"The enormous importation of slaves has caused increased production of sugar, as I said before, from 20,000 tons in 1838, to 49,000 tons in 1847." He surface is no longer in this condition. It is be-bourers. [Mr. LABOUCHERE: Where is this coming less practicable to cultivate it every day, estate?] In Jamaica. I can assure the excepting on larger estates, with the aid of much House that the noble Lord is not an ilcapital, and with numerous gangs of slaves." liberal master towards his workmen. And the same authority statespaid half a dollar a day for work, though he could only get that work for from six hours and a half to seven hours a day. How, then, I ask, is free labour in Jamaica ever to compete with that of slaves in Cuba and the Brazils, where the slaves, I presume, can be maintained as cheaply as they were under slavery maintained in British colonies? And let it not be forgotten that slavery in the British colonies, after the year 1823, was of the most mitigated description. The slaves had twentysix days by law allowed them, exclusive of Sundays, and also exclusive of the usual holidays of Christmas and Easter; and this was not only the case in the Crown colonies, but in all others. In the Crown colonies the time of labour was limited to nine hours a day; but this is not the case in Cuba or Brazil. In Cuba the slaves are worked sixteen hours a day, and during crop time twenty hours a day. It is said, that a negro upon a sugar plantation lives, upon an average, for about ten years. A noble Friend of mine was in Cuba lately, and he stated that he had visited for a single day an estate of a planter in that country. He saw these wretched negroes driven to their work. There were 100 men and 8 women on the estate, and on the day that my noble Friend was there, the agent informed him that two of the men had hanged themselves; but the planter told him that such a matter was not one of rare occurrence, and if a negro hung himself, his place was soon filled up. How, then, was the slavedriver in that country prepared to enforce discipline? I remember the horror which used to be excited in this House at the idea of a slavedriver in the British colonies having in his possession a whip, though but as the emblem of his power and authority. But a whip is not enough for the slavedriver in Cuba. No driver ventures among the slaves there unless armed with his cutlass, dagger, and pistols, and closely followed by his bloodhounds. On being asked what the bloodhounds were for, the driver answered that it was to keep the wretched negroes in order, they being more afraid of those animals than anything else; and, in fact, the dogs were used to keep them in order as sheep-dogs are used in this country. An unfortunate negro was marked out, and the dogs set after him, and they pinned him to a tree until The author of this statement is Mr. Merri- man. the driver came up. This is slavery in | procured I cannot tell-they will be able Cuba; this is the system with which you to beat down competition; but it must be think free labour can compete, and this recollected that there are but 25,000 lathe slavery you are stimulating. I see bourers in British Guiana at present, whilst the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. the coast extends about 200 miles. In a Labouchere) takes a note; and I am sure country, therefore, where food can be he will not contradict me when I say that grown so easily, what possibility is there the admission of slave-grown sugar must of beating down labour by competition to stimulate slavery, for I well remember to the point at which slaves can work? But have heard the right hon. Gentleman use it must be perfectly clear that, although the same argument himself. Notwith- there is a great desire to immigrate into standing all the animadversions cast upon the West Indies, especially in Madeira, the severity of the British colonists, how where the Portuguese Government is obcould they get as much labour as was got liged to have a steamer of war in order out of the slaves in Cuba and the Brazils? to prevent Portuguese subjects from goWhat free labour could compete with those ing to the West Indies, as soon as wages places? I hold in my hand a statement of are beaten down to the point desired, the the wages paid in British Guiana made by wish of the Portuguese, as well as of all Governor Light. By that statement it other emigrants, to get there will be pari appeared that 25,000 free labourers in passu diminished. I am one of those who that colony received wages amounting to think that this beating down of wages 300,000 dollars a month. If any attempt cannot be further attained by immigrais made to excite sympathy for these free tion, at all events, into Barbadoes or labourers, I hope the people of this coun- Antigua, though perhaps something may try will think upon what they have been be done in Jamaica, but not enough doing for the negro in the West Indies. to enable free labourers to compete with The people of this country were willing to slave-grown sugar produced by slaves make a great sacrifice, in order that the maintained at a cost of 50s. a year. While slaves in the West Indies might be eman- a free labourer in Demerara costs 317. a cipated; but, I apprehend, the people of year, and the subsistence of a slave can be this country never intended that those procured in Cuba for 50s., the slave is slaves should be raised to a condition far driven to do three times as much work, beyond their own. They did not intend and not only so, but the work done is that when the slave was emancipated, at a done when