It would thus be seen that there was a fearful increase in the amount of these four classes of crime. The whole of Ireland was implicated in the shame and disgrace consequent upon this large increase of crime. Looking at the police returns for the month of October, (for from that period it was that those crimes commenced to increase at such a fearful rate,) he found the following results for the whole of Ireland:—

Homicides,19
Firing at the person,32
Firing into dwelling-houses,26
Robberies of arms,118
—
Making a total of cases,195

Looking at the districts in which these crimes were committed, he found that the total number of all those crimes committed in three of the counties of Ireland, i.e., Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, was to the whole of Ireland as 139 to 175, or that 71 per cent of the whole amount of crime was committed in those three counties, which did not include more than 13 per cent of all Ireland."

Such has been the result of liberal government during twenty years in Ireland. And it is particularly worthy of notice, that the three counties in which this unenviable pre-eminence of atrocious crime exists, viz., Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, are precisely those in which the Romish faith is most inveterate, and the authority of the priesthood most unbounded.

The next great change introduced by the liberal party, was by the carrying through of the Reform Bill, and settling the constitution upon an entirely new basis by the act of 1832. We do not propose at present to resume any part of that great debate, in which at the time this Magazine took so prominent a part. We have seen no cause to change any of the opinions then expressed, and only pray God that the predictions then made may not be too faithfully verified. As little shall we inquire whether the changes which have since ensued, and under which the nation is now so grievously labouring, are or are not to be ascribed to the constitution of government as then framed, and the urban ascendency which the bestowing of two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons upon towns necessarily occasioned; we are content to accept the constitution, as new-modelled by the Reform Bill, as the constitution of ourselves and our children, and to support it as such. We know that by it the government of the country is substantially vested in the majority of eight hundred thousand electors. We aim only at explaining facts and dispelling illusions to these electors. Suffice it to say, therefore, that, whether the Reform Bill has worked for good or for evil as regards the industrious classes; whether it has substituted or not substituted moneyed for landed ascendency; whether or not the first devil has been expelled, but straightway he has returned with seven other devils worse than himself, and the last state of the man is worse than the first—in any of these cases the liberal party have got nothing to say, and have no title to complain of the results which have followed. They got every thing their own way; they remodelled the constitution according to the devices of their own hearts, and if they are now suffering, they are reaping the fruits of the seed which they themselves have sown.

But of all the innovations of the liberal party, that of which the consequences have been most disastrous within the sphere of their immediate influence, and which have now been demonstrated in the most decisive way by the results of experience, are the changes they have made on our West India colonies. They exhibit a series of alterations so perilous, so irrational, so disastrous, that we do not hesitate to say they are unparalleled in the annals, extensive as they are, of human folly and perversity. Only think what they were!

We first, in 1807, abolished the slave trade in our dominions. So far there can be no doubt that the step taken was both just and expedient—just, because the iniquitous traffic in human flesh should, at all hazards, be stopped in a Christian state; expedient, because we already possessed, in the colonies themselves, a large negro population, perfectly capable, if well treated, of keeping up and increasing their own numbers, and performing all the field operations requisite for the cultivation of produce, which at that period employed two hundred and fifty thousand tons of British shipping for its transport, and maintained a population that consumed £3,500,000 worth of British manufactures. But as the British colonies were thus deprived of the aid of imported forced labour, which the rival sugar colonies of Cuba and the Brazils enjoyed, of course it was indispensable that the labour of the black cultivators in the British islands should be perpetuated, and the proprietors maintained in the means of getting that work from them which they were prohibited from acquiring from foreign labourers. The way to do this, and withal to give the greatest possible security and means of improvement to the black population of which they were susceptible, was evident, and was clearly and forcibly pointed out at the time. It was to maintain slavery in the meantime, doing every thing possible to mitigate its severity, till the negro population had come so much under the influence of artificial wants as to be ready, for their enjoyment, to submit to regular and continuous toil; to regulate their days of forced labour, and give them some days in the week to work for themselves, of which they might reap the fruits; and to allow every negro, who could thus amass a sum equal to his price, to purchase his freedom from his master. By this simple system, no one could become free without having proved himself fit to be a freeman, and therefore the whole evils of premature emancipation were avoided. It was thus that slavery wore out almost without being noticed in the European kingdoms; it was thus it almost disappeared, insensibly and without a convulsion, in Spanish South America.

