What, then, has gone out to meet the import which is rapidly promoting Chartism among us, by impoverishing the poorer classes? Just what we predicted long ago—Gold; the idol without which men must starve, but which free trade periodically sweeps from out our grasp. The lowered tariffs have operated peculiarly unfavourably at the present crisis—not perhaps so much in the branch of silk manufactures as in others; for it is remarkable that the increase of import in 1847, over that of 1846, is quite as large as the increase of the present over the former year; and had Lord John Russell been alive to the duties of his situation, or capable of comprehending the effects which a glut of foreign goods must produce on the home market, he ought instantly to have brought in a bill augmenting the customs duties, and hurried it through Parliament without a moment’s unnecessary delay. The madness of encouraging increased imports, whilst exports are falling, is utterly inconceivable to any who have not eaten and drunk with Cobden; and it is quite possible that some who have been admitted to that precious privilege, may agree with us if they will take the trouble to consider the foregoing tables. We are not the only sufferers. America is beginning to understand that increased imports are by no means decisive symptoms of a healthy commercial state; and the following extract from Transatlantic correspondence, which we copy from the money article in the Sun newspaper of 16th August last, is pregnant with meaning in the present posture of affairs.
“The whole of Europe is in a terrible condition, and our only hope is, that Great Britain may escape the blast which has swept from one end of the Continent to the other with such devastating effect. If England escape, we shall continue to find extensive markets for our products, and our prosperity will be partially preserved. Our markets on the Continent have almost become extinct, so that the worst in that particular has already been realised; but, every week or month, consumption in that section of the world is restricted or limited—so much the more injurious must be the revolution causing such a state of things. With the exception of Great Britain, our European export trade has been literally annihilated; but unfortunately, our import trade with these countries has not met with a similar fate, but on the contrary, has rather increased than otherwise. Importers and speculators in this country have taken advantage of the financial embarrassments growing out of the Revolution, which the manufacturers of France and Europe generally have laboured under, and have purchased of them for cash, goods at one half their cost, and have filled our markets. A portion of the specie which has been shipped from this port within the last four months went abroad for this purpose; and while our exports had become reduced to the lowest limit, and exchange drawn upon previous shipments of produce was coming back protested, millions of dollars of gold and silver were going forward to purchase goods which could not be obtained on the usual credit. In this way, our whole foreign trade has become deranged, and we have thus far borne the brunt of the commercial revulsions and political revolutions in Europe.”
What is to be said of a system which swamps our home market, whilst at the same time it promotes a drain of gold? What is to be said of the system which makes a drain of gold almost tantamount to national bankruptcy?
Having hitherto dealt with the subjects of the currency and finance, let us now glance for a moment at the new legislation for our colonies. We need not repeat the tale of the disasters into which the West Indies have been plunged, or the ruin which has befallen many of our own most respectable citizens, who, to their misfortune, had embarked their capital and fortunes in sugar-growing estates, trusting to British faith and protection for at least an adequate return. The veriest zealot could not have wished to have seen the crime of slavery more bitterly avenged; but in what a manner! Great Britain, after having made a sacrifice of twenty millions to emancipate the slave population in her own colonies,—a sacrifice to her, though not an adequate compensation to the planters,—after having declared to the whole world her determination no longer to participate in the profits of forced labour,—after having made treaties, and equipped armaments for the suppression of the slave-trade,—suddenly changed her policy, admitted slave-grown sugar from foreign states, first, at a high, and, latterly, at so low a duty, that her own colonies, already impoverished, could no longer afford to defray the cost of production. Here, again, the principle of free trade has been triumphant and ruinous; here, again, the exporting trades have carried their point, not only against the interests of the colonists, but against those of benevolence and Christianity. The cause of the Blacks has been abandoned for the tempting bribe of cheap sugars, of an augmented demand for cottons and blankets to supply the gangs of Cuba, and of machinery for Brazil, to enable the planter more utterly to prostrate Jamaica.
In February last we reviewed with great care all the evidence which we could collect regarding the West Indian interest. The conclusion to which we arrived was contained in the following paragraph:—“And what is it that our colonists ask? What is the extravagant proposal which we are prepared to reject at the cost of the loss of our most fertile possessions, and of nearly two hundred millions of British capital? Simply this, that in the meantime such a distinctive duty should be enforced as will allow them to compete on terms of equality with the slave-growing states. Let this alone be granted, and they have no wish to interfere with any other fiscal regulation. And what would be the amount of differential duty required? Not more, as we apprehend, than ten shillings the hundredweight.” Having hazarded this statement so early, it was certainly gratifying to find that an impartial committee of the House of Commons, reporting four months later, had, after a full investigation of the whole case,—and of course with official documents before them, the correctness of which could not admit of a doubt,—arrived at precisely the same result. The proposition for a differential duty of ten shillings, which was finally agreed to by the committee, was actually made by a member whose general opinions are understood to lean towards the side of free trade,—we mean Sir Thomas B. Birch, one of the representatives for Liverpool.
