at once be assented to by every free trader. They | into which they have been involved by her own require to be allowed to export and import under bad tuition. any flag; to refine their own sugars on the spot, and to dispose of them in the home market on the same terms as the British refiner; to import any kind of sugar and molasses, and to distil from them; and, finally, that their rums should be admitted to home consumption, paying the same duty as British spirits. Such demands amount to nothing more than the liberty of making the most of their capital and industry, and ought to be liberally and cheerfully conceded.

We have a few words of advice to give the West Indians before we conclude. Their means are reduced; the people of England will no longer pay their rents and profits; and, like prudent private persons, they ought to set about retrenching their establishments in earnest. As yet, they merely talk about it. We take the principal colony, Jamaica, as an example of West Indian expenditure. In the memorial of the house of assembly to the queen, we find the following astounding account of it: "For the four years last past, our public and parochial burthens have exceeded an annual average of 400,000l., nearly equal in amount to one third of the value of the whole exports of the colony."

Here, then, is an islet of the Atlantic-much less in size than the county of York, with not double the population of one town of that county, with two thirds of its surface in a state of nature, and having for the great mass of its inhabitants, not industrious Europeans, but listless, semi-barbarous Africans-paying taxes that would suffice for the whole government, civil and military, of half-adozen German principalities; the matter being aggravated by the consideration that the whole military and naval charges are defrayed by the mother-country. Over so vast a field is it possible there can be no room for reform or retrenchment? Is it the legislature, that patronizes this monstrous expenditure, which is to be sponsor for a loan of a million to drain lagoons? Jamaica must give up all vice-regal airs, and henceforward live frugally, and unostentatiously, like others of the democracy.

By a recent message of the governor of Maryland, we find that the whole civil charges of this sovereign state, which is four times the size of Jamaica, and contains half as many more inhabitants, are covered by the modest sum of 26,0007. per annum. Making the largest allowance for parochial charges included in the Jamaica, but not the Maryland statement, surely the disparity of expense is frightful.

From the Examiner.

CHINESE LABOR FOR THE COLONIES.-In the very able leading article on the "Slave Trade and the West Indies" in your journal of Saturday, January 22d, an allusion was made to the Chinese as laborers for the colonies, they being, as you justly observe, the only other race of men, besides the negroes, capable of performing efficient field labor within the tropics. I am well acquainted with the Chinese, having had a personal experience of their methodical and industrious habits, during my service with the expedition from Hong Kong to Nankin. I have long been aware of their peculiar aptitude as laborers for the colonies; and some months since, when this important question was first seriously mooted, recommended a general scheme of Chinese immigration. But so determined are all parties concerned to encourage the importation of free blacks, that it has not as yet met with much attention. It appears that the Chinese are already employed in the cultivation of sugar in Java and the Philippine Islands, and a few have even been imported as free laborers into the slave-holding island of Cuba. You say that it would hardly be worth their while to seek employment at so great a distance, when they can find it so near their own shores. It is very true that they do obtain work, although it is in many cases very precarious and ill-paid; notwithstanding which, however, it must be said to their credit, that wherever they settle they invariably prosper. I feel convinced that if they were assured of steady work and moderate pay, there would be little difficulty in inducing some of the thousands of the superabundant and starving population of China, who yearly leave their country in search of the very necessaries of life, to volunteer their services for our colonies. As to the expense—a very material point-it would not in the first instance, be more, if so much, per man as for the negroes. Let them, however, but once know the way, and I feel We greatly fear Jamaica may in future times be morally certain that they would soon flock to the held out as 66 an ever-memorable example” at what West Indies, of their own accord and at their own an extravagant cost the government of 400,000 expense, as they do at present to all parts of the people inhabiting a small sea-girt island of the | Indian Archipelago. It is a question worthy of Atlantic may be conducted. But, assuredly, the solution, whether we should not be doing much colonists are not the only party to blame. They towards the abolition of the slave-trade, by proving were ill-brought-up children from their birth; and to the slave-holders that we have discovered a class the parent that foolishly pampered them into prod- of laborers apt for the purposes of tropical cultivaigality must not only bear a share of the blame, tion, and vastly superior to the negroes in every but endeavor to extrica them from difficulties respect.

Adam Smith tells us that the whole civil charges of the nine principal colonies which now constitute the most influential members of the American Union, amounted to no more than 64,700l. a year; an ever-memorable example," he adds, "at how small an expense three millions of people may not only be governed, but well governed."

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A WEST INDIAN.

From the Spectator.

DEFENCE FOR PEACE, NOt war.

