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

introduce a Bill, immediately, authorizing the admission of molasses into distilleries upon terms such as those on which sugar had been heretofore admitted. Cane-juice might be admitted on payment of an equivalent duty, but he understood that that would be prohibitory.

"With respect to immigration, a statement which he held in his hand showed that it had been extensive and beneficial. The details to which he referred were as follows:

Number of Slaves in 1829. Free Labourers imported into the following Colonies to 1846.

6,180 Liberated Africans. 17,788 Free.

3,181 Liberated Africans.

'It had been found, however, that the present system of immigration did not answer; and he proposed a change. He knew that there was a risk in allowing the practice of taking negroes from Africa; that if parties were permitted to buy negroes for slaves, and to bring them from Africa upon the pretext of their being made free labourers in the West Indies, the permission would offer a direct encouragement to a renewal of all the horrors of the slave trade. With this conviction, provision must be made that if natives were brought from Africa to the West Indies, it should be with their own free will, though the Government were not disposed to throw any fresh obstruction in the way of the importation of free labour; and they were prepared to advance a sum of money not ex

ceeding 200,000l. for that purpose. Another source consisted in the liberated Africans. At present the cost of these liberated negroes was defrayed by the colonists; but the Government were prepared to cast upon this country the cost of conveying these negroes to the West Indies. But the great body of these negroes were set free at Sierra Leone; and he believed the transferring them to the West Indies would be not only beneficial to these colonies, but beneficial to the negroes themselves, and to the colony of Sierra Leone itself.

"Another measure of relief would be to postpone the repayment of the hurricane loan for five years; and a new loan would be made to Tobago, as a relief on account of the last hurricane."

Reading various extracts from the memorial of the Jamaica House of Assembly and other documents, Sir Charles contended that there was vast room for agricultural improvements in the West Indies; and if proper exertions were made, he did not despair of seeing those colonies restored to a state of comparative prosperity.

Mr. Robinson gave credit to the Government for the openness of their declaration, but thought that if the West Indies were to have no other measure of relief than that suggested by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they must be prepared for total and irreparable ruin.

Mr. Hume and Mr. Ellice also made a light account of the promised measures, but urged Lord G. Bentinck to withdraw his motion and leave the matter to the responsibility of Government.

Mr. James Wilson entered into the subject at considerable length. He commenced by observing that he should not follow the noble

Mover into those general questions of commercial policy into which he had deviated, but should confine himself exclusively to the interests of the cultivators of sugar. He placed the whole question on the interest of the West Indian planters, on their demands for protection, and on the power of Government to grant those demands. The West Indians rested their demands for protection on four distinct grounds; of which the first was, that if moral considerations compelled us to exclude slavery from our colonies, they also compelled us to exclude all sugar, the produce of slave labour, from the home market; the second, that slave labour was cheaper than free labour, and that it was therefore unequal and unjust to confine the West Indians to free labour entirely; the third, that the sugar of Cuba was the produce of slave labour, and ought, therefore, to be excluded; and the fourth, that the Imperial Legislature had power to protect the sugar colonies by excluding all sugar the produce of foreign colonies employing slave labour. He contended at great length that not one of these four propositions was true; and, in the course of his observations, entered into a laboured refutation of most of the arguments advanced last night by Lord G. Bentinck. He showed that 250,000 tons of sugar were now annually produced by free labour in countries east of the Cape of Good Hope, and suggested that even if the Legislature were to exclude the sugars of Cuba and Brazil, on the ground that they were the produce of slave labour, the West Indian planters would still find it impossible to compete without difficulty with that enormous amount of free-labour produce. He

admitted that he had heard with great satisfaction the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer last night, not merely because he (Sir C. Wood) had announced the intention of the Government to adhere to the Act of 1846, but because he had also announced his intention to remove many restrictions which still pressed heavily on the West Indian planters; but he nevertheless thought that much further good might be conferred on the colonies by going into this Committee, for if those planters were to be saved, it must be by a considerable change in the social relations of the islands in which they lived. In the British West Indian islands the whites formed only 7 per cent. of the whole population, whilst the labourers formed the other 921 per cent. ; for the whites only went there to make their fortunes, and, when they had done so, returned home to spend them. But it was not so in Cuba. In that island there were ancient families resident on their estates, and therefore attentive to the improvement and prosperity of their country. Nothing of this kind was to be found in the British West Indies; and, as a proof of the wretched consequences of such a system, he mentioned that there were 800 miles of railroad in Cuba, and not above a dozen in the whole of our West Indian possessions. Considerable mischief had also been done to our planters by the onerous restrictions placed on them as employers of labour with regard to the importation of labourers. They had also suffered injury from the want of laws for the prevention of squatting and vagrancy. Now, these were all considerations, and many others might be suggested, connected with the police

and finance of the West Indian islands, which might usefully become subjects of inquiry before a Select Committee; and, such being the case, he hoped that Lord G. Bentinck would not accede to the proposition of Mr. Hume, but would persevere in his motion for inquiry.

