CHAP. 1833. 97. Result of the debate, was op posed. So strong was the feeling in Parliament and the country on the necessity of immediately abolishing slavery, that the first resolution proposed by Mr Stanley, which declared the expedience of taking measures for the immeand parties diate emancipation of the slaves under such provisions as by whom it might combine their interests with those of the proprietors, passed without a division, as did the second, that all children under six years of age, or born after the passing of the act, should be declared free. The third and fourth resolutions, however, which declared the establishment of the system of apprenticeship, and provided £15,000,000 as a loan to the West India proprietors, met with considerable opposition; not, however, as might have been expected, from the West India proprietors, but from the advocates of emancipation. It was strenuously contended by Mr Buxton, the persevering and consistent friend of the negroes, that any delay in emancipation was unnecessary; that the negroes, if declared free, would at once work with more vigour and efficiency than they had ever done in a state of slavery ; and that their taste for luxuries, comforts, and delicacies, was fully as strong as that of the whites, and would fully as efficacious in stimulating industry. Various iso 1 1833, 195, prove 1 Ann, Reg. lated examples, apparently establishing these assertions 196; Parl. in different parts of the West Indies, were given; but 1222, 1230. on a division, the Government resolution was carried by 324 to 42.1 Deb. xvii. 98. of the West prietors on the other side. The real arguments, however, urged against the proResolution posed measure, were brought forward at a great meeting of India pro- persons interested in the West Indies, held on 27th May. The House of Commons was tongue-tied by their constituents, and did not venture to say what many of them knew to be true. The considerations urged were well summed up in the following resolution, which was unanimously agreed to: "That, independently of planters, merchants, and manufacturers obviously and immediately connected with the colonies, there is a numerous class of XXXI. 1833. persons, consisting of widows, orphans, minors, annuitants, CHAP. and other claimants under wills and settlements, who have no support for themselves or their families excepting a charge upon colonial property, created on the faith of existing laws, and who must therefore be reduced to beggary by any ill-advised or precipitate measure of emancipation. The scheme of emancipation brought forward by Government provides no security for the lives of our fellow-subjects in the colonies: it proposes to divest the owner of his property without any compensation; it tends to destroy colonial agriculture by entailing heavy additional expense on a cultivation already confessedly depressed; it renders an outlay of capital in the West Indies unprofitable, and thereby puts a stop to the progressive civilisation of the negroes in our own colonies, while at the same time it directly encourages the slave trade and slavery in foreign countries. There is no stronger title to property than that which is derived from positive law; and no other security against spoliation than a confidence that the Government under which they live will respect those rights and interests which have grown up under the laws it has made. The proprietors of negro slaves possess them under the sanction of British laws, which enabled and especially encouraged the people of Great Britain to convey slaves from Africa, and to sell them to their fellow-subjects in the colonies. Looking to the rights thus acquired, the West India proprietors do solemnly protest against any measure which takes away the property of their fellow-subjects without adequate compensation; a measure which, if carried through, will shake the foundations of every species of property, and 1 Ann. Reg. establish a precedent which may speedily lead to every 197. other species of property being similarly dealt with."1 It was evident from these resolutions, which embodied all that was said on the subject on the occasion, that the West India proprietors regarded the question of immediate negro emancipation as settled, and directed all 1833, 196, XXXI. 1833. 99. Compromise effected by the grant of nial proprie tors. CHAP. their efforts to obtain adequate compensation. How much soever the country might be agitated on the subject, and how violent soever the cry that the West India planters were a body of slave-drivers, who were not entitled to any compensation for the glorious act of emancipating their £20,000,000 negroes, Government felt the justice of the appeal, and, to the colo- much to their credit, they met it in a worthy spirit. The West India proprietors had intimated that £15,000,000, especially if granted in the shape of a loan, would be wholly inadequate as a compensation; but that if it was increased to £20,000,000, and converted into a gift, they would withdraw their opposition. Government agreed to this change, and Mr Stanley brought forward the proposal for the enlarged sum, as a gift, in the House of Commons. It met with very serious opposition from the emancipation party some contending that it was a great deal too much, and that £12,000,000 would be amply sufficient ; others that it was a scandalous waste of public money to give £20,000,000 to a body of slave-drivers, when the country which paid it was ringing with the cry of distress from side to side. Government influence, however, and the obvious justice of the measure, prevailed: an amendment, moved by Mr Briscoe, to reduce the compensation to £15,000,000, was rejected by a majority of 304 to 56; and one by Mr Buxton, that one-half of the compensation should not be paid till the period of apprenticeship was passed, and the negroes were put in full possession of their freedom, by 277 to 142. The bill finally passed by a majority of 296 to 77. The compensation then given was on an average, for the whole negroes, who were 800,000 in number, about £22, 10s. a-head-not half the xviii. 