LET us not be led away from the true point of view in respect of national defence: it is not whether we are to prepare for war, but whether our defences are in such a state as they ought always to present so as to guard against unforeseen contingences. In the heat of disputation, we might be drawn away from that, the real question, and should waste our labor in discussing subjects that have little to do with it.

Those who have no earnest care about the matter may not mind letting a very plain and homely question branch out into other topics. Members of parliament in quest of a popular theme-exleaguers in want of a "mission"-professed agitators seeking employment-junior journals seeking a clientela—will all desire to magnify the question, and stuff it full of resources for eloquence, for "economical" agitation, and so forth.

We

ger that is the new element in the question, but a new knowledge of our exposed condition. The number of dangers and their degree of probability may be precisely what they have been any time these last thirty years; our weakness even may be what it was; the change is, that we know it. We had assumed all along that those who had charge of our military and naval forces had performed the paramount duty of keeping our national defences in a state of completeness and sufficiency

some among them have now avowed that such is not the case: we do not stop to find out where a retrospective blame may be due, for that would be a very idle task; but this avowal, we say, is the novelty in the question; and now that we know the momentous deficiency that exists, we are bound to repair it. It may be a question whether a city needs walls or not, but while it has walls, it would be silly to permit the continued existence of a breach that could not be repaired in haste.

A correspondent in Paris assures us that we There is no question here of expense. Safety have underrated the present pacific turn of the nais a thing that must be provided for at any cost. tional temper in France-that our neighbors are There can be no "economy" in leaving the na- utterly disinclined to war, and that they are much tional security to the chapter of accidents. amused at our sudden alarm. There is no sudden do not say that our national safety is not provided alarm at their attitude, but only a new consciousfor; but, seeing statements put forth on the high-ness of a want at home. The question is not to est of all authority, that our defences have not been sufficient, we say that they ought to be sufficient. Neither is it a question of aggregate numbers in army or navy: it is not an increase of the gross quantity, nor any special and absolute amount that we demand, but sufficient strength in a particular quarter for a particular service.

They who assume that "free trade" will supersede the necessity of national defences do not really trust to their own principle. If free trade would supersede the necessity of guarding against contingent attacks-if it has placed us in a situation of more uninfringible safety than we enjoyed in the last year, 1847-then we need not only neglect to provide against ulterior mischances, but might disband our whole army. If, through free trade, we are to have, in 1848, positively and certainly less danger and hostility than we had in 1847, then our whole military and naval expenditure is a purely supererogatory burthen. Free trade is either a sufficient reliance, or it is not. If it is sufficient, it will prevent aggression, and we need provide no means of repulsion. If it will not prevent aggression, then the question recurs, Are our defences sufficient?

For observe, if free trade does not absolutely prevent aggression, but only diminishes the chances of aggression in their number, it does not settle the question of sufficiency of defence. If, for example, free trade has been effectual in reducing the chances of aggression, say from three to one in the year, still our defence must be sufficient on that one occasion, or we should then be as ill off

as ever.

The danger of aggression may be less than it has been from one particular quarter, and we are willing to believe that it is. It is not a new dan

be settled in France, or in any other foreign country. It is not our part to watch the shifting moods in a changeful neighbor. We must be always sufficiently prepared for what may happen in the ever-recurring circle of events, among which is war.

The English wish for peace, and they are steadfast in that wish; but a neighbor, whose pacific professions are just now so exaggerated, has by no means displayed the same steadfastness. Very trifling incidents may provoke a contrary mood They have done so not long back, and might do so again at any moment. Nothing could be more paltry than the Pritchard affair, yet it was the occasion of a project for a descent on England. Our government, as we learn from Admiral Bowles, received positive information that the French meditated a sudden attack on Portsmouth by armed steamers; and the emphatic opinion of one of the most intrepid commanders in our navy is freely quoted, that if the attempt had been made, we had then no means of stopping its execution. About the same time, we understand, Sir Robert Peel was so impressed by what came to his knowledge, that he immediately, on his own responsibility, without waiting for parliament, ordered an expenditure of 50,000l. towards bettering the defences; and Portsmouth has since been further strengthened.

That is not the only instance in which the idea of attacking England has been disclosed by the French, even within the reign of "The Napoleon of peace." When King Louis Philippe visited us four years ago in friendly guise, he was struck with admiration at what he saw in "the capital of the commercial world;" he deplored, even in fancy, the havoc that a war might inflict on his old hospitable friends the English; and, in the openness of his heart, good man! he went so fa

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as to disclose a danger of which his friends had | national independence, in the Hanse Towns. And been unconscious. About 1840, when considera- theoretically, we perceive at once that it cannot ble irritation against this country existed in France, exert greater influences than those which exist in some of Louis Philippe's officers were prepared material objects. It is the poet, not the merchant with plans for a descent on England: they showed or retail shopkeeper, who finds sermons in him how thirty thousand men might be landed stones"-in hearthstones, for instance; West within easy distance of London, and how clear phalia hams carry with them no moral conviction; the road to our metropolis! Various motives for rein-deer tongues, however multitudinous, are the wily king's disclosure may be conjectured: mute; Baltic timber, however superior to Canathey were probably not unmixed-not all disinter-dian, is not more edifying, except in Spenser's ested, nor yet all insincere.

