1846 he agreed to the law which put an end to that distinction, and he could not shrink from the vote which he then gave. He therefore could not hold out any hopes to the West India interest in that direction; neither could he hold out to them any hopes from the reduction of Colonial expenditure, although he thought that that expenditure admitted of great reduction, and ought to be reduced to the narrowest limits. The payment of the salaries of our Colonial Governors by the Home Government, and the passing of police laws for the prevention of vagrancy and squatting, were measures to be recommended, but were not measures to remove the existing distress. He then referred to the measures of relief to be derived from the reduction of differential duties on rum to 4d. a gallon, from the repeal of the Navigation Laws, and from the withdrawal of our squadron from the coast of Africa, and delivered his opinion on each of them. He then observed that there were only two other suggestions of any importance left for the mitigation of West India suffering. The first of them was, that there should be a great supply of labour by immigration; and the second, that there should be direct assistance given to them by this country by the increase and continuance of protection to their produce. Now Her Majesty's Government had proposed a loan of public money for the first purpose. For his own part, he did not attach much importance to this increased supply of labour. To pour in a large number of Coolies or other strangers would be injudicious; for you would only be adding to the population of the Colonies without providing it with permanent em ployment. If you were to have immigration at all, you should have it at the cost of private speculation. He would, therefore, facilitate the enterprise of individual proprietors to obtain labour in every possible way, taking care at the same time that no ground should be afforded for the imputation that we were recurring to the slave trade. He begged Government to consider the best mode of extending to the Colonies the pecuniary relief which they had determined to grant, and suggested that their present scheme might be ameliorated by devoting the public funds to private remedies against drought by irrigation, better draining, and various other measures of local improvement. He came to the last of the two suggestions which he had just mentioned-a 10s. protecting duty for six years. Now, if he could vote for that, he would vote for the amendment of Sir J. Pakington; but he could not vote for that amendment without giving the West India body a right to expect that he would give them that amount of duty. He was, therefore, prepared to vote against it from a sincere and conscientious conviction that such protection was not for the benefit of the West Indies themselves. Having given his reasons for that conviction at some length, he observed that the best plan of benefiting the West Indies was to reduce the cost of cultivation to the planter, so as to enable him to enter into competition with the foreign cultivator. He could not hold out any hope of carrying that plan into execution, and, therefore, he must again decline to vote in favour of the amendment. would not say anything upon the scheme of the Government, for it was not regularly before the House He bate had turned on the question, whether the Committee should agree to the small protection proposed by the Government, or to the large protection that was proposed by members on the other side. One great party in this transaction had been entirely forgotten. Great sympathy had been exhibited for the colonists, and also for the slaves; but none had been expressed in behalf of the consumers of sugar at home. On their behalf he implored the House and the Government not to alter the Act of 1846; and he did so because he was convinced, that after the 20,000,000l. which it had paid for the emancipation of the negroes, and after the 30,000,000l. which it had given to the planters by means of the protection which they had enjoyed for the last eleven years, Parliament owed nothing to the colonists, whilst it owed a great deal to the consumers of this country, who had been deeply wronged by the protection granted for so many years to the sugar growers. He therefore protested against Parliament now taxing the people of England to the amount of 2,000,000l. or 3,000,000l. annually, for the benefit of the West Indian interest. He reminded Lord J. Russell that his Cabinet had been broken up in 1841, and Sir, R. Peel's Cabinet in 1846, on this very question of protection; and that even this morning the Ministry had been in articulo mortis, had received extreme unction, and had only been saved from dissolution by the votes of 15 members, who differed from it in toto as to the mode of relief. Never had a measure been passed by Parliament of which the success had been so immediate and com plete as that of 1846, both as regarded the revenue, the producer, and the consumer. Why then disturb a settlement so recently made, which had been productive of so much benefit to the comforts, industry, and exports of this country? Mr. Wilson, before his succession to the Administration, had made it as clear as demonstration could make any conclusion, that the protection which he now advocated would do no good, but much harm, to the West Indian interest, to whom he now offered it as a boon. Sir R. Peel, in his speech last night, had made the same declaration, and he therefore expected that the right hon. baronet would not oppose, but support his amendment. Having submitted Lord J. Russell's speech of last night to a very severe criticism, and having pointed out the manifold inconsistencies which it contained, he accused his Lordship of having done much mischief in disturbing the principle of free trade as applied to sugar, and warned him to be cautious of disturbing it as applied to corn. If his Lordship ventured upon such a vagary he would not escape even with a majority of 15, as he had that morning. Indeed, he ought to make up his mind to provide for the present defalcation in the revenue, before he made a further gap in it by applying 500,000l. wrung from the pockets of the poor to the support of an experiment which even the West Indian body repudiated. Mr. Bright's amendment was opposed, on behalf of the colonial interests, by Mr. Grantley Berkeley, Mr. Bagshaw, Mr. Tollemache, Mr. Hastie, and Lord Nugent.