COMMON SENSE OF THE WEST INDIAN CASE.
THE case of the West Indies is again earnestly mooted in the press, and will soon come before Parliament; for like the ghost of a murdered man, it will continue to haunt the Legislature until it be laid by the performance of justice. Lord George Bentinck is to move for a Committee of inquiry into the present condition and prospects of the West Indies, with a view to relief; Mr. Hope has given notice of an additional motion, to follow Lord George's, for a Committee of the whole House on the Sugar- duties Act of 1846, in order to suspend the further descent in the scale of differential duties; and there are other motions on the Notice-paper collaterally bearing on the same question. We have no sanguine hope that Lord George Bentinck will take the best course for a feasible settlement ; or that Govern- ment will be compelled to render justice. When individuals commit wrong, they may be coerced to make reparation, either by force of conscience or of law ; but Governments laugh at tri- bunals, and the West Indian case shows how little conscience they have.
England has virtually dictated a succession of contracts with the West Indian colonists, and has broken them one after another, as coolly as a great bankrupt in the linendrapery trade or a Repu- diating,State of the Model Republic forgets ' to meet its engage- ments.' For some time, England had the fancy to build up colonies, as markets for her produce, as nurseries for her navy—always with objects of her own, for her own benefit. If, while the fancy lasted, " protection " was afforded to the produce of the colonies, it was only as a countervailing privilege to be set off against all sorts of privative incapacities. The West Indies, for example, enjoyed protection for their sugar ; but they were debarred from direct trade with foreign countries, or even with their neighbours the United States ; nay, when "the ports were opened," under the pressure of some distress, the open ports, so called, only admitted foreign goods in British ships. The " pro- tection " was purchased at a loss • the system to which it be- longed was arbitrarily imposed. it was England that chose to make the West Indies slave colonies ; it was she that supplied the slaves. At length, England was conscience-stricken on the score of slavery : then, reckless of arrangements made on the faith of a system which originated with herself, she began to tamper with slave labour, first curtailing it in working hours, next partially free- ing it, and ultimately freeing it altogether. With a perverse des- potism unprecedented in history, England deprived the West Indian planters of the only labour which is consistent with nu- merical limitation—compulsory labour, and refused the proper accompaniment of free labour—an open market. However, in the Anti-Slavery sentiment as the new dominant principle of England the colonists put faith : England, they thought, had done her worst ; and, making the most of a bad bargain, they arranged their affairs so as to do the best they could under the difficulties of the Anti-Slavery system. But again the contract was broken, without so much as a warning,--except, we will be bold to say, from pens employed in this journal, which did warn the West Indians of their approaching doom. The West Indians were too trusting, perhaps too indolent, to believe us. The Anti-Slavery Association went out of fashion, and the Anti-Corn-law League came in—Anti-Slavery. sentiment gave place to Free-trade dogma. The falling Whig Ministers, in 1841, vainly propitiated the new humour as a means of staving off their downfall ; and Parliament, after nibbling at the protective duties on West India produce, successively reduced them ; until the Whigs, on their return to
office, consummated the reduction by the present sliding-scale of sugar-duties, which is to end in perfect equality in 1851. But, with the usual disregard of justice, freedom of trade against the West Indies was not accompanied (it ought to have been preceded) by freedom of trade in their favour : the restriction of customs called the " Imperial duties" was abolished afterwards ; the pre- tense of equalizing the rum-duties with the duties on British spirits is not yet made good in fact : the prohibition to import labour was practically maintained rong after the West Indies were exposed to foreign competition; and although it is now pro- fessedly abandoned by Lord Grey, the freedom is not real or complete.
