not hesitate to say they are unparalleled in the annals, extensive as they are, of human folly and perversity. Only think what they were! almost without being noticed in the European kingdoms; it was thus it almost disappeared, insensibly and without a convulsion, in Spanish South America. We first, in 1807, abolished the slave trade in our dominions. So far Instead of this wise, judicious, and there can be no doubt that the step really humane course, what have we taken was both just and expedient- done? Why, we first, by the act of just, because the iniquitous traffic in 1834, abolished slavery altogether in human flesh should, at all hazards, be the British dominions, upon giving a stopped in a Christian state; expe- compensation to the proprietors, dient, because we already possessed, which, large as it was, was not, on an in the colonies themselves, a large average, the fourth part of the value negro population, perfectly capable, of the slave population set free, at the if well treated, of keeping up and expiration of a prospective apprenincreasing their own numbers, and ticeship of seven years; and at the performing all the field operations end of four years, deeming that first requisite for the cultivation of pro- time too long, we set them free altoduce, which at that period employed gether! We thought, in our wisdom, two hundred and fifty thousand tons that a nation required no longer time of British shipping for its transport, to serve the apprenticeship to freedom and maintained a population that than a freeman did to become expert consumed £3,500,000 worth of British in a trade. We proposed to do in manufactures. But as the British a few years what nature could only colonies were thus deprived of the aid accomplish in centuries. The conseof imported forced labour, which the quences, so often and so fatally prerival sugar colonies of Cuba and the dicted, immediately ensued. The Brazils enjoyed, of course it was in- emancipated black population either dispensable that the labour of the refused to work, or did so at such black cultivators in the British islands high wages, and in so desultory a should be perpetuated, and the pro- manner, that the supply of sugar prietors maintained in the means of rapidly declined in the British islands. getting that work from them which It, in consequence, rose considerably in they were prohibited from acquiring, price in the mother country; and upon from foreign labourers. The way to that, partly under the influence of the do this, and withal to give the greatest free trade mania, partly from a desire possible security and means of imto appease the clamorous multitude provement to the black population of in the British towns, who had begun which they were susceptible, was evi- to feel, in the enhanced price of that dent, and was clearly and forcibly point-article, the inevitable consequences of ed out at the time. It was to maintain slavery in the meantime, doing every thing possible to mitigate its severity, till the negro population had come so much under the influence of artificial wants as to be ready, for their enjoyment, to submit to regular and continuous toil; to regulate their days of forced labour, and give them some days in the week to work for themselves, of which they might reap the fruits; and to allow every negro, who could thus amass a sum equal to his price, to purchase his freedom from his master. By this simple system, no one could become free without having proved himself fit to be a freeman, and therefore the whole evils of premature emancipation were avoided. It was thus that slavery wore out their own actions, we did a thing so unjust, so monstrous, so cruel, so inconsistent with all our former professions, that we believe the annals of the world may be searched in vain for its parallel. It was this: We first reduced to a half of its former amount the protective duty on foreign slave grown sugar, and then, by the act of 1846, in pursuance of Sir R. Peel's principles, and with his approbation, passed an act for the progressive reduction, during three years, of the duties on foreign sugar, until, in 1849, those on foreign and colonial were to become equal to each other! That is, having first deprived our own colonies of their slave labour for less than a fourth of its value, we proceeded to admit foreign sugar RAISED BY SLAVES to the supply of the British markets, on terms which in two years will be those of perfect equality. We have seen what came of the attempt in the Mauritius, to compete with slave-labour by means of the labour of freemen. Even though the attempt was made under the most favourable auspices, with the colossal capital of Reid, Irving, and Company, and an ample supply of hill coolies to carry it on, the immense wealth of that house was swallowed up in the hopeless attempt, and it became bankrupt in consequence. Experience had long ago proved in St Domingo that the black population, when not compelled, will not raise sugar; for that noble island, which, anterior to the emancipation of its slaves by the Constituent Assembly of France, raised and exported 672,000,000 pounds of sugar, now does not export a single pound; and instead of consuming as then £9,890,000 worth of French manufactures, does not import a single article. To provide against this evidently approaching crisis in the supply of sugar for the British market, we have thrown open our harbours to slave-grown sugar from every quarter of the globe; and from * the rapid decline in the produce of the West Indian islands, even before this last coup-de-grace was given them by the application of free trade principles to their produce, it is painfully evident that a result precisely similar is about to take place in the British colonies.