it is wanted. One great cause cost of no less than 20,000,000l., he should of loss to the sugar planter in the West repay their generosity by idleness, and re- Indies is this, that when the crop is ripe fuse to compensate them for that measure the negroes do not choose to work; and by his labour. The wages of field labourers if the cane is not cut when ripe, the cane in British Guiana, as stated by Governor becomes sour and the sugar is injured. Light, were for navigators, working from But I do think that as regards immigraseven to eight hours, 4s. 6d. a day; dig- tion much might be done in removing ging small drains, seven to eight hours, restrictions and facilitating and cheapen4s. 6d.; cutting and carrying canes, five to ing the conveyance of immigrants. I consix hours, 4s. 6d.; shovel ploughing, five fess I cannot understand why any fear to six hours, 1s. 10d.; relieving and sup- of encouraging slavery and the slave trade plying, five to six hours, 2s. 8d.; hoeing should prevent us from allowing British cleaned lands, five to six hours, 1s. 8d.; planters to obtain immigrants from the weeding and moulding young canes, five coast of Africa, provided they go free on to six hours, 1s. 6d.; clearing trenches and board, with the security of being free on grass, five to six hours, 1s. 6d.; weeding their arrival in our colonies. It is imand thrashing, four to six hours, 1s. 6d.; possible to doubt that the condition of making on an average five hours and fifty- Africans, Chinese, or Hindoos, would be four minutes of work done per day, at greatly improved by their transport to average wages of 2s. 84d. There are also those colonies. I hold in my hand a in-door labourers engaged with the mills, speech delivered by Sir C. Metcalfe in the who are not so well paid, but these are the year 1840, only two years after emancipawages which the field labourers get. There tion had been completed, in which he deare those in Demerara who think that if scribes the condition of the negroes in Jathey can get 100,000 or 150,000 free la-maica as most comfortable and prosperous. bourers-though where they are to be He says "The easy and independent circumstances of the peasantry, as compared with those of our own countrymen at home, is very striking. Probably no peasantry in any other quarter of the globe have such comforts and advantages." He does not, however, speak in such high terms of the prosperity of the cultivators of the soil. He says into the West Indies. But it is entirely a question of cost. The restrictions imposed by successive colonial governments on the free immigration of labourers, have created a burden and expense which are too heavy for the colonies to bear. Hampered as they are with all sorts of restric tions; enabled only to make contracts with "The deterioration of properties proceeds from labourers for a single year; not allowed to the want of continuous labour, which is the na- make any contract except in a British tural effect of an insufficient population, and the means possessed by the peasantry of rendering colony; obliged to send back the labourers themselves in a great degree independent of going at the end of five years, subject to the cost to labour as servants for hire. It is satisfactory of carriage backwards and forwards—our to reflect, that whatever number of immigrants colonial proprietors find that those charges is likely to come from any part of the world, eat up all the advantage of importing lathere is room for all, and spare land of the great-bourers. est fertility and abundance, so that any probable multitude can be provided for without a diminution of the comforts of the present population." But we have later evidence of the prosperous condition of the labourers in our West India colonies. That evidence is to be found in the report which accompanies the subscription which was made in the British colonies for the relief of the destitute Irish. At a public meeting, open to all the members of the labouring class, the colonial receiver-general spoke of British Guiana as -"a land of plenty-a field fitted for raising abundance of food, and, he might add, with a promising sugar crop." The Rev. Mr. Forbes used the following language on the same occasion: "In a country like this food is plentiful, and little covering suffices for the labouring classes. Even the dearth of last year did not produce much effect on those classes. No case of destitution has ever or could ever occur here." But, perhaps, the most remarkable state- intense cold." Now, I cannot conceive anything more expressive than that statement, that the great obstacle to be overcome in endeavouring to obtain subscriptions from the black labourers, arose from the difficulty of making them understand what was meant either by starvation or cold. I think, therefore, that there need be no delicacy about encouraging, in every possible way, the immigration of labourers What I want to know is this: why are we to be so delicate about Africans, Coolies, and Chinese, only going another; who leave a climate certainly not from one hot and congenial climate to more congenial than that to which they immigrate; why are we to say that no immigrant is to be hired for more than five years, when in this country Her Majesty's troops heretofore were expected when they all events ten years in the colonies for entered Her Majesty's service, to serve at every four years they served at home? And, practically, our army has served in time of peace fourteen years in the colonies for four years at home, and many of our Indian regiments have served twentythree years in India