19 JUNE 1841, Page 17

SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Poraricaz ECONOMY,

Lecture's on Colonization and Colonies. Delivered before the University of Oxford iu 1839, 1840, and 1841. By Herman Merivale, A.M., Professor of Political Eco-

nomy. Vol. I Longman and Co.

MERIVALE'S LECTURES ON COLONIES AND COLONIZATION.

Trris volume contains part of a series of lectures delivered before the University of Oxford ; it is published in compliance with a con- dition attached to the foundation of the Chair of Political Economy ; and forms one of the most useful contributions to economical science which have appeared in modern times. Conversant with the leading authorities in political economy, and well read in colonial his- tory, the lecturer has so digested his acquired stores as to present their spirit alone to his reader, and subordinate to the purpose in hand. The arrangement of the subject is natural and orderly ; the matter full and to the point ; the style clear, close, and cogent ; the manner agreeable ; and both the narrative and the argument rapid, unless in a few places where the lecturer is discussing some of the hypothetical abstractions of the Ricardo school. These are valuable literary qualifications in a lecturer, but Mr. MERIVALE possesses a still more useful quality for a teacher of political economy, good sense-

" Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,

And though no science, fairly worth the seven."

This " light " within yourself, as the poet goes on to call it, which seems necessary to permanent success in all pursuits, whether active, speculative, or in the world of imagination—whether in war or government, in philosophy or poetry—is more especially neces- sary in economical science, not merely to enable a man to seize upon the essential characteristics of his question, amid the com- plexities of long-established practice and the sophistries of interest, prejudice, and folly, but to prevent himself from being led astray by his own hypothetical imaginings.

The school of Mr. MERIVALE is that of ADAM SMITH, or of the practical as opposed to the abstract. He wants the original

perception and acumen which distinguish the great founder of political economy, and enabled him to form and almost to per- fect the science from the chaos of scattered truths and abounding

errors and prejudices which he found before him. But Mr. MERI- VALE has much of ADAM SMITH'S sagacity and sense ; leading him to consider things mixed, (as they are and ever must be in human society,) instead of looking at one element of a complex subject abstracted from all the other elements with which it must continue to exist.

The division of the work is into three parts. The first contains a history of modern colonizationSpanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British. It does not deal with particular events, and rarely with events at all, but develops the principles on which the colonies were founded, the " colonial system' adopted by the parent state towards them, and the results which flowed fiom that system, both upon the social character of the colony and its economical condition. For the general reader this is one of the most attractive parts of the book ; presenting the essence of colonial history unencumbered with its details, whilst it affords much in- formation of a statistical and economical kind having a bearing upon present colonial affairs and financial or "free trade" agi- tation. • The second part is of a more scientific character : discussing the economical effects of colonization on the parent state—first, as re- gards the effects produced by emigration on the population and wealth of the mother-country by the exportation of people and capital ; secondly, in what way and to what extent the wealth of the parent state is affected by the colonial trade and the " colonial

system." In the first section of this division, Mr. MERIVALE ex- amines some of the views of the Ricardo school on capital, wages, and

profits, but merely for the sake of the examination, since he main-

tains that practically no people can ever be injured by voluntary emigration for the sake of founding colonies ; and he applies this

part of the subject to the present condition of Great Britain and Ireland, as to how far and under what circumstances emigration would be beneficial. The true economical use of colonies, apart from the outlet they afford as a drain for surplus population, he holds to consist in furnishing the mother-country with new markets and new productions, or rather with new productions only.

" in point of fact, importation, not exportation, is the great interest of a country ; not the disposal of her own commodities, but the obtaining other

commodities in return. The first is only useful as a means to the last : and

yet it is singular to observe how the latter object, that of importation, is overlooked in ordinary reasoning on the subject, as if the only benefit of

colonies resulted to our producers—our merchants and manufacturers, and not to our consumers—that is, to the great bulk of the people. This strange omission is in reality the consequence of those very narrow views of commercial policy, which have become so inveterate by long indulgence, that even those who are convinced of their futility can scarcely shake off the prejudices pro- duced by them. Thus we constantly underrate those commercial benefits which are common to us with all the world, or which we only enjoy in a superior degree in so far as superior industry and manufacturing advantages fairly command it. To suit our contracted notions of economical gain to a particular country, the gain in question must be something exclusive and monopolized. • • Nothing is more common, even now, than to hear colonies spoken of as if they were only so many emporia where certain quantities of cotton and hardware

