bers protested as contrary to usage and constitutional rule. Ultimately, upon the suggestion of Mr. Herries, Lord John Russell consented to take a reduced grant of 170,000l., which was carried on a division by 70 to 21. As the Session advanced it became evident, from the increasingly adverse tenor of the accounts received from the West Indies, that some measure of relief or as sistance must be extended to these Colonies, as the only means of extricating them from imminent in solvency and ruin. Although the Ministers had some months before avowed their determination to adhere to their settlement of the preceding year, symptoms of concession began to manifest themselves; and at length, on the 16th of June, Lord John Russell laid before the House of Commons his proposed measure of relief. In moving that the House should resolve itself into a Committee to consider the Act of 9 & 10 Vict. c. 63, Lord John reviewed the past legislation affecting the West Indies, especially referring to the Emancipation Act of 1834, and to the alteration of the Sugar Duties, by admitting foreign free-labour sugar in 1845, and all foreign sugar in 1846. The first measure he declared to be an act of humanity and justice, and he verily believed, that if it had not passed, we should have had a series of insurrections and disturb ances, which would have been fatal to the prosperity of the West Indies. The gift of 20,000,000l. to the West Indian proprietors showed that the Parliament and people of England were disposed to make important sacrifices to prevent distress and ruin from falling on them. Both that Act and the Acts of 1846, he maintained, had been completely successful. The main object of the Act of 1834 was to give freedom to 800,000 slaves, and to place them in a condition of independence and prosperity. That object was admitted on all hands to have been attained. The main object of the Act of 1846 was to obtain a cheaper and larger supply of sugar, with a diminution of burdens to the people of England; an object which he showed by financial returns had been completely accomplished. The consumption of sugar had increased from 244,000 tons in 1845 to 290,700 tons in 1847, and was still increasing. The revenue derived from the duties on sugar had increased from 3,745,000l. in 1845, to 4,596,000l. in 1847. Lord John reviewed the measures which had been taken for introducing labourers from the East Indies into the Mauritius, and from the East Indies and Africa into the West Indian Colonies; which he admitted had not been very successful. The present state of the case was, that labourers might be introduced from any British possession in Africa, with only this provision, that there should be an officer on board the vessel who should take care that there were no transactions resembling the purchase of slaves or the slave trade, and that the person who emigrates to the West Indies, should go there with his own consent. Also, “liberated Africans," from captured slave ships, were conveyed direct to the West Indies, instead of being sent first to Sierra Leone. But the suspicion entertained in this country, that the slave trade might be revived under the pretence of immigration-the fear that slaves should be compelled to work in the West Indies-retarded for a longer period than was quite fair or just to the West Indian proprietors the immigration into the West Indies. He proposed, therefore, to do more now than he should have done had that question been settled some years ago, and had there been a fair import of labour since the year 1834. He proposed to make an advance to the Colonies, on the security of the colonial revenues, for the purpose of meeting the expense of immigration; or rather, he should say, that he proposed to guarantee a colonial loan, not exceeding 500,000l., in addition to 160,000l. which the House had already guaranteed this Session. He Complaints had been made of the too rapid operation of the Act of 1846; and that under it one class of sugar had an advantage over every other class in the classification of duties, which it ought not fairly to have. In considering that subject, he frankly avowed that he did not think it fair to the British consumer to impose a differential duty of 10s. on sugar, to last for ten years or more, for the purpose of reviving the industry and prosperity of the West Indies. therefore looked in another direction he looked to the experience of late years, in which he saw that, with regard to many articles on which the duty had been diminished and the price had been lowered, the revenue had been no loser, whilst the consumer had been a great gainer. He quoted a table showing that from 1825 to 1841 every fall in the duty on sugar had been accompanied by a rise in the consumption, and every rise of duty by a fall in the consumption; a fact also shown by the returns for 1845-7. He therefore looked to a large consumption of sugar for the means of modifying the Act of 1846. What he proposed was, that the duty on colonial sugar should be reduced after the 5th of July in the present year to 13s., and should be reduced subsequently a shilling every succeeding year until it reached 10s. He likewise proposed that the duty on ordinary foreign Muscovado sugar should remain as fixed by the Act of 1846; but he proposed a new distinctive duty for foreign brown clayed sugar. In this species of sugar, the foreign producer had an undue advantage, from the wide variation of quality which might be made to come under that head; and thus the foreigner was able to introduce a very high quality of that sugar under the low range of duty. Lord John proposed a distinctive scale for brown clayed, or qualities equal to brown clayed, foreign sugar: from the 5th July, 1848, to the 5th July, 1849, the duty would remain at 20s.; and it would then be reduced by 1s. 6d. a year, until it reached a 10s. duty in July 1854. The proposed duties, then, would stand thus:Year ending Foreign. July 5. 