† And it is little consolation to find that this injustice has recoiled upon the heads of the nation which perpetrated it, and that the decline in the consumption of British manufactures by the West India islands is becoming proportioned to the ruin we have inflicted on them.‡ But most of all has this concatenation of fanaticism, infatuation, and injustice proved pernicious to the negro race, for whose benefit the changes were all undertaken. Happy would it have been for them if the British slave trade had never been abolished; that they had crossed the Atlantic chiefly in Liverpool or Glasgow slave-ships, and been brought to the British West India islands! For then the slave trade was subject to our direction, and regulations might have been adopted to place it on the best possible footing for its unhappy victims. But now we have thrown it entirely into the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese, over whom we * Dumas, viii. 112; Mackenzie's St Domingo, i. 312. "Of the progressive decline in the powers of production of the West India possessions generally, some idea may be formed from what has been observed in Jamaica; for though that island labours under some peculiar disadvantages, that fact merely increases the force of the argument which is derived from its past experience : A verage of the five years ending 1807-last of the slave trade, Average of the five years ending 1815-date of the Registry Act, Average of the five years ending 1823-date of Canning's Resolution, Average of the five years ending 1843-first five of freedom, £3,852,624 3,588,903 3,192,637 2,791,478 1,213,284 "The House of Assembly, from whose memorial to the government (June 1847) we borrow these facts, makes the following remarks on this instructive table : 66 6 Up to 1807 the exports of Jamaica progressively rose as cultivation was extended. From that date they have been gradually sinking; but we more especially entreat attention to the evidence here adduced of the effects of emancipation, which, in ten years, reduced the annual value of the three principal staples from £2,791,478 to £1,213,284, being in the proportion of seven to sixteen, or equal, at five per cent., to an investment of about thirty-two millions of property annihilated. We believe the history of the world would be in vain searched for any parallel case of oppression perpetrated by a civilised government upon any section of its own subjects."" EXPORTS TO BRITISH WEST INDIA COLONIES : have no sort of control, and who exercise it in so frightful a manner that the heart absolutely sickens at the thought of the amount of human suffering, at the cost of which we have reduced the price of sugar to sixpence a pound. Compared with it, the English slave-ships and English slavery were an earthly paradise. Mr Buxton, the great anti-slavery advocate, admitted, some years ago, that the "number of blacks who now annually cross the Atlantic, is double what it was when Wilberforce and Clarkson first began their benevolent labours."* Now, under the fostering influence of free trade in sugar, it may reasonably be expected that in a few years the whole, or nearly the whole sugar consumed by Europe, will be raised by the slave colonies, and wrung by the lash from the most wretched species of slaves— those of Cuba and Brazil! Moreover, the slave trade, to supply them, will be triple what it was in 1789, when the movement in favour of the negro population began! Thus, by the combined effects of fanaticism, ignorance, presumption, and free trade, we shall have succeeded, by the middle of this century, in totally destroying our own sugar colonies; adding, to no purpose, twenty millions to our national debt; annihilating property to the amount of £130,000,000 in our own dominions; doubling the produce of foreign slave possessions; cutting off a market of £3,500,000 a-year for our manufactures and tripling the slave trade in extent, and quadrupling it in horror, throughout the globe. : Grave and serious matter for consideration as these results afford, all of which, be it observed, are now ascertained by experience. they yet sink into comparative insignificance compared with the gigantic measures of "free trade and a fettered currency," which have now spread ruin and desolation through the heart of the empire. It is here that the