264 TlMEHRI. 



The last sentence is no flight of oratory, but the 

 simple truth, as West Indians know well. Was it not 

 only so lately as 1885, that these colonies were not per- 

 mitted to enter into an advantageous convention with 

 the United States, which had been successfully negotiated 

 by the British minister at Washington, ably assisted by 

 Mr. NEV1LE LUBBOCK, the Chairman of the West India 

 Committee?* And so it has been for more than two cen- 

 turies. For a long time the West Indies were bound 

 hand and foot by the Navigation Laws. In the present 

 century, the necessities of a policy of Free Trade have 

 admitted slave-grown sugar on the same terms as those 

 accorded to sugar from the British colonies, where 

 slavery had been abolished. To-day, the foreign sugars 

 produced under a system of bounties are admitted on 

 equal terms with sugar grown in the West Indian Islands 

 — to the great injury of the latter. It is no sufficient 

 answer to the West Indian to tell him that the Bounty 

 system cheapens sugar for the English consumer, and the 

 sacrifice of the producer in favour of the consumer is a 

 matter about which the English producer is likely to 

 have something to say, now that he has a vote. This 



* As some of the islands had been old English colonies even before 

 the Union of Scotland with England, it was far from pleasant for the 

 islanders to learn, in the earlier stages of the negotiations, that the 

 British West Indies were not entitled to the most favoured Nation treat- 

 ment, at the hands of the United States. This disability was the outcome 

 of the Navigation Laws. When the Commercial Convention of 1815 was 

 being arranged, the Americans desired to share in the West Indian 

 trade, but the British Government would not hear of their doing so. In 

 later years, modifications were from time to time made in this Policy of 

 Exclusion, and especially so during the Presidency of General Jackson' 

 until Free Trade finally gave up everything to the Americans, without 

 relieving the islands from the disability mentioned. 