1849 1850 1851 Brown Clayed. Musc. S. d. 20 0 ... 18 6 O Colonial. Muscovado. S. d. S. d. 18 6 13 O ... 17 15 6 14 6 13 0 ... ... 10 0 1853 1854 ... Equal... 10 0 O ... ... 10 O 10 0 Of course such a change in these Sugar Duties would require a corresponding change to be made in the duties on refined and double refined white-clayed sugars, and on molasses. Complaints had been made by the West Indian proprietors of the differential duty on rum. Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had proposed that the dif ferential duty on rum should be 6d. Some difficulty arose on that proposition, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer raised it to 9d., although he maintained that 6d. was quite sufficient. The Chairman of the Board of Excise thought that 4d. was sufficient as a differential duty; and Lord John therefore could not agree to impose a higher differential duty on rum than that sum. There was one question connected with this reduction of duty, which would make it necessary to withdraw the permission given last year to use sugar in breweries. With regard to the use of sugar in distilleries, no change in the present law would be made. The proposition of the Government was received with a good deal of disapprobation in several quarters of the House. Sir Robert Inglis and Sir John Pakington condemned it, on the ground that it would encourage the slave trade. Mr. Bernal, Mr. Barkly, Mr. Henry Baillie, Mr. Hume, Mr. Henry Drummond, Mr. Philip Miles, Mr. Henley, Mr. Hudson, and Mr. Evelyn Denison, all condemned the plan as totally insufficient to avert the ruin of the West Indies. Mr. Barkly declared that the loan of 500,000l. would be useless for purposes of immigration-it might as well be thrown into the sea. Mr. Bernal claimed, on behalf of the West Indian proprietors, the right to import their produce into this country free from all duties whatever. Mr. Herries, Lord George Bentinck, and Mr. Disraeli, vigorously urged both objections-the encouragement of the slave trade, and the insufficient aid to the West Indies. Mr. Disraeli called it a paltry and perilous measure; and sharply accused the Government of breaking faith with the West Indies. Lord George fastened a serious imputation upon Mr. Hawes, of having withheld from the Committee on the West Indies, for fifty-six days, a despatch of Sir Charles Grey, Governor of Jamaica, suggesting a plan of relief for the West Indies. The measure was attacked on freetrade grounds by Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Charles Villiers; Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright calling upon the House not to overlook the sufferings of their own fellow-countrymen in Yorkshire and Lancashire. On the 18th the subject was renewed, Sir John Pakington proposing an amendment condemnatory of the Ministerial scheme in the following terms : "That this House, considering the evidence taken during the present Session before a Select Committee, is of opinion that the remedies proposed by Her Majesty's Government for the great distress of the sugar-growing possessions of the Crown, and which that Committee has said will require the immediate application of relief, will neither effect that object, nor check the stimulus to the slave trade which the diminution of the cultivation of sugar in those colonies has inevitably occasioned." The object of this amendment, he said, was not to create embarrassment and delay, but to rescue the Colonies from the danger which was impending over them. did not argue the question as one of protection or anti-protection, but contended that the differential duty now proposed by the Government was quite inadequate to the present crisis, and totally incapable He affording relief to the distress. of the British Colonies. He proved this by referring to the comparative cost of producing sugar in the British West Indies and in the slave colonies of Cuba and the Brazils. He also objected to that part of Lord John Russell's scheme which permitted the captured Africans to be landed in Jamaica and the other West Indian islands free of cost, on the ground that it may lead to the renewal of the slave trade. He likewise complained of the mode in which the Act of 1846 had been passed, and of the results which it had produced in the West Indies. No less than eighteen mercantile houses in the West Indies had already become bankrupt, and if the present state of things continued, other firms must be involved in the same ruin. He showed that equally melancholy results had been produced by the same cause in the Mauritius and in the East Indies; and quoted the opinions of the most competent authorities in all our Colonies to prove that our sugar planters could not cultivate their estates to advantage without competent protection. He then turned to that portion of the subject which is connected with slavery and the slave trade, and