a
course as we now advocate, and for years have advo-
cated—were never more strikingly evident than now.
We stand now, as a nation, upon the verge of a new
course of commercial legislation. A principle is
abroad, and has already made some progress, which
teaches that no branch of domestic or colonial industry,
which is not self-dependent in the struggle of competi-
tion, can be permitted to be propped up by legislative
protection. Colonies, in the eye of the new philosophy
of the day, are monopolies; and, however vast may be
their value, however important the interests penned,
must be swept away unless they can emerge triumph-
antly from the ordeal to which they are to he sub-
mitted. Thus far, we have regarded our West Indian
colonies as entitled to a protection against the colonies
of other countries. Within the last two years that
protection has been preserved mainly by the consi-
deration that, in them, the great experiment of tropical
cultivation by free labour was upon trial. The West
Indies have existed, as exporting colonies, solely by the
protection thus afforded them. But we say now—we
warn alike the friends of humanity, our colonists
themselves, and the British legislature,—that no states-
man can much longer continue such protection and defy
the vast power of active hostility which is being put in
force for its removal ! The British West Indies must,
we fear, long before they can under any circumstance
be prepared for it, be driven to struggle for existence
with the Brazilian and Cuban planter—the dear labour
of free men with the labour of the slave ; and the day
which witnesses their entry upon that struggle, unaided
by a previous concession of extensive immigration,
will witness also the failure of that noble effort of
Great Britain to strike the fetters from the limbs of
the African, and the conversion of the fertile posses-
sions, in which that experiment is now being tried,

into howling wildernesses !
'l'bat period of struggle is, even now, we believe,
much nearer at hand than is suspected by those most
immediately concerned. To the government of Sir
Robert Peel we say, therefore, " give to the West
Indian, before you ask him to compete with the
Brazilian and the Cuban slave-owner, the means of
competition—a supply of labour. And to the philan-
thropist we say, abstain from throwing impediment in
the way of such a measure ; aid it—pray for it—
agitate for it—unless you would have the world
suppose that all your past professions of exclusive
regard for the welfare and the freedom of the African
were the offspring of hollow hypocrisy and disgusting
cant ."'

Since writing the above, a report of the proceedings
of the Birmingham Anti-slavery Society, held on
Friday evening last, has come before our notice, in
which we find the following remarks of Mr. Scoble—
a gentleman with whose virulent attacks upon the pro-
prietors of the British West Indies we have before
had to do. Mr. Scoble—as reported in the Midland
Counties Herald--" concluded his address by referring
to the sanction which had recently been given by the
government to the emigration of Hill Coolies from
India to the British Colonies, and which the legislature
of Trinidad had already turned to account, by imposing
laws and restrictions on the ' free ' labourers thus im-
ported, which deprived them of every thing but the name
of liberty." We do not hesitate to characterise this
as an unwarrantable libel upon the legislature of
Trinidad—a libel conceived, as are the proceedings of
nine-tenths of the humanity-mongers of the Anti-
slavery Society, in bigotted hatred of the colonists
individually and as a body, and in perfect disregard of
those great principles by which they profess that their
efforts are directed.

In our report of the proceedings of the Protestant
Association, held on Monday evening, in the Music-
hall, a suggestion was made by one of the speakers,
Mr. Howard, which we feel impelled most cordially to
impress upon the consideration of the Protestant pub-
lic of this town. If it be asked of them, to what man,
above all others, do they owe the proud position which
this borough occupies in the eyes of the nation—that
its voice in the Legislature is Conservative—and that
its local council is Conservative. The answer of every
lip will be—to the Rev. Hugh M`Neile. His eloquence,
his faithful counsel, it is, which have again and again
enabled them to bruise the head of rampant Radicalism
in our town ; which have fixed the wavering, cheered
the timed, and inspired the lethargic to press on, by
the straightforward path of principle, to the triumphs
which have thus far blessed their efforts : and we do
not overrate the character of our Protestant brethren,
when we declare our conviction, that their feelings to-
wards him is one of admiration and gratitude, worthy
of the object and of themselves.
When we see it suggested, therefore, that that feel-
ing should be recorded, by the presentation to this dis-
tinguished man, of some memorial of respectful affec-
tion from the hands of his Protestant brethren, we
cannot but earnestly pray that such a suggestion, so
honorable to its author, should not be permitted to fall
to the ground. We are confident that any testimonial,
however insignificant in value, springing from such a
source—from the affectionate gratitude of the Protes-
tants of Liverpool—would be an object of prouder
contemplation to the rev. gentleman himself, and to
those dear to him, than the highest honor, to which
his talents and character alike warrant him in aspiring,
from other hands; and, we trust, therefore, that the
opportunity of thus recording that gratitude will not
be permitted to pass by unimproved.