] TIIIXIPAD. 



daily task-work. The labourer, seeing his employer yielding at 

 discretion, wantonly indulged in idleness and revelry, or squan- 

 dered his time in wandering over the country, from place to 

 place, being always certain of procnring shelter and work where- 

 ever he preferred remaining, even for a few days. 



I have already proved that slave countries can produce sugar 

 and other articles at a cheaper rate than could be effected in the 

 emancipated colonies. As a consequence of the Equalisation 

 Act of 1846 Cuba, Porto-Rico, Brazil, the United States, 

 Mauritius, and the East Indies enormously increased their 

 production ; whilst that of the emancipated colonies was retro- 

 grading, with the exception of Mauritius, which had been 

 allowed to import labour from India. 



Emancipation was not only a political, it was, above all, a 

 philanthropical act ; an act of reparation, intended as the means 

 of the regeneration of the oppressed race. As such it ought to 

 have had its consequences ; and one of these results surely was 

 to extend its benefits, as far as possible, to the whole African 

 race, by discouraging negro slavery in all countries where it 

 actually existed. The reverse, however, may be said to have at 

 first practically ensued; for, at the very time in which the 

 British money was employed in checking the slave trade on the 

 coasts of Africa, the British Parliament was passing measures 

 which, indirectly but most effectively, favoured that trade, by 

 tendering a premium to slave produce. Certainly it is difficult 

 to say what would have occurred had the British market been 

 closed against slave-growing sugar, or a differential duty been 

 established; but I am justified in concluding, from what has 

 taken place, that such a measure would have been the death- 

 blow of the slave trade, both in Cuba and Brazil. 



It has been stated that the "ci-devant slave proprietors were, 

 in most instances, impoverished, in many ruined/' With regard 

 to Trinidad, the fact was this : by far the greatest part of the 

 compensation grant (£1,390,000) had been applied in liquidating 

 the mortgage and other debts of the planters, so that the 

 majority of them began the new era free from liabilities, many 

 with reserve funds. However, they were soon afterwards 

 involved in fresh difficulties, owing to the exorbitant wages 

 they were compelled to pay, in order to obtain a mere modicum 

 of labour, and to the usurious rates of interest paid on capital 

 advanced by merchants and others residing in Great Britain. " I 

 could quote to your lordship/' wrote Lord Harris to Earl Grey, 

 in April, 1848, " I could quote estates, so far as their soil is 

 concerned, of great value, and giving previously to emancipation a 

 large income, on which the whole of the redemption money was 

 expended in improvements ; which were entirely free from debt 



