The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-05-12
STATE OF THE WEST INDIES.

Mr.. T.. Buxton, son OF the late Thomas
POWELL Buxton, made a speech in the British
House of Commons, on the Sd of March, from
which we present an extract:
Mr.. Buxton said, in rising to move for a
committee to inquire into the present state OF
the West Indies, and the best means of pro-
noting immigration, he would first of all touch
on the former part of his motion. 1t was very
common to hear it said, that emancipation had
been failure. He read, not long ago, in one
of our leading periodicals, that the philan-
thropists had been the ruin of the West Indies.
There was floating impression in the public
mind, that Freedom had plunged the West In
dian planters into hopeless penury, and the
negroes into kind of voluptuous barbarism.
1t was not surprising that such notion should
prevail No one could deny, that in l847 and
the ensuing years the owners of West Indian
property were thrown in state of the utmost
distress, and, of course, since Slavery was done
away IN 1884, and that crash fell within thir-
teen years afterwards, the world could not but
assume that emancipation had caused the
events that followed SO hard upon it the more
SO because the abolition of Slavery caught the
eyes of the whole people every one bore it in
mind, whereas that which really came like a
tfdnderbolt upon the planters was much less
within ken. That which really struck the
planters down was the enormous fall in the
price of sugar, which in 1910 was 49S. per ewt.
without the duty,) and in 1913 was 23S.
5d.-a fall of more than one-half. He had
given long and minute study to the history of
the West Indies during the last fifteen Years,
and the thing which had most struck him, and
which could not have failed to strike any one
who made the same investigation, was the close
parallel between the history, during that period.
of the West Indies, and of Ireland. In each
country the very same causes had wrought the
very same efects-had brought about the same
ruinous the same rotten state of affairs. Each
country was at length overtaken by great
calamity, which at the time seemed fatal
Each country-the old order of things having
been swept away by that calamity-each coun-
try was now rising steadily and swiftly to a high
degree of wealth. In the West Indies, lust as
in Ireland, but to an even greater extent, the
proprietors used to be absentees but what
made that more disastrous in the case of the
West Indies was, that the planter could not let
his sugar estate, but was obliged to carry on
the costly and precarious processes, not merely
OF culhvating the sugarcane, but of manufac-
turing the sugar at his own cost, under his own
hand, by means of agents. And so hard was il
to find any man who at once understood the
management of sugar estate who was willing
to live IN the West Indies, who was Trustworthy.
SOBER and energetic-so hard was it TO find
such agents, that he believed, in five cases out
OF SIX, the estates were scandalously managed.
Those who had gone deeply into the history of
the West Indies were, he believed, of one
mInd-that 1t was this, far more than any other
cause, that cut the very roots of West in
dian prosperity. The absenteeism of the planters
led to a host Of other evils, and, as one of the
-. Al
American traveller, declared, it could not have
failed some day to bring about general bank
ruptcy and ruin. There was another trait of
West Indian society just like that of Ireland in
the days gone by. Almost without exception,
the sugar estates were heavily encountered.
Most of them were mortgaged far beyond their
value. The owners of the estates were always
struggling with an incubus of debt which they
could not possibly shake off. The effect of all
that was, that even when monopoly and Slavery
were at their zenith-when even the sugar of
our own oriental dominions was not allowed to
compete with theirs on the same level-eyen
then, petted assthey were by the laws of Eng
land, the West Indies were continually coming
TO the Government of the country with the most
doleful lamentations. That state of things was
the legacy which Slavery and Monopoly bad
left behind them and then, when the price of
sugar ShNdSul1 lcll W less IMAM OuG-DdlI WldL
1T had been a few years before, the effect was
precisely analogous to that of the famine in
Ireland The projectors were thrown into
deep distress All society was unhinged. The
crash was terrible. But there as in our sister
country, the consequence was that the owner
ship of the soil changed hands. 1t passed from
those who were abSenteeS, drowned in debt it
came into the hands of those who were for the
most part resident, and free from those tram.
mels
And now What was the result? The result was,
that although labor was still free, that although
trade was still free or, rather, he would saw be-
cause labor was free, and because trade was free,
the West Indies were now rising to a pitch of
wealth and happiness unknown to them before
1t would be impossible for him to lay beforethe
House the immense mass of evidence which de-
rnonstrated that fact He was assured of it by
men; he found it strongly set forth
in the reports from the Governors of the islands,
which used to be full of dismay, and were now
bright with cheerfulness and hope. But the
keystone of the arch consisted of the statistics
furnished by the Board of Trade, which showed
that the imports and exports together of the
West Indies and Guiana had amounted in the
four years ending with 1853 to 932.5OO 600.
and in the four years ending with 1857 to
E37 900, O0O-an increase of e4,50O, 900 in the
four years; and, further, that the annual ex-
ports of sugar, coffee, cotton, rum, and cocoa.
had greatly increased of late years So much
had been said of the ruinous state of these
islands, that perhaps the House would be sur
prised to learn that the exports from Great
Britaip to the West Indies in 1857 exceeded
her exports, in that year. to Sweden. NORWAY.
Denmark, Greece, the Azores, Madeira. and
Morocco, all combined. Or perhaps it would
give a more vivid idea of the value to us of
these islands, if he mentioned that our exports
to them in 1857 equalled our exports to the
Channel islands, Malta, the Ionian islands, the
Mauritius, the Gold Coast, the Gambia, Sierra
Leone, and what are called. our sundry posses
sions, all together. Considering what mere
specks the West Indies look in the map of
America, twas astonishing that their trade to and
fro should now actually amount to Gl0, 735, 600
That was the value of their commerce in the
year 1857. He would only add, that in 1857.
the value of the sugar imported into this country
from our West Indies amounted to e5,6I8, 900.
Surely all this demonstrated that free labor was
holding its own, in spite of the competition of
Slavery, Probably it would be said that all
this was mainly due to the immigrants. In the
last FIVE years, $4,000 immigrants had come
to all our West Indies including a large
number of women and children. 1t was alto
getner aoSuru 10 imagine that TINS great pros
perity was owing to the labors of those few
thousand men, and, in fact the islands which
had not received immigrants were quite as
tlonrlshing as those that had. Clearly, then,
our West Indies were possessions of immense
and increasing value. The committee might
inquire, however briefly, into this point, and
report to the country whether it was true or
not that free labor and free trade were bring
ing about a great prosperity. He was aware
that this proposal would meet with strong re.
Sistance. for he had often notnod thn4 ,,otI;r,oz