Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1857-07-23
WASHINGTON NEWS AND GOSSIP.


movements of our great rival in commerce, and
her instruments (wherein American affairs are
cOncerned) France and Spain, with reference to
her very last conceived scheme to compass her
ends against slavery in the United States. We
mean ''the apprentice system, by and through
which she evidently aims to obtain for herself
all the industrial and commercial advantages
of African slavery, and at the same time to
strike blow at the phase in which it exists in
this country, which shall in the end demolish it
here, bringing upon our great national interests
involved with it, the ruin that has resulted to
her industrial interests in the West Indies from
her act of abolishing it there, as it existed but
few years ago.
That her intrigues in this connection can pos
sibly succeed better than her efforts to build up
In India cotton producing interest that would
rival ours, is utterly impossible. Neverthe-
less, they are of Importance in more ways than
one, and if persevered in, cannot fail to lead to
an eventual war with this country rs, to per.
NIT them to triumph, will be to surrender with
out struggle the key to the unexampled pros
perity that has marked the history of the peo-
pie of the United States from Maine to Oregon.
That prosperity-or, in other words, that so
much more rapid progress in the development
of our resources and the accumulation by our
people, individually, of wealth, than hers-is
based on our unrivaled production of cotton,
rice, and tobacco, which form the basis of our
export trade which, in turn, affords to US, from
abroad, the pecuniary means through which our
population in all sections Of the Union are en-
abled to get g fore-handed."
We may not detain the reader with q chap
ter on political economy by way of explaining
in detail how the cotton tobacco and rice. or the
production of the slave labor of the United
States, procure directly and indirectly for the
whole people their imported goods, and also
directly or indirectly furnish employment for
the mass of our shipping, and for the hundreds
Of thousands at the North whose labor fills mil
lions of mouths there with their daily bread !;
for the subject is thoroughly understood by all
who are well-read in commercial affairs.
To permit England to carry out successfully
policy aimed to strike down the basis of our
national prosperity, as above briefly explained,
will not be consented to by any party or inter
est in this country, North or South, except the
craziest AbolitiOnism; more especially when, to
do so, she must resort to what she has herself
proclaimed to be piracyin treaty with us, and
has, up to this time, treated as piracy-the
slave trade.
These last efforts of hers are also of striking
Importance, as involving, under existing cir
cumstanees, q signal admission that without
African slave labor in some way or other, the
products Of the West Indies-sugar, coffee, to-
bacco rice, &c, cannot be successfully raised
This admission is being made, not only in the
current intrigues of England upon this subject,
but in the daily publications of the leading
English prints
The London Times has assumed the cham
pionship of the scheme, and we accordingly
quote its admission on the subject as follows:
We remarked on recent occasion-and our
opinions were echoed in the arguments employed
by the deputation-that it must necessarily be diff
hcult to extinguish a supply where no other pro-
vision is made for strong and recognized de-
mand. Europe requires sugar, coffee, and rice
The West Indies can send MS these commodities,
but to do so they must have labor Such labor
was formerly provided by imports of slaves from
Africa, but this traffic we have striven to abolish
successfully at some points, unsuccessfully at
others. As long, however, as the supply Of labor
is considered identical with the supply of slaves
II is clear that the slave trade will struggle for
istence. Planters will not let their estates 90 out
of cultivation without effort but, if they could
be enabled 20 calculate on the labor they need in
any other shape, the work of suppression might
DC completely accomplished
AS things stand, il Is slave labor or nothing :;
and it was TO the substitution Of some alternative
more agreeable and promising than this that the
proposal of the deputation tended. In few
words, the suggestion was to this effect-that the
Stare trade should be abolished through the abO-
luton OF SIorery itself, and that Slorery should
be abolished By The employment Of free labor OBJ
1lnr
once the wants Of tropical agricutursts, and the
capacity and aptitude of the blacks; establish
emigration agencies in Africa, provide suitable
vessels for the passage make voluntary contracts,
see to proper faculties of return, get the services
of the African on fair conditions, and so drive
slavery out of the field altogether by putting an
END 10 the exlgencies which maintain it-such
was the proposal of the deputaton and though
We are not insensible to the difficulties in the way
we think il contains the germs of sound and sue
cesSful policy
All sensible persons must scout the idea that
savage African labor can be aught else, practi-
cally, than slave labor, it matters not under
what pretence it may be procured-imported
No argument from our pen is required to satisfy
any one who knows anything of the system of
work that must be followed to produce the sta
Piles mentioned above successfully, of the char
acteristics of imported African savages, as dis.
played In plantation life in this hemisphere,
and Of those who will work them in the West
Indies. can dream for an instant that however
imported once on West India plantation, they
will be g to all intents and purposes" slaves,
and nothing but slaves.
We call the American readers attention to
the broad admission of the Times that the end
designed to be accomplished by this new scheme
is the destruction of the system of African slave
ry now existing in this country, Brazil and Cuba;
the right to seek to do which she does not draw
from her (England'Sl slave trade treaty with
Us, the only convention under which she has
the slightest legal right to interfere directly or
indirectly with the future of the institution be-
yOnd her own dominions
Just here we may not pause to comment on
the impudcnt and infamous, no less than dan.
gerous assumption of right ON her part to strike
down our great national commercial interests
by an indirect blow by such a blow as she