may be disposed of with advantage to the manufacturer and shipowner. That the poor man possesses additional articles of food and clothing, and many little comforts or enjoyments which were unknown to his forefathers ; that mem- bers of the richer and the middle classes, in return for the outlay of a similar proportion of their income, can indulge in many luxuries which were hereto- fore denied them, can surround themselves with a refinement and elegance

heretofore unknown ; these are, after all, the great primary benefits which the discovery of America, and the spread of colonization have secured to us: and it in to a similar increase of our physical well-being that we ought to look as the chief economical advantage to be derived to us from its farther extension. " The increase of the demand for products of national industry is a good, not because it enables us to part more readily with these products, but because it increases our means of acquiring articles of necessity, comfort, and luxury, in exchange. It is not the export of so many millions' worth of cotton goods which benefits England ; it is the acquisition of the auger and coffee, the wines, tea, silk, and other numberless objects of value, which we receive in return. Our best customers are, not those who take most of our produce, but those who give us the greatest amount of value in exchange for it."

It will readily be inferred from this that Mr. Maas/ALE is a free- trader in the largest sense of the word, and opposed altogether to the "colonial s■ stem," as alike useless, mischievous, and unjust. Useless, because it can never be enforced against the colony to its fullest extent ; and even where it is enforced at all, as in the mono- poly of the carrying-trade by our navigation-laws, it is questionable whether it is not upheld by circumstances and not the law. Unjust, as interfering with Boage's admitted natural right of man, " the right of making his industry fruitful." Mischievous, as forcing the labour and capital of a colony into an unnatural direction, or maintaining it there after it has ceased to be advantageously em- ployed; sometimes creating employments which, not resting on any solid basis, are ever in a feverish and fluctuating state ; and -always raising up interests, which, when time develops their in- veterate evils, it is injurious to uphold and difficult as well as bard to abandon. But the great evil of the colonial system, in Mr. Mrativm.e's opinion, is inflicted upon the mother-country. If the struggle be one of law against nature and right, the foreign smuggler steps in to the colonist's assistance—as was exhibited in the case of the Spanish colonies ; but when the parent state voluntarily binds itself to receive goods from its own colonies only, and to prohibit the productions of all other countries, it annually deprives itself of the price or quantity of the commodities which it might have pro- cured from the foreigner. " If I am forced to carry on a traffic in which I sell cheap and buy dear,—if I buy coats with hats manufactured by myself, and, giving my own hats at the market-price, am bound by contract to take the coats for twice as much as they are worth,—surely I should be reckoned a strange calculator if I persisted in estimating the value of my trade by its amount—boasted of the number of hats which I had sold, when 1 him parted with them for half their value, and mea- mired the value of the coats I had purchased by setting them all dean at the fictitious and exaggerated price I had agreed to give for them. Yet this is rre- cisely, and without any exaggeration, the ordinary line of argument adopted by the advocates of the colonial system. Three millions and a half of British exports to the West Indies, in 1838, purchased less than half as much sugar and coffee as they would have purchased if carried to Cuba and Brazil. Goods to the amount of 1,750,000/. were therefore as completely thrown away without remuneration, as far as Britain is concerned, as if the vessels which conveyed

t hem had perished on the voyage. Yet this sum of 1,750,0001. is gravely set down, along with the remainder, as part of the annual ' value of our colonial trade.'"

