THE

THE Session of Parliament having commenced, by a departure from the usual custom, in November, 1847, and being adjourned for the Christmas holydays, the two Houses resumed business again on the 3rd of February. The condition of the West Indian Colonies was the first subject that occupied the attention of the House of Commons, a motion being brought forward by Lord George Bentinck, the indefatigable advocate of that interest, for a Select Committee of Inquiry. The noble Lord, before entering upon his subject, presented three important petitions; one from the Standing Committee of the West Indian Planters, another from the merchants of Greenock, against restraints on immigration and on the employment of labour, and a third from merchants and others in Jamaica, praying for the removal of burthens, for a full supply of African labour, an alteration of the Navigation Laws, and an assimilation of the duties on colonial rum to those paid by the British distiller. The motion of Lord George Bentinck ran as follows:

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the present condition and prospects of the interests connected with, and dependent on, sugar and coffee planting in Her Majesty's East and West Indian possessions and the Mauritius; and to consider whether any and what measures can be

adopted by Parliament for their relief."

In introducing this motion to the House, Lord George first defined his own position. His personal wish, as he was aware that his motion would be unopposed by Her Majesty's Ministers, was to make no statement to the House : the observations he should make were offered only in deference to what he believed to be the general desire of the House and of the parties at large interested in the question. It had been represented to him by the colonial interest that the planters were in extremis, and that whilst redress was under discussion by the Committee that great interest would perish. His motion had, indeed, been termed pusillanimous. It was, however, for himself to consider what was his power to obtain any substantial relief by a direct vote of the House. In July 1846, only five gentlemen connected with the West or the East Indian interests had voted with him in a minority of 130 against the majority of 265, who then negatived the protection now sought: he thought, therefore, that the West Indian interests had no right to blame him on the present occasion. He had no reason to suppose that the minority had been converted into a majority; but, to justify inquiry, he pointed to the extremity of the West Indies, to the failure of fifty great houses in this country, with liabilities exceeding 6,300,000l., and

to the change in the public feeling on the subject of slavery and slavetrading; at the last general election not a wrod was said on the subject; those who were omnipotent in 1832, were powerless in 1847. In proposing his inquiry, he wished it to be distinctly understood that he neither precluded himself nor wished to preclude others, if a substantial measure for immediate and effectual relief should be brought forward, from lending their support to any such proposal. He hoped that he should be able, through the instrumentality of a Committee of inquiry, to prevail upon the House to change its policy with regard to this great question. He did not seek to enforce the distinction between slavegrown and free-grown sugar, because that attempt would be followed by the overthrow of the Government-which he did not

desire.

Alluding to the petition from Jamaica, Lord George declared that he could not agree with the demand for the repeal of the Navigation Laws; and he entered into a long statement of the rates of freight, to show that the West Indians suffer no injury from those laws. With respect to the differential duty on spirits, he thought that the British distiller would need its maintenance. He was not indisposed to give every facility for immigration, but doubted whether it would do much good. The state of Barbadoes, as densely peopled as China, shows that increased numbers will not suffice. He agreed with Mr. Merivale, the new Under-Secretary for the Colonies, that free labour never can successfully compete with slave labour. At the highest estimate, the cost of maintaining a slave in

even

the West Indies is 50s. a year; in Jamaica a free labourer is paid half-a-dollar a day, for six or seven hours' work, and he can scarcely be got to work four or five days in the week. In Cuba the slave is made to work sixteen or twenty hours a day; the driver armed with whip, cutlass, and dagger, attended by bloodhounds. That is the kind of slavery which we are stimulating by the admission of slave-grown sugar into this country. However, there is no objection to immigration. Sir Charles Metcalfe declared, in 1840, that the fertile soil of Jamaica could provide for any multitude, without diminishing the comforts of the exist ing population; and similar reports were made from other colonies. But the cost of immigration is too great for the planters to bear, especially with the obligation to send back the immigrants at the end of five years. He did not know why there should be this delicacy about removing an African, a Cooly, or Chinaman, when he is only transferred from one hot climate to another, and no such delicacy is shown to the British soldier, who is bound to remain ten years in an uncongenial climate.

Lord George adverted to the case of the East Indies, invited by Parliament to exert themselves in producing free-labour sugar-contending that the faith of Parliament was as much pledged to them to enable them to repay themselves for the outlay of that capital, as it was pledged to repay the fundholder the debt that was due to him.

In July last, Mr. Hawes had described the Mauritius as being in a state of most flourishing prosperity; since that, out of six great firms in the Mauritius trade, but one re

mained standing: the liabilities of those that had fallen are estimated at 2,900,0001. ; Ministers have been obliged to advance 450,000l. on sugar to enable the colony to go on, and to supply rice from India for the food of the labourers. That fact showed how utterly Ministers had been in the dark respecting the true state of Her Majesty's colonial possessions, and would alone justify inquiry.