contended that the Act of 1846 had increased both to an extent almost incalculable. If we wished to exterminate the slave trade we must enable the British planter to enter into competition with slave labour, and to do that we must give him competent protection. He therefore implored the House to retrace its steps, as it valued the dependencies of the British Crown and the reputation and character of this Christian land. Sir E. Buxton seconded the amendment, though he did not approach the question altogether with the same views as Sir J. Pakington. The true policy of this country was, he thought, to exclude from its shores all slavelabour sugar, and to admit from every country, without any restriction, sugar the produce of free labour. He was anxious to let the people of England have sugar at a low price; but he firmly believed that if they were informed that they could not have low-priced sugar without the destruction of the man who made it, they would reject it with abhorrence, and would gladly give a higher price for the sugar raised by the freeman. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had listened to the speeches of the mover and seconder of the amendment with great attention, in the vain hope that he should find in some portion of them a substitute for the measure of the Government which they condemned; but with all his desire to dive into the meaning of Sir J. Pakington's amendment, he could not make out either what he would do for the relief of the West Indian planter, or what protection he would grant to his sugar. Sir E. Buxton was somewhat more explicit, for he proposed the perpetual exclusion of slave-labour sugar; but, unfortunately, Parliament had already decided against that proposition, as well as against the perpetual high protective duty to which Sir J. Pakington appeared inclined. He then proceeded to contend, in opposition to the same gentlemen, that the Act of 1846 had not caused that increase of slavery and the slave trade which had been attributed to it; that neither slavery nor the slave trade could be put down by high protective duties; and that the only mode of extinguishing either was by establishing the superior cheapness of free labour. He admitted that there was no hope of restoring the prosperity of the West Indies, unless we could enable their planters to compete successfully with the planters in Cuba and in the Brazils; and at the risk of being lectured by Mr. Ellice as Lord J. Russell had been for alluding to the extravagance of the West Indies, he would repeat, that one mode of enabling them to meet that competition was the diminution of their expenses, and especially of the cost of managing their estates. After showing that protection had operated very injuriously in the West Indies by increasing the rate of wages, which was an essential ingredient in the price of production, he argued at great length that Government would defeat its own object if it were to restore the high protection which formerly existed, and that the best plan for renewing the prosperity of the West Indies and for suppressing the slave trade would be the plan of the Government, which gave at once a free supply of labour to those colonies which wanted it, and an extension for three years longer of the moderate protection now in force. He then travelled over much of the same ground as on Friday last, defend ing the Government resolutions in all their details, and contending that whilst they were beneficial to the West Indies, they were not injurious to the consumers in this country. He also maintained that no injury would accrue to the revenue from the changes now proposed, as they were calculated to produce an increased consumption of sugar. Mr. Seymer supported the amendment, in the hope that if it were carried it would compel the Government to reconsider the whole of this subject. After a strong attack on the political economists, whom he characterized as dull deceivers, who were sometimes. right in their decimals but always wrong in their millions, he expressed himself unable to conceive how the country, which had so nobly abolished slavery in 1807, could have passed the Act of 1846, which not only encouraged slavery but also renewed the slave trade, or how it could accede to a proposition like the present. It was true that the Act of 1846 had rendered sugar cheap; but did the House never hear of parties selling their wares at a tremendous sacrifice? Many of our planters were already ruined, and those who were not were declining business; and the result would be that the supply of sugar would diminish, and before long the price would again increase. He should have gladly given his vote in favour of a 10s. discriminating duty against all foreign sugar; but, as that question was not at present before the House, he should vote in favour of Sir J. Pakington's amendment. Mr. Hume rose as a free trader to show that free trade had nothing to do with the question then before the House. Free trade could only operate where the parties were in like circumstances, and where both could apply the same objects to the same ends. Now, it was the opinion of Mr. Deacon Hume that if the British West Indies could be placed on a footing of equality with Cuba or Porto Rico, they would be able to compete with them successfully; and that gentleman entertained that opinion with great confidence, because, up to a recent period, this country had |