Now, though we do not desire to war against France, does it follow that we are indifferent to her warring upon us? Or, if we tempted her to do so, should we be fostering peace? We seek nothing more, nor anything less, than defence for peace itself.

From the Spectator.

FREE TRADE IS NOT THE UNIVERSE.

sense, when he mentions "a little chapel edified" in a wood; the sweetness of sugar is purely phys ical, not moral. English hard-ware and delf are good, so are French silks and claret; but the mutual interchange imparts no intellectual virtues either to pen-knives or pale brandy; and the pictorial instructiveness of a figured dinner-plate or silk dress does not equal that of an ancient Mexican picture-book or an Egyptian hieroglyphic. Free trade can directly produce no moral sensation which is not the effect of sugar, cotton, silk,

SOME worthy enthusiasts seem to think that free trade is the philosopher's stone, the inclusive cre-earthenware, and such substantial articles; indiator of all things human They ascribe to their formula such omnipotence, that it really becomes necessary to make distinctions between those few things which lie within its scope and all the rest of the universe.

rectly, it increases such opportunities for mutual instruction in manners and knowledge as belong to the shop, the counting-house, the exchange, and the quay-not places the most famous as intellectual or moral schools. Those facilities, too, may What free trade can do, in a word, is to give exist without free trade: protective England offered the productive resources of a country liberty of far greater facilities for the foreign traveller, and action, and thus to increase the riches of that therefore for intellectual commerce, than free-trade country. Free trade is the exchange of goods Turkey. Art, a much higher social influence than unrestricted by distinctive fiscal burdens or prohi- trade, rose in Italy as political and commercial bitions; but even in its largest aspect it is still no freedom declined. Learning flourishes within the more than exchange of goods. It is freedom to circle of the Zollverein; the savoir vivre within exchange corn, wine, oil, cotton, silk, timber, met- exclusive France. Shakspeare wrote without the als, and other tangible things which are articles of inspiration of free trade; in spite of tariffs, Rossale; and the power to exchange implies a juster sini's passionate language vibrates from the Baltic division of employments among workmen of differ- to the Mediterranean; the pulse of love is not ent lands, so that each may take that which is most dependent on the custom-house-officer; the ethics suitable to him, and may therefore produce a larger of Christianity know no fiscal confines. These quantity. Free trade thus increases material things exist without free trade, and are not created wealth.

by it.

It has certain indirect consequences, which are But free trade has some positive drawbacks-it not different from those of commerce of any kind; may do its share of harm. By augmenting mateonly it is to be presumed that, when free, com-rial wealth, it tends to materialize the ideas of a merce will exhibit those consequences in the largest proportion. By increasing the productive powers of mankind generally, commerce tends to foster the natural capacities of man. By multiplying opportunities of intercourse, it tends to promote friendly dispositions, mutual enlightenment, and civilization. By augmenting abundance, it tends to produce ease, contentment, and the good feelings belonging to that condition..

nation. By bringing into greater prominence mere commercial success, it tends to exalt the commer cial test of "profit" into a standard of worth for higher things; insomuch that at this moment we have before us a spectacle incredible to the great patriots of ancient Greece or Rome, or of modern Europe-men reducing the question of national safety and honor to one of "pounds, shillings, and pence !" Books remain unwritten because they But that is all. Empirically, we may learn will not " pay:" the devotion which is necessary that free trade cannot perform many most impor- to art is suppressed by material worldliness; in tant functions needed by the body corporate. That English society, no virtue can cause poverty to be it cannot produce political freedom, we see in Tur-"received" except upon sufferance, no vice or key; nor social concord, in Switzerland; nor meanness can exclude wealth.

Monthly parts. For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four of five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in Binding. We bind the work in a uniform, strong, and each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. good style; and where customers bring their numbers in But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and good order, can generally give them bound volumes in ex-fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 change without any delay. The price of the binding is cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume 50 cents a volume. As they are always bound to one containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives pattern, there will be no difficulty in matching the future eighteen months. volumes

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind ja the utmost expansion of the presert age. J. Q. ADAMS

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 204.-8 APRIL, 1848.