He wanted the inquiry also as a bridge of retreat for Ministers and the free-traders. He would not hint to them that it should be a bridge such as acted as a guide to a certain proposition in Euclid. They wanted no bridge for the blockheads who had predicted all the evils that had occurred; they must have a bridge for the men of brains, which the hon. Member for the West Riding of Yorkshire and his friends might be permitted to pass over; but certainly not with colours flying, or drums beating, nor with bands playing "See the Conquering Hero comes," or the tune of Coeur de Lion," with which the hon. Gentleman was, he believed, greeted abroad; but they might be permitted to pass over with arms reversed, and with muffled drums, muttering perhaps between their teeth, "If our cause is of God, it will live; but if not, it must perish." Their cause was not of God, and therefore it must perish. To make out the failure of the recent measures of free trade, Lord George plunged into an immense mass of statistical details. Against cheap sugar, he set off the failure of our great merchants for more than 6,300,000l., asked how free trade had benefited Lancashire, now in so miserable a state; whether it had fulfilled the promise of

opening the trade of Brazil? Comparing the sixteen months before with the sixteen months after the admission of slave-grown sugar, there had been a gross decrease in the production of cotton goods to the amount of 1,339,244 pounds, against an increase of 168,082 pounds: taking into account the enhanced price of raw cotton, the balance remaining for wages and profits had declined by 1,871,0037.

Lord George assailed the system for suppressing the slave trade, calculating, with a great array of figures, that from first to last it had cost this country 100,000,0001. He proposed a substitute for the ineffective blockade of Africa. They would never put down the slave trade so long as it depended upon blockading 10,260 miles of coast. He would, as Captain Pilkington recommended, strike a blow at the head and not at the hand. He would not send an army to destroy every individual hornet, but go to the hornets' nest at once, and smother that nest of the slave trade which now existed in Cuba. He had read in the Times an extract

from United States paper,

an

of it we should only be distraining for a just debt, of which we had long demanded payment in vain. We might then emancipate the slaves of Cuba; and having thus destroyed slavery itself in that quarter of the world, there would be no difficulty in allowing the British merchant to go to Africa, for the purpose of obtaining there, by the offer of good wages and other advantages, a number of free Africans to cultivate his estates.

Sir Charles Wood, though not opposing the appointment of the Committee, guarded himself against the supposition that the Government meant to recede from the course which they had chosen in 1846, and thought that he should be showing most kindness to the West Indians by stating distinctly what were the views and intentions of the Ministry. He declined to follow his noble Friend through many of those topics which he had presented to the House, especially as he thought that no sound inferences, with regard to the future, could be drawn from the state of trade during the last twelve months. The extraordinary fall in the price of sugar, for example, he regarded as transitory, because he thought it owing to the generally disastrous state of commerce during the autumn. As great a fall was to be found in the prices of other articles; in indigo, 25 per cent.; in rice, 26; in sago, 51; and in tea 48 per cent. The houses in the Mauritius trade had fallen from causes totally independent of the price of sugar; and in like manner the West Indies had suffered from the failure of the West India Bank.

As to the grievances of the West Indies, Sir Charles contended that they had been much exaggerated;

resting his case partly on a pamphlet entitled Ministers and the Sugar Duties." The curtailment of the apprenticeship," he said, "had worked well; the anticipation formed, in 1844, that there would be a large increase in the production of free-labour sugar, had not been confirmed; and the distinction between free-labour and slavelabour sugar had proved to be incompatible with treaties. As the question of slavery had to be omitted from consideration, they were led to consider solely whether there should be protection or no protection. The proposal of the West Indians was to fix the differential duty at 10s. per cwt., or 10l. per ton; the avowed object being to enhance the price by that amount. Last year the consumption of sugar amounted to 290,000 tons; the proposed enhancement of price, therefore, would be equivalent to a tax of 2,900,000l., or say, in round numbers, 3,000,000l. On the other hand, diminished protection had benefited the revenue, which had risen from 3,743,3627. in 1845, to 4,596,6967. in 1847, despite the great distress. Her Majesty's Ministers held that duties should be imposed with reference to revenue alone. Government intended to propose such an alteration in the Navigation Laws as would completely put an end to any discontent springing from that source. He should be happy to extend the use of molasses to brewers; but he thought that it would not be practicable, as molasses could not, like sugar, be made to bear an amount of duty equal to that on malt: but the experience of the past year had shown that there was no difficulty in admitting molasses into distilleries; he proposed, therefore, to