INTRODUCTION. 39 



complain of unjust treatment; to protest that, though forming a 

 portion of the British nation, we are worse used than the slave- 

 holders of the United States and Brazil whose cotton, hides, and 

 dyes, are admitted duty free, whilst we are made to pay an ad 

 valorem duty of 100 per cent, on our principal, nay only article of 

 commerce. The British public have therefore every reason to 

 mistrust a policy which evinces a determination to aid in the ruin 

 of these islands. 



But a reduction of duty on sugar is not the only step which 

 the Government ought to take, nor the sole act of justice to which 

 we are entitled. It ought also to alter the legislative acts relat- 

 ing to refineries, and the use of sugar and molasses in distilleries. 

 It is again contended, that great difficulties are to be encountered 

 in the adjustment of such changes. I am not sufficiently ac- 

 quainted with the details of legislation on those matters to offer 

 any comment thereon here ; but I make bold to say, that such 

 difficulties ought not to deter the Parliament from framing just 

 and appropriate laws such, in short, as might aid in saving British 

 possessions from utter ruin, and the emancipated class from con- 

 sequent barbarism. British legislators, I opine, are, or ought to 

 be, too familiar with such difficulties, not to be able to make such 

 provisions as would ensure the rights of the treasury, without in- 

 juring either the interests of the producers in the colonies, or of 

 the consumers at home. If the British Government wishes to be 

 just and impartial, let it place the Queen's subjects of the colonies 

 on the same footing with those of the fatherland ; and why, in the 

 name of equity, should not our sugars and molasses the duty 

 once paid be as free in the markets of the United Kingdom, as 

 is the slave-cotton of Brazil and Louisiana ? 



The British Parliament can do more still, through the power- 

 ful engine of legislation. I have already adverted to ecclesiastical 

 matters, and suggested what might, and ought to be done ; I now 

 turn to subjects connected with the purely temporal prosperity of 

 the colonies. To this end, every facility should be afforded for 

 the acquisition of emigrants either by adopting some compre- 

 hensive scheme for the increase of a labouring population, by 

 entering into arrangements with the United States for facilitating 

 the introduction of the free people of colour, or by removing all 

 difficulties in the way of East Indian immigration ; in fact, by 

 opening up every channel through which population may flow, in 

 a continuous stream, into these islands. 



Both the changes in the social condition of these dependen- 

 cies, and also the commercial policy of Great Britain, require 

 correspondent changes in the general constitution of the West 

 India colonies. As matters stand, they now form six distinct 

 governments: the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, and the Virgin 

 Islands viz., Anguilla, St. Christopher, Nevis, and Montserrat, 