The third part of the work is yet unfinished, and indeed little more than begun. Its subject is the progress of wealth and so- ciety in colonies : one of its topics is the Wakefield system of selling land,—whose utility Mr. MERIVALE is disposed to limit very considerably, and to rest chiefly on the peculiar circum- stances of the new country ; another topic is the different methods in which a supply of labour is procured in young colonies,—involving in its discussion the question of Slavery and the future prospects of our West Indian possessions. And these two subjects, handled in different parts of the work according to their historical or econo- mical phases, are those which will attract the most present atten- tion, if they are not in reality the most important and interesting parts of colonial history. From a survey of colonial history, Mr. MERIVALE shows that great wealth, either to individuals or as a colonial export, can only be produced when tropical agriculture takes the form of a manufacture. To accomplish this effectually two elements are necessary,—an ample supply of labour, and plenty of fertile virgin soil, to be broken up as soon as the land in cultivation begins to be exhausted. This last condition prac- tically implies that the labourers should be slaves ; for freemen would either " squat" upon or appropriate the unoccupied lands, or demand most exorbitant wages if they worked at all. But whatever the true theory may be, the labour, in fact, has always been slave-labour, and every colony has illustrated the principle that may be deduced from the alleged elements of prosperity. As long as the soil of Jamaica and the smaller islands was unexhausted, and labour plentiful, the superior energy, industry, skill, and capital of the British race, carried all before it, till St. Domingo came into the field, as the British islands touched upon their decline. In Cuba and Porto Rico a few great planters quietly jogged on upon their estates, something after the fashion of feudal lords ; but the islands, especially Porto Rico, were inhabited by a free Creole race either of pure Spanish descent or of mixed breed. These led a laborious, half uncivilized life, upon their small properties, raising a surplus produce to supply them with such foreign commodities as their simple habits required,—and chiefly raised it by their own labour,—for even so late as 1810, Porto Rico bad 165,000 free inhabitants, and only 17,000 slaves, whilst in the British settlements before Emancipation, the free population was about 150,000, the slaves 800,000. But the destruction of St. Do- mingo, the abolition of the British slave-trade, and the exhaustion of the soil in the English settlements, gave an immense impetus to the Spanish colonies and to Brazil. The population of Cuba increased from 300,000 in 1800 to 800,000 in 1895 ; her exports from the value of 600,000 to 4,000,000; and in 1830 she furnished between one-fifth and one-sixth of all the sugar consumed in Europe. In twenty years the population of Porto Rico has doubled; Brazil is also advancing, and we may add the South of the United States. Our abolition of the slave-trade, and the loss of the monopoly of the seas we possessed during the war, gave, no doubt, an additional impetus to the advance of these countries ; but nothing could have prevented it. Neither skill, nor capital, nor industry, nor machinery, says Mr. Meatvaix, can compete in tropical agriculture with the fertility of a virgin soil. The complaints of the West Indians, for very many years past, show that they had begun to experience the certain result of that exhaustive mode of cropping which alone can render slave-labour profitable ; and that even had the slave-trade been continued to them, they could not have maintained their ground but by the aid of protective duties. From the law of consequences there is no escape : it haunts us in every pursuit, at every turn and "though a late a sure revenge succeeds" to every deviation from the dictates of justice and of nature. It is traceable in every history, if we will but be at the trouble of the search ; and here is ready to our hand the

CYCLE OP WEST INDIAN COLONIZATION.

Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the remarkable uniformity with which events have succeeded each other in the economical history of the West Indies in general. At each epoch in that history we see the same causes pro- ducing almost identical effects. The opening of a fresh soil, with freedom of trade, gives a sudden stimulus to settlement and industry ; the soil is covered with free proprietors, and a general but rude prosperity prevails. Then follows a period of more careful cultivation ; during which estates are consolidated, gangs of slaves succeed to communities of freemen, the rough commonwealth is formed into a most productive factory. But fertility diminishes; the coat of production augments ; slave-labour, always dear, becomes dearer by the in- creased difficulty of supporting it ; new settlements are occupied, new sources of production opened; the older colonies, unable to maintain a ruinous compe- tition, even with the aid of prohibitions, after a period of suffering and diffi- culty, fall hack into a secondary state, in which capital, economy, and increased skill, make up, to a certain extent only, for the invaluable advantages which they have lost. Thus we have seen the Windward Islands maintaining at one period a numerous White population ; afterwards importing numerous slaves, and supplying almost all the then limited consumption of Europe. We have seen Jamaica rise on their decay, and go through precisely the same stages of existence. We have seen how St. Domingo, in its turn, greatly eclipsed Jamaica ; but St Domingo was cut off by a sudden tempest, and never attained to the period of decline. Lastly, we have seen the Spanish Colonies of Cuba and Porto Rico, after so many centuries of comparative neglect and rude productiveness, start all at once into the first rank among exporting countries, and flourish like the exuberant crops of their own virgin soil ; while our islands, still rich in capital, but for the most part exhausted in fertility and deficient in labour, were strug- gling by the aid of their accumulated wealth against the encroaching principle of decay. The life of artificial and antisocial communities may be brilliant for a time; but it is necessarily a brief one, and terminates either by rapid decline, or still more rapid revolution, when the laboriously-constructed props of their wealth give way, as they sometimes do, in sudden ruin.