Instead of this wise, judicious, and really humane course, what have we done? Why, we first, by the act of 1834, abolished slavery altogether in the British dominions, upon giving a compensation to the proprietors, which, large as it was, was not, on an average, the fourth part of the value of the slave population set free, at the expiration of a prospective apprenticeship of seven years; and at the end of four years, deeming that first time too long, we set them free altogether! We thought, in our wisdom, that a nation required no longer time to serve the apprenticeship to freedom than a freeman did to become expert in a trade. We proposed to do in a few years what nature could only accomplish in centuries. The consequences, so often and so fatally predicted, immediately ensued. The emancipated black population either refused to work, or did so at such high wages, and in so desultory a manner, that the supply of sugar rapidly declined in the British islands. It, in consequence, rose considerably in price in the mother country; and upon that, partly under the influence of the free trade mania, partly from a desire to appease the clamorous multitude in the British towns, who had begun to feel, in the enhanced price of that article, the inevitable consequences of their own actions, we did a thing so unjust, so monstrous, so cruel, so inconsistent with all our former professions, that we believe the annals of the world may be searched in vain for its parallel. It was this:—

We first reduced to a half of its former amount the protective duty on foreign slave-grown sugar, and then, by the act of 1846, in pursuance of Sir R. Peel's principles, and with his approbation, passed an act for the progressive reduction, during three years, of the duties on foreign sugar, until, in 1849, those on foreign and colonial were to become equal to each other! That is, having first deprived our own colonies of their slave labour for less than a fourth of its value, we proceeded to admit foreign sugar RAISED BY SLAVES to the supply of the British markets, on terms which in two years will be those of perfect equality. We have seen what came of the attempt in the Mauritius, to compete with slave-labour by means of the labour of freemen. Even though the attempt was made under the most favourable auspices, with the colossal capital of Reid, Irving, and Company, and an ample supply of hill coolies to carry it on, the immense wealth of that house was swallowed up in the hopeless attempt, and it became bankrupt in consequence. Experience had long ago proved in St Domingo that the black population, when not compelled, will not raise sugar; for that noble island, which, anterior to the emancipation of its slaves by the Constituent Assembly of France, raised and exported 672,000,000 pounds of sugar, now does not export a single pound; and instead of consuming as then £9,890,000 worth of French manufactures, does not import a single article.[3] To provide against this evidently approaching crisis in the supply of sugar for the British market, we have thrown open our harbours to slave-grown sugar from every quarter of the globe; and from the rapid decline in the produce of the West Indian islands, even before this last coup-de-grace was given them by the application of free trade, principles to their produce, it is painfully evident that a result precisely similar is about to take place in the British colonies.[4] And it is little consolation to find that this injustice has recoiled upon the heads of the nation which perpetrated it, and that the decline in the consumption of British manufactures by the West India islands is becoming proportioned to the ruin we have inflicted on them.[5]

But most of all has this concatenation of fanaticism, infatuation, and injustice proved pernicious to the negro race, for whose benefit the changes were all undertaken. Happy would it have been for them if the British slave trade had never been abolished; that they had crossed the Atlantic chiefly in Liverpool or Glasgow slave-ships, and been brought to the British West India islands! For then the slave trade was subject to our direction, and regulations might have been adopted to place it on the best possible footing for its unhappy victims. But now we have thrown it entirely into the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese, over whom we have no sort of control, and who exercise it in so frightful a manner that the heart absolutely sickens at the thought of the amount of human suffering, at the cost of which we have reduced the price of sugar to sixpence a pound. Compared with it, the English slave-ships and English slavery were an earthly paradise. Mr Buxton, the great anti-slavery advocate, admitted, some years ago, that the "number of blacks who now annually cross the Atlantic, is double what it was when Wilberforce and Clarkson first began their benevolent labours."[6] Now, under the fostering influence of free trade in sugar, it may reasonably be expected that in a few years the whole, or nearly the whole sugar consumed by Europe, will be raised by the slave colonies, and wrung by the lash from the most wretched species of slaves—those of Cuba and Brazil! Moreover, the slave trade, to supply them, will be triple what it was in 1789, when the movement in favour of the negro population began! Thus, by the combined effects of fanaticism, ignorance, presumption, and free trade, we shall have succeeded, by the middle of this century, in totally destroying our own sugar colonies; adding, to no purpose, twenty millions to our national debt; annihilating property to the amount of £130,000,000 in our own dominions; doubling the produce of foreign slave possessions; cutting off a market of £3,500,000 a-year for our manufactures: and tripling the slave trade in extent, and quadrupling it in horror, throughout the globe.