Intelligence to the middle of September has arrived from the
West Indies. The Negroes were happy and hazy; the 'Planters Intelligence to the middle of September has arrived from the West Indies. The Negroes were happy and hazy; the 'Planters
perplexed with present difficulties and seriously alarmed for the future. Notwithstanding what are described as " desperate " et- ertions to save the sugar-crop, the produce is sadly deficient for this year, and the necessary preparation of the ground for the crop of 1840 has been to a great extent impracticable. State- ments in the West India newspapers, minute and apparently cor- rect, some of them official, and generally confirmed by our private information, leave us DO room to doubt that the sugar-estates are rapidly falling out of cultivation. This opinion is not shaken by counter-statements like the following, which the Morning Chro- nicle publishes, from a correspondent- " In Barbados, an island of first-rate importance, it appears that 23,000 hogsheads of sugar had been shipped to the 7th September,' which is 'a fair average crop ; " and at St. Christopher, the island is in a ilourishiug condi- tion, rot abundant crop has been reaped, and the proipects for the ensuing year are of a very encouraging kind.' In Trinidad, the drought had affected the canes, but not to a very material extent, and no deficiency of labourers was complained of; whilst in Jamaica and St. Lucia, the tenour of the intelligence would lead to the supposition that, if labourers were unwilling to work, it was not because thir WfigiS have been refused, so much as that planters and. owners were too much disposed to evade the payment of the work when done. "'lust the average production of sugar in the West Indies will be little or perh.ips nothing inftior to the usual average, appears to be sufficiently aseer- taincalrenn Ctrse Barbados, magnified into first-rate impertance, is one of the smallest islands ; St. Christopher is less; but in Trinidad the canes have been "affected "—though by "drought," we are told- otlur accounts attribute fhilure in the produce to want of labour. In Jamaica a deficiency is admitted. Ilad Demerara been noticed, the same admission must have been made with respect to that colony. But, omitting Demerara, the Morning Chronicle cor- respondent is sadly out in his calculation when he attempts to halance the deficice9- in Trinidad, Jamaica, and St. Lucia, with "a fair average crop' in Barbados and an "abundant one" in St. Christopher.