306, 1 Parl. Deb. price of a full-grown negro on an average of the islands, nor a third in some of them, but not altogether inadequate, if the number of children, sick and infirm, is taken into consideration.1 359; Ann. Reg. 1833, 198, 201. To understand how readily the West India body withdrew any serious opposition when the compensation was XXXI. 1833. 100. which in proprietors in this ar advanced from £15,000,000 to £20,000,000, and con- CHAP. verted into a grant, it must be considered in what circumstances they were placed, and in what embarrassments they had long been involved. These difficulties arose from Reasons two causes the first was the decline in the productive duced the powers of nature in all the islands, when the virgin riches West India of the soil began to wear out, which was generally the case to acquiesce after twenty-five or thirty years' cultivation. This was rangement. universally experienced after a certain time, and it led to two effects, each of which contributed to stimulate production to an undue degree, and increase the embarrassments of those who lived by its sale. The original proprietors, seeing the soil failing, sold their estates, and bought new ones, in which the virgin riches of the soil might be relied on for twenty or thirty years, and instantly commenced extensive plantations; while the purchaser of the old ones, finding the productive powers of these declining, borrowed money on their security, and endeavoured, by increased exertions and a liberal expenditure, to restore the production to what it formerly had been. Thus, from one cause the decline of crops after the riches of the virgin soil were exhausted-a forced and unnatural production, attended with a ruinous reduction of prices, generally took place. 101. direct taxes West India was sub The next was the enormous and crushing duty to which sugar and all West India produce were subjected, Enormous and which, when the decline of prices took place after the adjust peace, was in a great part paid by the producer. This to which tax, when first augmented in 1793, was 30s. a hundred- produce weight on sugar, which was subsequently reduced to 27s., jected. and in 1830 to 24s., at which it still was. A grosser and more iniquitous instance of fiscal oppression never was heard of; and it illustrates the extreme danger of oppression, in a constitutional monarchy, to its unrepresented dependencies. Most certainly the English would never have consented to a tax of this description, equivalent to one of 50s. the quarter on wheat, on their own produce. 1833. CHAP. But it is a very different thing to tax ourselves, and to XXXI. tax a defenceless and unrepresented colony subject to our power. This immense tax had come latterly to be chiefly, if not entirely, paid by the producers. The proof of this is decisive. In 1831, the price of sugar, excluding duty, in Great Britain was 23s. 8d. the cwt., while in America, in the same year, it was 36s. The difference was owing to the duty of 24s. a cwt., being to the extent of the difference paid by the producers. They could not raise their prices in proportion to the tax, in consequence of the competition with other sugar-growing states, and the vast increase of production, from the cause just mentioned, in their own. "An absolute sovereign," says Mr Hume, "being equally elevated above all his subjects, and not more dependent on one class than another, views them all, comparatively speaking, with equal eyes; whereas a free State is ruled by one body of citizens who have obtained the mastery over another, and govern exclusively the distant settlements of the empire, and are 1 Hume's constantly actuated by personal jealousy and patrimoEssays, i. nial interests, in their endeavours to prevent them from obtaining the advantages of equal and uniform legislation.”1 247. 102. Causes which had duty bear able during the war. It may appear strange how this enormous and crushing system of taxation on rude produce, which amounted rendered the now to £5,000,000 yearly, on estates yielding, according to Lord Althorpe's statement, only £1,500,000 profit on cultivation, could have come to be imposed under the old Parliament, in which the West India was for a time the strongest of all local interests, and at one time numbered eighty votes among its supporters. But the reason was this, which, when once stated, is perfectly apparent, and explains the whole phenomenon. The burden of the tax was not felt by the producer during the war, when, under an adequate currency, sugar brought from 120s. to 130s. (including duty), and the tax of 30s., then wholly paid by the consumers, still left an ample price |