It may be gathered from all this, that Mr. MearvAee, whilst opposed to slavery, and shrinking from all the cruelties and moral evils it involves, is yet very doubtful as to the possibiliy of preventing the slave-trade, or as to the success of Negro emancipa- tion. Nor can the difficult position of the West Indian planters be better illustrated than by the fact, that, with their case and all the plans suggested for their relief before him, Mr. MERIVALE can find nothing better for Trinidad and Demerara (as be considers Jamaica sufficiently peopled) than emigration from the United States and the smaller and over-peopled islands. Even of that resource he speaks doubtfully ; and looks to the East Indies, Ceylon, and the Mauritius, as the only places likely to compete with Cuba and the Brazils, if it be possible to compete with them upon equal terms.

The nature of his subjects and the scope of the lecturer's views may be apprehended from this notice ; but the fulness, the force, and the eloquence with which he treats his topics, and the variety he imparts to them, can only be shown by extracts ; of which we proceed to present a few.

THE OLD SPANIARD AND HIS SLAVES.

Unhappily, or rather, I ought to say, by a just and striking retribution, the moral and social condition of this thriving island [Cuba] seem to have de- clined, under the influence of slavery and its consequences, with the same rapidity with which its wealth has advanced. At the beginning of this century, the Spaniards of the West Indies were accused with justice of indolence, and enjoyed in some respects an inferior civilization to that of their neighbours, But on the other hand, the steadier habits and greater repose of the old Castilian genius contrasted favourably with the eager, jealous, money-making character of the motley adventurers who constituted too large a proportion of the West Indian population subject to England, France, and Rolland. These were a people whom no ties seemed to bind to the land of their adoption ; the home of whose recollections was in their native countries ; whose only object was the rapid attainment of wealth, in order, if possible, to return there. The Spaniards were permanent inhabitants ; they maintained, in each colony, the habits of a fixed, social, and organized population, with distinction of ranks and regular institutions. There are even now thirty grandees of Spain among the resident proprietors of Cuba. As there was little profit to be obtained out of the labour of the slave, so his condition was generally easy, and the conduct of his master towards him humane and considerate. The laws of Spain encouraged this tendency, beyond those of all other nations. Instead of being an outcast from the benefits of law and religion, he was peculiarly under the protection of both. The four rights of the slave, as they are emphatically termed in Spanish legislation, have been uniformly respected in theory and generally in practice : these are, the right of marriage, the right to compel a master guilty of illegal severity. towards a slave to sell him to another, the right to purchase his own emancipation, and to acquire property. The sentiments of the Spaniards towards their enslaved dependents were much modified, in the course, of centuries, by the wholsoino spirit of their laws ; and it may perhaps be added, that if the Spanish character, under the excitement of the spirit of revenge, fanaticism, or avarice, be capable of atrocities from which the civilized mind shrinks with abhorrence, there is about it, in the commonalty as well as the higher orders, when unindamed by passion, a sense of dignity, an habitual self-respect, evincing itself in courtesy to equals and forbearance towards inferiors, of which nations of more practical but more vulgar habits of mind afford but rare examples.

THE MODERN SPANIARD AND HIS SLAVES.

But the progress of wealth and of the slave-trade have rapidly changed the moral aspect of these communities. From being the most humane among all European slave-owners, the Spanish colonists have become the most barbarous and utterly demoralized. This is a painful fact, of which the evidence is too abundant and too notorious to admit even of a suspicion of exaggeration. The sugar-plantations of Cuba are now almost entirely wrought by means of the alave-trade ; that is, as we shall see when we come to examine this part of the subject more closely, they are wrought at an enormous profit, purchased by an enormous expenditure of life, replaced by perpetual recruits, and the humane provisions of the law itself are turned against the imported slave. For as the trade is forbidden by law, the Bozals, as the African Negroes are called, are considered in the light of contraband articles, of which the possession and use is winked at, not recognized, by the authorities. They are thus entirely without protection, which they stand more in need of than any other class of the slaves. Nothing can be more horrible than the condition of these wretches in the inland plantations of the island, where the average duration of the life of a slave is said not to exceed ten years : in Barbados, in the worst period of English slavery, it was rated at sixteen. Sir Fowel Buxton believes that 60,000 slaves are annually imported into that and the other Spanish colonies. The boasted humanity of the Spanish planter has scarcely left any traces, except, it is said, in the treatment of domestic slaves. But even this is far worse than formerly; and the Whites of Cuba have occasionally resorted to the expedient of arming the Bozals as a kind of Mameluke guard, to defend them- selves against the dreaded hostility of the native Coloured population.