without coming home at all. I am aware that we made some alterations in the system last year. But if it is not to be held a hardship towards the flower of the British army that it is sent from a congenial climate to climates destructive to their health, where they are to serve ten years, or a longer period if required, why are we to limit the immigration of Coolies, Africans, and Chinese, to our colonies, to a period so short that they do not repay the speculator who takes them out? I must add, that in my opinion there ought not to be imposed on the colonies or on the importer of immigrants any obligation to take them back. They should be left to their own resources-they should feel that they were free in the colonies; but they should also feel that they must rely on their own industry and exertions to pay for their passage home. And more than this; they should not, as I think, be permitted to return home until they had repaid the expense of their importation. Those are matters that will properly come under the consideration of the Committee for which I move. There are other restrictions that seem to be very unnecessary as regards the West Indies. But I shall now pass to the case of our East India colonies. Those colonies certainly have not the same claim on us that the West India colonies have-namely, that of their property having been taken from them, and their having received as compensation but a very small portion of its value. But, in my opinion, they have the same claim on the good faith of Parliament that the fundholders or any other interest have. When you emancipated the slaves, you invited British capitalists to exert themselves in the production of sugar by free labour. You induced them to invest their money on the banks of the Ganges; and, in my opinion, the faith of Parliament is as much pledged to them to enable them to repay themselves for the outlay of their capital, as it is pledged to repay the fundholder the debt that is due to him. I shall next advert to the case of the Mauritius. I believe that if any Member of this House was ever justified in moving for a Committee of Inquiry, and in asking Parliament to revise its previous judgment, such a justification is to be found in the language used by the Under Secretary of the Colonies, on the last day of the last Session of the last Parliament, with respect to the condition of that colony. I am sure that it is in the recollection of my noble Friend opposite (Lord J. Russell) that on that occasion, when I gave notice of an inquiry upon this subject, in presenting a petition from the British West Indies, Mr. Hawes, with an air of great triumph, said "The noble Lord had confined his attention to the West India Islands; but let him turn to the Mauritius, and he would find that there the great est prosperity was manifest, and that the production of sugar had immensely increased. He would ask, if it was for a moment to be supposed that these petitioners could be favoured by the admission of their produce free of duty? [Lord G. BENTINCK had not made any proposition of that kind, but simply that an inquiry should be entered into.] He was drawing the attention of the House to the petition, and he found that one of its prayers was, that the petitioners should be permitted to have their sugar imported duty free. But, at all events, the noble Lord was in favour of at least 50 per cent being imposed as a protection to the West India planters. Now, if they were to refer to the entire history of the West India colonies, they would find that more complaints were made in that House on the part of the planters during the most palmy days of protection, than had been heard of late years; and the noble Lord might rest satisfied that a system of free trade and open competition would be most beneficial for all parties concerned; that it would lead to greater economy of production, be the means of embarking more capital in the growth and manufacture of sugar, and tend to the general prosperity of the whole population." Now, I think that when the Colonial Office, on the 23rd of July last, was so entirely in the dark-so entirely ignorant of the true state of Her Majesty's colonial possessions-so totally uninformed of the real state of this question-a complete justification is afforded for the course I now take in moving for this Committee of Inquiry-not that I may teach my hon. Friends-the 130 Members who supported me, and foresaw all that has happened since 1846; but that Her Majesty's Ministers, and the free-traders in general, may have an opportunity of becoming more perfectly acquainted with all the branches of this subject. I am inclined to hope that this Committee may be the means of persuading Her Majesty's Ministers that they have thus far taken altogether an erroneous course, when, instead of finding the Mauritius in a manifest state of prosperity, they shall find that, out of six great firms in the Mauritius, but one unfortunately remains standing; that the liabilities of the houses that have failed in the Mauritius amount to no less than 2,900,000l.; and that the Government has found it necessary to advance 450,000l. to enable the colony to go on, as well as to send out orders to India to supply the people of the Mauritius with rice, in order to save them from starvation, in consequence of their policy having reduced the price of sugar 11s. per cwt., and as a sequence knocked up the cultivation of the sugar cane in that island. When they learn all this, they may, perhaps, be disposed to pause, and to consider whether the free-trade system can work in the British