Mr. T. Baring observed, that of all the disheartening statements which this debate had brought forward, none was more so than the description which Mr. Wilson had given of the flourishing condition of Cuba, and of the depressed condition of the West Indian islands. Mr. Wilson had also told the House that no protection could save our Colonies; for such was the growth of sugar in countries east of the Cape of Good Hope, that he was only surprised that our Colonies were not worse off than they were, having such an amount of produce recently raised to compete with in the market. But why was this? Because the planters in the east were not fettered in their labour, and because there had not been among them that great revolution which took from them the means of producing sugar at the very moment at which it opened the home market to other sugars. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer asserted that the Act of 1846 had not produced the distress of the West Indian interest, and that sugar was now only suffering the same depression of price to which other articles were now liable, he overlooked the real question, whether the same fall of price had taken place in the sugars which were not introduced into this country before 1846, as had taken place in the sugars of our own Colonies. Mr. Baring then proceeded to show that the price of the

sugars of Cuba and Porto Rico had not fallen in the same proportion as the price of British sugars; and, having established that point, he concluded that the Act of 1846 must have had some share in producing the existing distress. Almost all the requests of the colonists the Chancellor of the Exchequer had rejected, contending that it was not the law, but the absenteeism of the proprietors, and their want of management in their estates, which had caused all the distress. Now, he (Mr. T. Baring) was afraid that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would find that the residents in the Colonies had suffered as much as the absentees, and that West Indian estates were as well managed by agents as by proprietors. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had quoted extracts from many nameless pamphlets to show that West Indian estates were not well managed; but he would have been better pleased had Sir C. Wood given the House extracts from the despatches of our different governors-Sir C. Grey, Lord Harris, and other men of intelligence and station. But how were those estates to be better managed, when in consequence of the Act of 1846 the credit and capital of our West Indies were destroyed, and the credit and capital of Cuba and Brazil had risen upon their ruin? The House had raised hopes in the West Indian planters in 1840, and in 1844, which it had subsequently disappointed. It had given them a compensation which was clearly inadequate, for it was founded on the value of the slave, and without any consideration of the fact that when the slave was taken away from the property the property was rendered valueless. He would not

say, that if it were possible to restore slavery to the Mauritius and the West Indies, it would not be a good bargain for those Colonies to pay back that money to this country. He did not set himself up as an advocate for free trade; but, if he did, he should contend that the case of the West Indians was an exception from the ordinary principles of free trade. If it were not, would the free traders rest the truth of their principles on the success of the experiment which they had tried in the Act of 1846? They had said that it would benefit all, injure none, and produce a low price of sugar; but if it should throw out of cultivation the existing sugar plantations, as he anticipated, then it would destroy the planters, and ultimately enhance the price of sugar itself. It had been said that free trade was certain to produce harmony in all quarters; but the commencement of the era of harmony would not be very favourable if free trade should produce discord between our Colonies and the mother country. Let the House then declare whether it attached value to those Colonies or not; whether it would allow them to transfer their allegiance to another power; and whether, according to the principles of free trade, they would allow them to sell themselves in the dearest, and to buy their Government in the cheapest market. With regard to the motion of Lord G. Bentinck, he wished to say, that although the West Indian interest would look with confidence to the appointment of a Committee, if Government would give them any assurance of substantial relief, they did not attach much importance to it now, as any relief which the Committee might suggest would come too late. The alteration of the

duties on rum and molasses might be of use if connected with other measures, but would be of no use by itself. He would therefore leave the responsibility upon Ministers to decide whether the country should pay an additional price for its sugar for the purpose of giving free labour a fair trial, and of so making free labour the best exterminator of slave labour. He called upon the country to observe their conduct, and to insist upon their saying whether they would restore hope to the Colonies, to enable them to struggle against the competition of slave labour, or whether, after acknowledging their distress, they would not give them a farthing in relief, although last year they had given 8,000,000l. to mitigate the sufferings of Ireland.

Mr. Bernal supported the claims of the West Indians, as did Sir Edward Buxton, and Mr. Goulburn, the two latter resting their arguments rather on anti-slavery grounds. Mr. Bagshaw asserted the rights of the East Indies to relief. Mr. Labouchere backed up Sir Charles Wood's argument, repeating his assertion that free labour would be able to compete successfully with slave labour. Mr. Disraeli supported the motion in his usual lively and pungent style of oratory.

The real problem before the House, he said, was the success of the new commercial system in the only branch of our imperial industry upon which it had been tried: it had proved, he maintained, a total failure. But the bulk of his speech was a very animated and trenchant attack on the paltriness of the Government policy and measures. He announced, in the outset, that he should give an unqualified opposition to the vote