TRUE REPAYMENT OF COLONIZATION EXPENSES.

The capital sunk in well-directed emigration is speedily replaced with interest by a far surer process than the ingenuity of financiers or economists can invent. Wherever England plants a colony, she founds a nation of customers. Already, in return for the slight expense which has attended the removal of a few of the less fortunate of her inhabitants from her shores, she receives the profits of the trade of a vast confederacy, which these outcasts have raised to an equality with the proudest empires of the earth. And the extraordinary progress of her recent colonies justifies us in hoping that empires as vast and wealthy still remain to be founded, and new branches of commerce as extensive and as prosperous to be created.

PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY.

Neither skill nor capital nor abundance of labour have ever been found able to compete, in tropical cultivation, with the advantage of a new and fertile soil. Notwithstanding all the improvements in agriculture which experience or accu- mulated knowledge can bring about, it has always been found, that whenever a new district has been opened to adventurers, it inevitably attracted the capital and eclipsed the prosperity of the older ones. * • • So long, then, as there is new soil to break up, so long the continuance of slavery is secured ; because workmen must be had at all hazards, and it is more profitable to cul- tivate a fresh soil by the dear labour of slaves than an exhausted one by the cheap labour of freemen. It is secured, I mean, as far as the immediate in- terest ofihe masters can prevail in maintaining it. 'or example : the limit of the ill-gotten prosperity of Cuba will, of course, be found in the exhaustion of the fresh and fertile soil in that island. How near that limit may be, it is impossible to conjecture. We have seen that the old sugar-plantations in the neighbourhood of the Havanna are already aban- doned, but that clearing is continually extending in the interior. About three millions of acres in Cuba are said to be in cultivation,—that is, a sixth of the surface of the island. But if that limit had been reached, no perceptible advance towards the abolition of slavery would be gained. The Southern part of the New World still offers its vast and almost untouched continent to the speculations of avarice. Brazil, the second if not the first slave state in the world, has soil available for every kind of tropical produce beyond all practical limit ; and, if unchecked by any other than economical causes, there seems no reason why the slave-trade and slave-cultivation should not extend with the extending market of Europe, until the forest has been cleared, and the soil exhausted of its first fertility, from the Atlantic to the Andes. North America affords a still more remarkable instance of this general truth. I entered, in a former lecture, into some details of the economical history of Virginia, as an example of the natural course of things in regions of limited fertility, raising exportable produce by compulsory. labour. You will have perceived from that statement, how slavery, from having afforded a high rate of remuneration to the planter, becomes at last a burden ; the profit of his culti- vation falling off along with the gradual diminution of fertility, while the expense of maintaining his slaves remains the same or increases. Therefore if the Allegany Mountains had offered as formidable a barrier to the migration of slaves and slave-owners as the sea which washes our island colonies, it is very easy to perceive that, in the older slave states of America, all economical reason for the maintenance of slavery would by this time have ceased ; its con- tinuance, if it continued at all, would have been owing only to habit or to fear, and free labour would by degrees have been superseding compulsory. But, unfortunately, a new source of profit opened to the Virginian slave-holder. -Whether from better institutions, or from a healthier climate, the Negro race multiplies in slavery in America, while it declines or remains stationary in the West Indian islands. While, therefore, capital is migrating farther and farther Westward, and new lands are daily taken up as the old ones are aban- doned, slaves are bred in the older states, and supplied, by a regular domestic slave-trade, to the new.

ONE SIDE OF THE WEST INDIAN QUESTION.