— On the part of the Government by Mr. Wilson and Sir Charles Wood. The latter expressed his agreement in great part of Mr. Bright's principles and speech; but, while he contended that the Ministerial proposition would not injure the revenue, he maintained that Government was bound to attempt a check to that destruction of property which was threatened in the West Indies, from the utter want of credit. He estimated the consumption of next year at 309,000 or 310,000 tons-beingan increase of 15,000 or 20,000 tons. The amount of revenue would depend on the proportionate increase of foreign or colonial sugar: the utmost loss could not be more than 55,000l.; but he calculated on a revenue of 4,625,000l., being an increase of 284,000l. As bearing on the resolution before the House, Sir Charles Wood proceeded to make a statement of the existing financial prospects of the country. This part of the subject will more appropriately find a place in another chapter. After some further debate, in which Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Mowatt, and Lord John Russell took part, the Committee divided, when Mr. Bright's amendment was declared to be rejected by 302 to 36. Further amendments were proposed in Committee, and a good deal of discussion took place upon the details of the Bill. An amendment moved by Sir John Paking ton, for increasing the differential duty in favour of British colonial sugar to 10s., was negatived, after a long debate, by 231 to 169. Another was proposed by Mr. Barkly, which he thus explained: -He did not propose to alter the rates of duty upon foreign and colonial sugar, but simply to arrest the progress of the Bill of 1846; except that he proposed to make an alteration in the standard sample at the Custom-house on which the duties are levied, and to substitute the new standard which the Government had adopted for brown-clayed sugars, so that there might be only one class for all clayed sugars, instead of the two classes as proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He proposed to give a minimum protection of 48. 6d. per hundredweight on Muscovado for six years, and a maximum protection of 7s. 7d. upon clayed sugar for the same period; so as to obviate the complaints of the sliding scale of duties in the Bill of 1846. He objected to the Government plan, that reductions of one shilling at time would not benefit the consumer, but would only fritter away the revenue. Sir Charles Wood objected to the amendment that the prearranged and sudden reduction of the duty would cause a previous stagnation of trade. The proposition was also opposed by Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Jas. Wilson, and Mr. Godson;-it was supported by Mr. W. Gladstone, Mr. Cayley, Sir George Clark, Mr. Bruce, and Mr. Henry Baillie. The debate again took a financial turn, and was ultimately adjourned. Being resumed on the 10th July, Lord Geo. Bentinck availed himself of the opportunity afforded him to explain at great length the views which he had propounded as Chairman of the West India Committee. The question at present was, which of all the propositions made to the House on this subject was most worthy of its attention? He was bound to say, that the amendment of Mr. Barkly was one of which he approved very little but the question which he had then to determine was, whether it was better or worse than the proposition of the Government? Now, the sum total of the protection for six years given by Mr. Barkly's amendment amounted to 458. a cwt. on the highest, and to 27s. a cwt. on the lower qualities of sugar. The whole protection proposed by the Ministers amounted in six years to 32s. 6d. a cwt. in the same time. He therefore felt it impossible to deny that the proposal of Mr. Barkly was better for the Colonies than that of Government. He should, therefore, vote for the former; but, in so doing, it was his duty on behalf of the West Indies, of the Mauritius, and of the East Indies, and on behalf of the gentlemen who had supported his views in the Committee, to repudiate it altogether as a settlement of this question. It was an expedient which would give no satisfaction either to the West Indies, or to the Mauritius, or to the East Indies. He then explained to the House at great length the reasons which had induced him to submit his scheme of sugar duties to the West India Committee, complaining that all the force of the Government had been mustered to defeat it, and contending that, if it were adopted, it would reduce the price of the poor man's sugar d. a pound, increase the consumption, benefit the revenue, and produce innumerable advantages to the sugar colonies. In the course of his speech he frankly declared that neither the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, nor Mr. Goulburn, nor Mr. Cardwell, nor Mr. Gladstone, knew anything of the sugar question, and insisted that there was no correctness in their estimates, and no accuracy in any calculations but his own. He could see nothing to approve in the proposition of Her Majesty's Government. It would aggravate the slave trade in its character, and increase it in its amount. Instead of reducing the profits of the slaveholder by increasing the differential duty, and making the slaveholders pay it, their scheme selected other victims, and robbed the distillers of Scotland and Ireland of 70,000l. a year. He also accused the Chancellor of the Exchequer of bribing the shipowners to agree to his Act of 1846 by promises of a great increase in the freight of their vessels, arising from the increased consumption of sugar in Great Britain, and of bilking them now by depriving them of the Act which had seduced many of them from the strict path of duty. He concluded an elaborate speech, full of statistics, by declaring that the people of England were not disposed, for the gain of a farthing in the pound, to refuse to do justice to the British colonies, or to endure the continuance of the slave trade. They had not adopted the two doctrines of the Manchester school-first, that "Vilius argentum est auro, virtutibus aurum;" and next "rem, facias rem; "Si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." No, they rather adopted the wiser language of the poet, when he said "Hic murus aheneus esto, "Nil conscire sibi, nullâ pallescere culpâ.', Lord J. Russell observed that, although Lord G. Bentinck, from the attention which he had given to this subject in the inquiry conducted before the West India Committee, had a right to be heard upon it before the close of |