evil now pressing is to be found; it is from hence that the cry of agony, which now resounds through the empire, has sprung. And unless a remedy is applied, and speedily applied, to the enormous evils which have * arisen from the reckless and simultaneous adoption of these powerful engines on human affairs, it may safely be affirmed that the present distress will go on, with slight variations, from bad to worse, till the empire is destroyed, and threefourths of its inhabitants are reduced to ruin. These are strong expressions, we know; but if they are so, it is from the testimony of the government, and the ablest advocates for the free trade and bullion system, and the facts which we see around us, that we are reluctantly compelled, not only to use them, but to believe they are true. Hear what the Times says, on the aspect of national monetary and commercial affairs : "In our wide sea of difficulties, therefore, we are without rudder or compass. We cannot base our proceedings on a calculation that the Bank Charter Act will be carried out; nor can we, on the other hand, assume that an inconvertible currency will be authorised, and thus frame onr future contracts accordingly. All that we can discern before us is declining trade and grinding poverty, bankrupt railways, and increased taxation; but whether the lesson will be prolonged in its bitterness, and its salutary effect retarded by measures of national dishonour, is a point upon which it would be vain to prophesy. Three years back an indignant negative might have been given to such a conjecture, but since then demoralisation has been rapid, and time alone can determine if, by the deliberate proceedings of the legislature, the record of it is destined to become indelible."-Times, 26th November 1847. This is tolerably strong evidence from the leading and ablest free trade and bullionist journal. Strong indeed must have been the testimony of facts around them, when the wellinformed and powerful writers in the Times put forth such admissions as to the state of the country. Observe the emphatic words wrung by woful experience from this journal. "Three years back an indignant negative would have been given to such conjectures; but SINCE THEN the progress of demoralisation has been rapid." Sir R. Peel's Bank Act was passed in 1844, and his free trade measures in 1846. Buxton on the Slave Trade, 172. And be it observed that that state arose entirely under their own system; at a time when the Bank charter stood unchanged, and free trade, the grand panacea for all evils, was, and had been in a great degree, for years, in full and unrestrained operation. We shall see anon whether the Irish famine and English railways had any thing material to do with the matter. Strong as it is, however, this testimony is increased by the real evidence of facts in everydirection, and of the acts and admissions of government. These are of such a kind as a few years ago would have passed for fabulous. They have outstripped the most gloomy predictions of the most gloomy of the Protectionists; they have outHeroded Herod in the demonstration of the perilous tendency of the path we have so long been pursuing. They could not have been credited, if not supported by the evidence of our own senses, and the statements of ministers of high character, from undoubted and authentic sources of information. We subjoin a few of them, of universal and painful notoriety to every inhabitant of the empire at this time; not in the belief that we, in so doing, can add any facts not previously familiar to the nation, but in order that these facts, now so well known, should get into a more durable record than the daily journals, and not pass for fabulous in future, and it is to be hoped, happier times. The first is, that the interest of money has, by the recommendation, and indeed express injunction of government, been raised to eight per cent. This grievous and most calamitous effect, which was never heard of during the darkest period of the Revolutionary war, which did not ensue even at the time of the Mutiny of the Nore, or the suspension of cash payments in 1797,* has been publicly announced to the nation, in the Premier's and Chancellor of the Exchequer's Letter to the Directors. It is well known that, high as this rate of interest was, it was less than had been previously taken by private bankers, which had risen to nine, ten, and even fourteen or fifteen per cent. for short periods. These are the rates of interest which, anterior to their conquest by the British government, were common amidst Asiatic oppression in the distracted realm of Hindostan. They had not been so high in England before for a century and a quarter. It was reserved for Great Britain, in the middle of the nineteenth century, to render universal, by the effects of domestic legislation, at the end of thirty years' peace, and when in a state of entire amity with all the world, a rate of interest unknown for a century before in the British empire; which could previously be hardly credited as