The display of these qualities [morality and love of finery] does not solve the great question of the future. The present flourishing condition of the Negro peasantry cannot continue without steady industry. We are not now discussing the abstract question whether civilization may not flourish in the absence of wealth ; suffice it to say, that in the present state of the West Indies, the growth of wealth alone can insure the growth of civilization. Their taste for comforts and luxuries, and the great increase in the importation of articles consumed by them, on which so much stress is laid by writers on the prosperous aide of the question, prove that they are able just at present to obtain very high

wages for very slight and irregular labour,—the worst of all preparations for an ordinary and industrious state of life. When those wages fall, as fall they inevitably will and that shortly, what will be their conduct then ? Will they be content to work more steadily for less remuneration ? or will they prefer to continue in their present desultory habits, and drop, one by one, their acquired wants, rather than undergo the additional fatigue which will then be necessary to satisfy them ? This is not only the great question of the day in reference to the actual condition of our tropical colonies, but it is perhaps the most im- portant of all the questions which now agitate the political world, in its ultimate bearing on the destinies of the human race. If all our sacrifices, all our efforts, end but in the establishment of a number of commonwealths such as Hayti now is, flourishing in contented obscurity side by side with the portentous and brilliant opulence of slave-owning and slave-trading states, the best in- terests of humanity will have received a shock which it may take centuries to

repair.

The delivery of these lectures in Oxford under the authority. of the University is one of the signs of the times. When the rising aristocracy are accustomed to have just views of political economy inculcated during their nonage, no such difficulty will be encoun- tered in carrying out the principles of free trade as we experience ; or rather, no Ministry, whether Whig, Tory or any-thing-else, will be allowed to thrust aside financial and commercial questions as things utterly indifferent, or take them up at a last gasp as a sort of quack panacea. Such passages as this, for example, would have sounded strange to the " port and prejudice of the monks of Oxford"—

THE FAST-COMING FUTURE.

You, I am sure, will learn to despise this foolish and vulgar outcry. There is no novelty in the plain and simple arguments which show the mischief of restrictions on trade ; but if they were novel, they would not be the less cogent. There is nothing un-English in pointing out the fact, that England suffers a certain loss by the maintenance of a particular system ; but if it were other- wise, love of country is a poor substitute in inquiry for love of truth. But these are considerations which need bit little concern us now. The rapid tide of sublunary events is carrying us inevitably past that point at which the maintenance of colonial systems and navigation-laws was prac- ticable, whether it were desirable or no. We are borne helplessly along with the current : we may struggle and protest, and marvel why the barriers which ancient forethought had raised against the stream now bend like reeds before its violence, but we cannot change our destiny. The monopoly of the West India islands cannot stand ; and its fall will be followed by the crash of those minor monopolies which subsisted along with it ; for the branches of the colonial system were nearly connected with each other. And when these are gone, the same curious result will follow which has attended the overthrow of so many other institutions and systems, political and intellectual, which have held for their respective periods a powerful sway over the minds of men. All the theories which have been founded on it by induction, or raised on baseless assumptions, in order to support it—all the volumes of statistical facts, tortured into arguments—all the records of the eloquence or the reasoning by which it has been defended, which once were in vogue with the million, which swayed senates and silenced captious objectors, and governed and delighted the public mind—will pass with it into nothingness, or speak to us as it were in a dead language.

From what we have said of this volume, it must not be inferred that we agree with every opinion which the author may advance. For example, we conceive that a colony should be looked upon, to the utmost practicable extent, as an integral part of the mother- country, the same freedom being granted to her as is possessed by ourselves ; and though the great convenience of custom-duties over every other class of taxation might render it judicious to retain a colonial import-duty after the parent state was able to abolish her own excise, yet, the public income permitting, we should not consider it an unsound policy to remit the duty on a colonial com- modity and retain one on the foreign commodity, for the pur- poses of revenue only, not of protection. Again, the discussion of Mr. Maawske on emigration contains this statement, that our manufacturers can only carry on their business at the present rate of profit by means of a sufficient supply of labour to meet the largest sudden demand; the labourers in slack or average times of trade being out of work, or only partially employed. The fact may be true ; but we demur to the justice of the implied conclusion, that the profits of our manufacturers are to be upheld by means of the sufferings of the poor or an increase of the poor-rates. On the contrary, we hold that if any poor artisans can benefit their condition by emigrating, they have an undoubted right to do it ; and that any attempt to throw obstacles in their way, or even to deny them assistance, is an act of the grossest injustice. There are other questions on which we differ, or perhaps may seem to differ, from Mr. MERIVALE ; but it is sufficient to note the fact, without further enumeration.