colonies. When I ask for a Committee of Inquiry on this subject, I ask for a bridge for Her Majesty's Ministers and the free-traders to pass over. But I must say that I have too much respect for the abilities of those Gentlemen, to imitate the example of the hon. Member for the West Riding of Yorkshire (Mr. Cobden), by attaching to that bridge the epithet applied to a well-known proposition in Euclid. The bridge we must find for those Gentlemen is not a bridge "for the blockheads," because we, who have been represented by the hon. Gentleman to be the " blockheads," foresaw all that has occurred; but a bridge for the "men of brains, over which the hon. Member for the West Riding and his fraternity may * Hansard, Vol. xciv. (Third Series), p. 695. ́ be able to retreat-not with colours flying that the annual produce of those estates or drums beating, and bands playing "See, was that by which that security ought to the conquering hero comes, or "King be measured. The reduction of 10l. per Richard Coeur-de-Lion," the tune that ton, caused by Act of Parliament on the greeted the hon. Gentleman at Berlin. 28,000 tons, the average annual produce They may pass with arms reversed, and of the estates on which the capital of these muffled drums, perhaps muttering between individuals was hypotheticated, represents their teeth, 66 If our doctrine is from God, an annual revenue of 280,000l., and at ten it will live; if not, it is doomed to perish." years' purchase would, within 100,000%., But what are the difficulties of the Mau- equal the sum total of all the liabilities of ritius? Do they arise from any want of all these merchants together. And yet, labourers? The people of that colony, whilst a great portion of them have had at an expense of 800,000l., have had an so large a proportion of their property renimportation of 93,000 labourers. The dered almost valueless, they will honourdifficulty in the Mauritius is not to get ably meet the larger portion of their enlabourers, but to make those they have do gagements. But it is not only the value work. The licence given to those labourers of the property upon which they have lent as soon as their first yearly contract is at their money that has been diminished in an end, enables them to run loose over the value, at ten years' purchase, to the extent country, and prevents their employers from of 2,800,000l., but it has been made altogetting any work from them. The state gether unsaleable. A harder measure was of the Mauritius is grievous indeed; and if never dealt out to any body of men in this we cannot but rejoice at the great pros- world than to the merchants of the Mauperity and the great happiness that have ritius, of whom but one out of six, their accompanied the emancipation of slaves in entire number, has escaped destruction. the British West India colonies, we must They have been ruined-not by their rash deplore a very different state of things in speculations-not by any mistaken calcuthe French colony. In this colony, I be-lations in trade-the only mistaken callieve, out of 60,000 negroes emancipated, culations they have made being in the not more than 8,000 work in the fields; honour and good faith of the British Parwhile no less than 26,000 have died. That, liament. They could not reckon on the I am informed, has arisen from the demo-measures of versatile minds. It is all ralised and drunken life into which they very well for Gentlemen holding seats in have fallen. So also as regards the Cool- this House to come down and say they ies-I hear that the moral state of the have changed their minds; but when the Coolies is most painful to contemplate. I commerce of England hears the right hon. understand that the emancipated negro Baronet the Member for Tamworth dewomen consider themselves far too high a clare in 1841, that the faith and honclass to have anything to say to the Cool- our of the British Parliament, the faith ies; and the consequence has been, that and honour of the country itself, are conthe Hindoos have indulged the most un- cerned in the maintenance of the exclusion natural and beastly propensities. of slave-grown sugar," and when they find But I hope I may be allowed to say a a majority of this House affirm that profew words in defence of the merchants position, and find on an appeal being made connected with the Mauritius. It has to the country at a general election, a been too much the fashion to condemn majority of ninety returned to Parliathose merchants as wild, rash, and un- ment to maintain that principle-I know pardonable speculators and gamblers. It not what men engaged in trade or comappears to me that a more unjust charge merce are to do, or where they are to could not well be made. I cannot give look for security, if not in such pledges the details of the business of individual as these. It cannot be doubted that these merchants trading to the Mauritius. But I recollect that the quantity of sugar consigned to the merchants connected with that colony was 28,000 tons; which, at 101. per ton, would give a sum of 280,000l. It is charged against the merchants that they have rashly and improvidently advanced money on those estates far beyond their value; but it should be remembered 66 frequent changes in our commercial regulations are highly injurious to the welfare of this country; and it is no wonder that our neighbours in the United States should observe that "no country in the world can stand such constant change and vacillation of commercial policy." Why, it is plain that there must be waste-there must be loss-in such a state of things. You can |