Each one of the systems established in the West Indies for the purposes of England has been relinquished by England without consent of the colonists, without regard to the implied contract, without regard to preventing the mischiefs consequent on sweep- ing changes, without even correlative measures which mere logi- cal necessity ought to have dictated. For her own purposes, England has successively established in the West Indies commer- cial restriction, slavery, freedom of labour, and free trade; but at each stage of these gigantic caprices, has denied to the colonies the correlative benefits of the system for the time being enforced against them. Perversity, cruelty, and bad faith, are not terms too strong for this treatment when we know the actual condition which the colonists are suffering. The actual position of the West Indies is this. They are deprived of slave labour, and denied free labourexcept in name; deprived of protection, and denied free trade; officially told to be energetic i with improvements, while capital is frightened away by the offi- cial acts. What are the hopes of effecting a change of policy ? Scanty in the extreme. Some fatal influence or other in home politics, with which the West Indies have no more to do than they have with the succession to the throne of Japan, debars them in turn from the useful alliance of each political party in this country. The Whigs have used the fanatic cry of "Free trade!" even more than its practical application. They promised the English people " cheap " sugar, and threw the sweet in as a make- weight in their bargain for office; for Lord John Russell stood ready to "turn out Peel on the Sugar question," if Sir Robert had not conveniently gone out on the Irish Coercion Bill. The independent Liberals are not compact enough to be called a party; and the majority of them, it is to be feared, are too bigoted to the literal interpretation of "free trade," for a proper recollection or construction of Mr. Deacon Hume's sound maxim, that the West Indies were removed from the category of free trade by the complicated state of the slave and labour questions. The quondam Tories, now the " Country party," profess alliance with the West Indians; but it is a damaging alliance, based on the purpose to which that party make others subserve—the im- practicable project of restoring commercial protection. What Sir Robert Peel might do, is concealed in impenetrable obscurity, and he has made no sign of encouragement. He disapproved of the i Whig scheme of sugar-duties in 1846; but sacrificed his own opinion, and the West Indian consideration, to political reasons connected with the expediency of avoiding a change of Ministry. Were he to take a different course now, Sir Robert would be liable to quotations from Hansard. Not that he has shown any abso- lute submission to that sort of attack in other affairs; but the motives that influenced him in 1846 probably hold their sway still. Everybody knows Sir Robert's power, his insight into practical affairs, his general disposition to do the best for all in- terests; but his faculty of waiving any too troublesome consi- deration, not germane to the paramount question of the time in home politics, is also well known. The West Indian question might turn on the thought of Sir Robert Peers mind ; but who knows whether he will have anything to do with it as a matter of active statesmanship? The survey of parties in the Legislature, therefore, is not favourable. But statesmen will very grossly misconceive the case if they suppose that by abstaining from change of policy they are merely passive. In this case the policy of laisser alley is not a negative policy. It behoves legislators who are prepared to negative the claims of the West Indians, and to sanction a continuance of the 'present system, also to ask themselves whether they are not about to do additional mischief—not only leaving the colonies to their downward fate, but inflicting new and active injuries on the peo- ple of this country, and even on the prospect of emancipating the Negro race, which has been the pretext for sacrificing the West Indies.
The supply of sugar produced by all countries is annual- ly consumed, or nearly so. If the production be contracted in the West Indies, the total supply must either be de- ficient, or the deficiency must be made good from other quarters. It will not be made good in Mauritius ; because that area is too small to supply the place of thereat West Indian colonies ; because there the labour is capricious, and the planters have not managed well; and because special causes of a commercial nature have precipitated the ruin of the chief capitalists ; insomuch that next year, and for some time to come afterwards, the supply of sugar from Mauritius will be short. The East Indies find difficulty in competing with the slave grower, and the differential duty which sustains them yearly di- minishes. The only countries from which the supply can be made good, if from any, are Cuba, Porto Rico, and Brazil. But if the complement is to be sought in that quarter, the consequences will be very startling—very discreditable to the country. Mean-
while, prices will rise enormously : " cheap sugar " will prove to be the brief dream of the past.
The endeavour to abolish Negro slavery must be abandoned, in favour of a policy which will give it so great an encouragement that it will in effect newly create that odious institution. The fatal injury to the Anti-Slavery cause—a cause ill conducted by its professed advocates—will be effected thus. The supply of sugar can only be made good by a new extension of culture in Cuba and Brazil ; but even in those countries, production cannot be increased without an increased supply of the labour used in those countries---slave labour; and that must be furnished by an exactly proportionate increase of the African slave trade. Of course, our Government cannot be so idiotic as to make this coun- try dependent for a necessary of life on Brazil and Cuba, and still keep up a squadron on the coast of Africa to cut off the supply of the labour which produces that necessary of life. No ; a corol- lary to the continuance of the present system of treating the West Indies must be the abandonment of that squadron—not in favour of more enlightened influences for the discouragement of slavery by fostering free labour in Tropical products and the growth of opinion through unrestricted commerce, but in favour of a recognized, sanctioned, and encouraged extension of that identical slave-trade, in the effort to suppress which we have, for so many years, incurred so much cost of blood and treasure, so much toil, so much odium just and unjust, so much detriment to our international relations.
Such are the direct, inevitable, and imminent consequences of persevering in the present policy towards the West Indies : the ruin of those colonies ; that ruin followed by a long period of dear sugar for the people of this country ; which in its turn will result in a vast extension of the African slave-trade. It would be a very dull and foolish burlesque on shrewdness if the monstrous nature of these consequences should induce legis- lators to presume exaggeration or deception : the consequences can be discerned in the data ; and if they be suffered to ensue, the responsibility will rest on the deliberate choice and act of the British Parliament.
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