This resolution of course implied a direct condemnation of the Whig Act of 1846, which the West Indians bitterly complained of as a flagrant breach of faith, and as having put the coping-stone on their misfortunes. It was the resolution of an independent and intelligent parliamentary committee, founded upon a mass of evidence derived from every quarter; and in a matter of this sort, wherein so vast an interest as that of our most valuable colonies was concerned, it might have been expected that the report would be treated with deference, even though it might in some degree impugn the sagacity of a prime minister, by exposing the results of his former reckless legislation. Such was not the case. Had the seven wise men of Greece sate upon that committee, their report would have been utterly indifferent to Lord John, who immediately came forward with a counter-scheme, which had not even the merit of consistency to give it colour. He proposed a new sliding-scale of duties, the result of which will be, that next year the colonists will have a protection against the slave-owners of seven shillings in the article of clayed, and five-and-sixpence in that of muscovado sugar,—the boon to taper away annually, until, in 1854, the protective duty will be reduced to three shillings on the one article, and two shillings upon the other. This is the doom of the West Indies,—and we expect nothing less than an immediate stoppage of the supplies for the maintenance of the colonial governments. Robbed as they have been, ruined as they are, and all through a course of most reckless and unprovoked legislation, it is in vain to hope that any further capital will be embarked in the cultivation of these islands. For the benefit of economists at home, and the clamourers for cheap sugar, it may be as well to record that this new sliding-scale is to be accompanied with a loan of £500,000, in addition to £160,000 already guaranteed this session, for the purposes of promoting immigration, and that at a period when the annual deficit was originally calculated at three millions! The amendment of Sir John Pakington, founded upon the resolutions of the committee, was negatived in a full house by the small majority of fifteen.
This has been by far the most important debate of the session; and at one time it was confidently expected that ministers would have been defeated. Sir Robert Peel, however, came to their rescue at the last stage. Oleaginous and plausible as ever, the wily baronet began his speech by deploring the misfortunes of the West Indians, repudiating mere pecuniary considerations, and calling to mind old struggles, in which these colonies had stood by the side of the mother country. This sympathetic introduction boded little mercy for the parties it seemed to favour. Sir Robert had acquiesced in the Act of 1846, and it was now rather difficult to back out from that position. But soothing measures might be adopted, the salaries of governors defrayed by the mother country, and perhaps, if, after due consideration, it should be found expedient to remove the blockading squadron from the coast of Africa, part of the sums so saved might be devoted to colonial purposes. Then came a discourse upon the merits of irrigation, which would have done credit to a lecturer in an agricultural society. Finally, Sir Robert rested his future hopes for the Indies upon other, and what appear to us peculiarly objectionable considerations. He has no confidence in the tranquillity of Cuba and Brazil, and he hints at an insurrection of the slaves being probable, if emancipation is not granted. We shall not comment more than lightly upon the decency of such a hint. Desirable as emancipation may be, it is, to say the least, questionable whether it would be cheaply bought by so terrible a catastrophe as a general rising of the black barbarian population against the whites; and in the event of such a misfortune occurring either in the above slave colonies or in the United States, it is extremely problematical whether our own dearly bought emancipation would effectually prevent the contagion from spreading to the free colonies. But we will tell Sir Robert a fact of which he ought to be fully cognisant. The greatest enemies and obstacles to emancipation, in the Spanish and South American States, have been himself and his free-trading allies. It is well known to many here, and notorious in the West Indies, that at the very time when the ill-advised Act permitting slave-grown sugar to be introduced into this country was produced, negotiations were actually pending in Cuba for the immediate emancipation of the slaves. The results of that Act were the instant abandonment of such an idea, the withdrawal of the slaves from the coffee plantations to the sugar-fields, double work rigorously enforced, and an enormously increased importation of human beings from the coast of Africa. With such a bonus held out to the Cuban planter, such a huge increase of consumption in this country as Lord John Russell gloatingly contemplates, it would be utter insanity to expect that emancipation can take place through any other means than blood, rapine, plunder, and incendiarism. Sir Robert and the free-traders have effectually precluded any milder method. Had they been true to the principles professed by this country at the time of our own emancipation, there is every human reason to believe that by this time Cuba would have been a free colony. Had that event taken place, slavery, and of course the slave-trade, would have received its death-blow. But now when we have given, and continue to give, a direct premium to the abhorred system, when we have shown that we love its produce so much, as to hold the welfare of our own colonies as nothing in comparison, it is mere Jesuitry to cant about the probability of voluntary freedom. This is the worst and most indefensible argument, if, indeed, it can be brought within the category of arguments, which has yet been advanced from any quarter in support of the false legislation and determined opposition of ministers to the just claims of the colonists.
