1836.] 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



51 



vigation Acts, were warrantable in point of justice 

 to the present sugar-growers of tlie West — would 

 .still give no abatement of price; because East In- 

 dian suo-ar (as we shall presently see) may, from 

 ail past experience, be expectetl, if sent hither in 

 any considerable quantity, to require, tliough at 

 an equalized duty, a price rather above, than be- 

 low, the sugar of the west, even with the calcu- 

 lated addition of 9^. per cwt. tor free labor: the ad- 

 vantages enjoyed by the East Indian in cheap- 

 ness of labor and other items of liis outlay, being 

 overbalanced by the heavier rates ot his inland 

 carriage and long voyage to England. Now, as 

 England consumes almost 200,000 tons, or 

 4.000,000 cwts. of VVest Indian sugar yearly, an 

 advance on that sugar of 9s. per. cwt. (the esti- 

 mated additional cost of fl'ee labor) would be a tax 

 of nearly £2,000,000 sterling, levied principally 

 upon the working classes of our own people; and 

 and 5'et, the duties and commercial restrictions re- 

 maining as now, it would be an advance altogeth- 

 er avoidable. 



Perhaps it would be too romantic to expect that 

 a mere philanthropic consideration for tiie remote 

 sutienngs of the African would lead the majority 

 of the lower ranks in England to acquiesce in the 

 payment of this heavy charge, still less in the sur- 

 render or abridgment of one of their most im- 

 portant daily comforts. The rise of prices, to so 

 great an amount, and on so necessary an article, 

 could not, in feet, fiiil to excite a loud dnd general 

 demand for cheaper sugar; and since the British 

 possessions would be incapable of satisfying this 

 demand, it could be quieted only by the hasty re- 

 moval of those prohibitory duties which now vir- 

 tually exclude the sugars of the foreign, that is, 

 slave-importing, colonies. With the diminished 

 force and influence which modern events have left 

 to the government, and especially with the pre- 

 sent disposition toward free trade of all kinds, such 

 a cry, however vicious, would not be easily resist- 

 ed, even if the administration were interested in 

 the resistence; but unfortunately, their interests 

 would be with, and not against, such a movement; 

 for it would help them in that great difficulty of 

 all administrations, their finance. The diminu- 

 tion of consumption, compelled by the rise of pri- 

 ces, would have occasioned a grievous deficiency 

 in the revenue produced by the sugar duties: for 

 instance, a diminution of one-fifth would leave a 

 deficiency of near £1,000,000 sterling. But the 

 income so lost to the Exchequer would be but too 

 easily reparable, by the admission of the foreign 

 slave-grown sugars at a low rate of duty; and 

 that would be a sufllcient temptation, with most 

 governments, to admit them. 



Thus, by the simplest and most natural combi- 

 nation of popular clamor with the interest of the 

 treasury, the whole object of our long struggle on 

 the negroes' behalf is in danger of being frustrated 

 absolutely and for ever. The evil of slavery, ex- 

 pelled from our colonies, will have shified its 

 sphere, indeed, but increased its amount. Not 

 merely that sixth which has hitherto supplied the 

 continental market — but half — perhaps, two-thirds 

 — of all our West Indian possessions will have 

 been thrown out of cultivation. From the com- 

 mencement of that desolating change, until the 

 burst of some such general emancipation as we 

 have anticipated in the foreign colonies, the Bra- 

 ziUian and the Spaniard, not the African, will have 



been reaping the harvest of all our toil, and trea- 

 sure, and sacrifice; and, in addition to her payment 

 of £20,000,000 for the emancipation of British 

 slaves, England will have sustained the mortifi- 

 cation and mischief of depopulation to more than 

 half her VVest Indian settlements — destruction to 

 more than half her West Indian commerce — and a 

 frightful aggravation of slavery and the slave- 

 trade. The sum of human miserj" will have 

 been augmented by the tremendous difference be- 

 tween the social condition of the British and of 

 the foreign negro; the difierence between cottagers, 

 dwelling in enjoyment of all the necessaries and 

 most of the privileges and comforts of life, alike in 

 health or sickness, infancy or age — and men sta- 

 bled like brutes, and harnessed out to the daily 

 horrors of a toil, whose only redeeming quality is 

 that of shortening the life which it renders intol- 

 erable. 



Considerations of national defence, too, inter- 

 pose themselves, though we hope they are not 

 needed, to reinforce our humanity. Not only must 

 the displacement of our sugar cultivation, by the 

 foreign slave-trade, be the displacement likewise of 

 all the maritime strength which the commerce 

 and carriage of West Indian produce have raised 

 and maintained for Great Britain, but the force 

 thus lost by her is gained precisely by that power 

 which alone has a navj? capable of giving her mo- 

 ment's uneasiness. It is inevitably transferred to 

 the already formidable harbors of the United Slates 

 of America; for it is from their shores that the 

 Spanish slave-islands derive their main supplies. 

 Cuba alone takes goods from the United States to 

 the 3'early value of eight millions of dollars. 

 Twenty years ago, the direct trade between the 

 United State and the two great Spanish slave- 

 colonies of C iba and Puerto Rico would scarcely 

 find employment for an amount of 50,000 or pro- 

 bably even 40,000 tons of shipping. That trade 

 now occupies American shippingto the amount of 

 220,000 tons. To America, from her local posi- 

 tion, the intercourse with Puerto Rico and Cuba 

 is in the nature of a coasting trade; and thus, in 

 the commencement of a maritime war, the Ame- 

 ricans could man, without difficulty, from so vast a 

 marine, a navy of twenty, or perhaps thirty sail, 

 before the flag of an English admiral could be 

 visible in their waters. 



* * # * # 



Do what we may,however, the plain, disagree- 

 able truth still is. that we can, in no possible mode, 

 avoid a loss in some shape or other, to the extent 

 of the difierence in price between free and slave 

 labor. We may distribute and apportion that 

 loss; but we cannot get rid of it. We have for a 

 vast number of years carried on a trade in sugar, 

 in which we netted, by the labor of slaves, a pro- 

 fit of 9s. or 10s. per cwt. beyond what we could 

 otherwise have attained. We have now, by a 

 great national enactment, given up that profit. 

 But having so given it up, we must patiently bear 

 the privation, and not deceive ourselves into a 

 supposition, that, by any arrangement or contri- 

 vance between one set of interests and another, 

 we can — at least for a long time to come — retrieve 

 a single penny of what we have fairly surrender- 

 ed. 



Yet perhaps eventually, even with a view to 

 profit, the present maintenance of the West In- 

 dian plantations may prove itself a measure of no 