having existed, even in the days of feudal barbarity; and which had latterly been known only amidst the predatory warfare, fierce devastations, *For a few days during the panic consequent on the Mutiny at the Nore, the 3 per cents were at 45, but they soon rose and ranged from 55 to 58. The interest of money never exceeded 5 per cent., and indeed it could not, as the usury laws were then in operation. The issue of one pound notes in sufficient numbers by the Bank of England, after February 1797, soon relieved the distress, extinguished the panic, and brought us triumphantly through the war. The following are the rates of interest and amount of bullion in the Bank of England for thirty years past, which shows how little low interest has to do with the plentiful stores of the precious metals : The rate of eight per cent. has not been charged by the Bank of England before for upwards of a century and a quarter. and universal hoarding of specie, under the native powers of Hindostan. In the next place, the public revenue for the quarter ending 1st October, 1847, is £1,500,000 less than it was in the corresponding quarter of the preceding year, which itself was below the corresponding quarter in 1845. Here then is an ascertained falling off of £1,500,000 a quarter, or SIX MILLIONS A-YEAR, in a revenue not exceeding £52,000,000 of net income, and of which upwards of a half is absorbed in paying the dividends on the public debt. There is no reason to hope for an amendment in the next or the succeeding quarter; happy if there is not a still greater falling off. This is, be it observed, in the thirtysecond year of peace, when in amity with all the world, and when the war income-tax, producing £5,200,000 ayear, is added to the national income! But for that grinding war-addition, laid on to meet the disasters of the Affghanistaun expedition, and kept on to conceal the deficiency of income produced by Sir R. Peel's free trade measures, the deficiency would be above £11,000,000 a-year. And this occurs just after a proper and suitable thanksgiving for an uncommonly fine harvest; when all the world is at peace; five years after Sir R. Peel's tariff in 1842, which was to add so much to our foreign trade; three years after the act of 1844, which was to impose the requisite checks on imprudent speculation; and eighteen months after the adoption of general free trade, and the abolition of the corn laws by the act of July 1846, by which the commerce and revenue of the country were to be so much improved! In the third place, nearly the whole railways in progress in the United Kingdom have been stopped, or are to be in a few days, in consequence partly of this exorbitant rate of interest, partly of the impossibility of getting money even on these monstrous and hitherto unheard-of terms. It is calculated that three hundred thousand labourers, embracing with their families little short of a million of persons, have been from this * cause suddenly thrown out of work, and deprived of bread. Already the effects of this grievous and sudden stoppage are apparent in the metropolis, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and other great cities, in the groups, at once pitiable and alarming, of rude and uncouth, but sturdy and formidable labourers, who are scen congregating at the corners of the principal streets. But if this is the effect of the sudden stoppage on the mere navigators, the hod and barrow-men, what must it be on the vast multitude of mechanics and iron workmen, thrown idle from the inability of the railway companies, at present, at least, to go on with their contracts? So dreadful has been the effects of this stoppage in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, the two principal iron districts of Scotland, that before these pages issue from the press, forty thousand persons in the former county, and thirty thousand in the latter, including the families of the workmen, will be out of employment in the iron and coal trades alone! The greater part of this immense and destitute mass will fall on Glasgow, where already half the mills are stopped or on short time, and in which city, since the beginning of the year, no less than 49,993 Irish have landed, ninetenths of whom were in the last stage of destitution, and no inconsiderable part bringing with them the contagion of typhus fever. In the fourth place, the great marts of manufacturing industry, both for the home and the export trade, are in nearly as deplorable a condition as the iron trade; and the multitude who will be out of bread in them is not less appalling than in the railway and iron departments. As a specimen of the condition to which they have been brought by the combined operation of free trade and a fettered currency, we subjoin the weekly return of the state of trade in Manchester for the week ending November 23. It is well known that this return is made up under the direction of the admirable police of that city, with the utmost accuracy. Report of the Glasgow Poor Inspector, 28th November, 1817. |