In the course of the debate a singular discussion arose, which tends to throw some light upon the management of the Colonial Office. A most important despatch upon the state of Jamaica had been received from Governor Grey, and this was withheld from the select committee then sitting, although Mr Hawes, the Under-secretary for the Colonies, was directly questioned as to its existence. We do not wish to enter into the details of this matter, or to cast any imputation upon the probity of Mr Hawes, who, in explanation, was fain to take shelter under the plea of a mistake. But the circumstance certainly did look awkward, and the doubts, not only of the House but of the country, were far from being removed by the extreme acrimony displayed by the Premier, in his injudicious defence of his subordinate. Never in our recollection has a Prime Minister shown so remarkable a want of temper and of courtesy to a political opponent, as was exhibited by Lord John Russell in his reply to Lord George Bentinck. We should be glad, for the sake of the utterer, that the speech could be erased from the pages of Hansard, even were we to lose, at the same time, the brilliant and withering reply which it elicited from Mr D’Israeli. A suppression certainly had occurred, whether through mistake or otherwise; and the matter was thought so serious that Earl Grey volunteered an explanation in the Upper House. He had better have let it alone. New charges of suppression were preferred; and finally Earl Grey admitted that, on one occasion at least, he had quoted passages from a Jamaica memorial in support of his argument, totally and purposely omitting to read other sentences, which gave a different construction to the meaning intended to be conveyed! This is popularly said to be the method adopted by a certain personage, who shall be nameless, whenever he has occasion to quote Scripture, and yet it is practised and defended by a high official functionary! We copy the remarks of our contemporary the Spectator, as very apposite on this occasion.
“The personal dispute about the conduct of Lord Grey and Mr Hawes, and the strictures of Lord George Bentinck, which began on Friday last, have usurped a large share of the week’s debates; not altogether to so little purpose as most personal squabbles, since it throws considerable light on the administration of colonial affairs. The general impression, when all sides have had their say, is, that Mr Hawes and Lord Grey did not intend to cheat Lord George Bentinck’s committee by the deliberate suppression of evidence; but the very statements made by ministers, in defence, unveil reprehensible practices. It seems that the routine of the Colonial Office is such as to preclude any security against ‘mistakes’ so grave as the withholding of most important despatches. And Lord Grey claims, as an admitted official privilege, to pick out bits of evidence in his exclusive possession, that make for a particular view, although those bits may be torn from a context that should perfectly refute that particular view! In effect, he upholds the doctrine that a government is not bound to lay before parliament all the information that reaches the departments, even though that information be not of a secret kind, but may select such parts as go to bolster up the preconceived crotchets of the minister for the time being. In this case, Lord Grey had preconceived crotchets hostile to the West Indian colonies, whom he treated as if he were the Attorney-General prosecuting a state criminal. He has carried beyond its usual bounds the spirit of the Anti-Colonial Office, in Downing Street. With this spirit of animosity the Secretary for the Colonies coupled the most singular exhibition of personal trifling, and self-worship. He appealed to the name of his father, as a reason for not accusing himself! and pointed to the ‘awful warning across the Channel,’ as a reason for not preferring charges calculated to weaken English statesmen. ‘Don’t talk of inefficiency or dishonesty,’ cries he—‘it is dangerous; for such talk has upset governments abroad.’ Yes, shaky and dishonest governments; but what is Lord Grey afraid of?”
As for the sugar duties, we do not by any means believe that this is a final settlement of the question. If free trade, indeed, should continue to progress, there is not much hope for the colonists; but, to the observant eye, there are unmistakeable symptoms of reaction apparent in this country, and a very general sympathy for the case of the West Indians. Our greatest fear is, that irretrievable mischief will be wrought before there is an opportunity of applying a remedy. It seems cruel mockery, after all that has happened, to exhort the planters to persevere, and to prevent those valuable islands from lapsing into a state of wilderness: and yet there seems no alternative between such perseverance and abandonment. This only we can say, that should the commercial principles, which we have advocated throughout, be again recognised and adopted—should true and not hollow Conservatism once more triumph over Whig effrontery and weakness, this mighty grievance will assuredly be the earliest redressed.