decreasing as well. Thus in five years, ending with 1820, the exports of sugar from Jamaica had been 585,172 hogsheads, but had fallen to 493,784 in the five years ending with 1830-a decrease of no less than 91,388 hogsheads. Nay, in the ten years ending with 1830, the decrease was no less than 201,843 hogsheads from the amount in the ten years ending with 1820." (Bigelow's Jamaica, Appendix.)

"Another fact plainly shows that these distresses would only have grown deeper and heavier had slavery been allowed. to go on. In the Dutch colony of Surinam, the very same ruin has come which befel our own islands. The fact that slavery was left standing, has made not the least difference. Here we have a large colony, with slavery preserved in all its force and beauty [this was written in 1859, slavery in the Dutch colonies was not abolished till 1864]. And what is the result? The result is almost total ruin, out of 917 plantations, 636 have been totally abandoned. Of the remainder, 65 grow nothing but wood and provisions. And the small balance are stated to be on the road to destruction."" such was the fact is certain, why it was so we have not here space to discuss. We will only say, that all political economists are agreed that, under ordinary circumstances, slave labour does not pay. There is no one fact which a long experience more uncontrovertibly proves.

That

But even if this had not been the case; if down to 1833 the slave colonies had uniformly flourished, it would be equally certain that the abolition of slavery alone delivered them from a future ruin which was hastily coming upon them. The worst effect that Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Baker, or the Times supposes to have resulted from the abolition of slavery is that labour is scarce and dear. Any how, this would be better than having no labourers at all; and to this the old system of slavery was rapidly bringing the West India colonies. Mr. Carlyle himself must admit that a dead negro will not produce even as much as a pumpkin. Now under the old system, the labouring population of the West Indian colonies was swiftly dying out. This had been known long before the abolition of the slave-trade, but the diminution of numbers was then met by a large importation. Mr. Bryan Edwards, the most approved historian of the West Indies, discusses the comparative economy of supplying an estate with labour by keeping up the old stock, and by working it off and importing a new one. He says the diminution varies exactly with the quantity of sugar produced. After the slavetrade was abolished, importation was at an end. And then the numbers decreased so rapidly that before very many years

the only alternative would have been either to restore the slave-trade, or to abandon the cultivation of the islands.

"It was not by stories of atrocious cruelty that the eyes of Parliament were opened to the wickedness and folly of slavery. If any of our readers will turn to the pages of Hansard, they will find that what gave the death-blow to slavery, in the minds of English statesmen, was the population returns; which showed the fact, the appalling fact,' that although only eleven out of the eighteen islands had sent these in, yet in those eleven islands the slaves had decreased, in twelve years, by no less than 60,219; namely, from 558,194 to 497,975. The decrease by manumission is not included in this number. Had similar returns been made from the other seven colonies (including Mauritius, Antigua, Barbadoes, and Grenada), the decrease must have been little, if at all, under 100,000. Now, it was plain to every one that if this were really so, the system could not last. The driest economist would allow, that it would not pay to let the working classes be slaughtered. To work the labouring men in our West Indies to death, might bring in a good return for a while, but could not be a profitable enterprise in the long run. Accordingly this was the main, we had almost said the only, topic of the debates on slavery in 1831 and 1832. Is slavery causing a general massacre of the working classes in our sugar islands, or is it not, was a question worth debating in the pounds, shillings, and pence view, as well as in the moral one. And debated it was long and fiercely. The result was the full establishment of the dreadful fact. The slaves, as Mr. Marryatt said [he had long been the leader of the advocates of slavery], were dying like rotten sheep"" (Edinburgh, p. 428).

Hence the common assertion, that we sacrificed the prosperity of the sugar colonies to our humanity to the negro, is simply false and nonsensical. Unless we had been prepared to restore the slave-trade the sugar colonies would many years before this have been utterly ruined by the natural working of the system of slavery. If we had restored it, we should have confirmed the ruin of the older colonies and have built a bloodstained commercial prosperity in some of the new ones.

Let us say, in passing, that this wretched fact of the speedy destruction of the slave population in the West Indies is a remarkable contrast to what took place in the slave States of the American Union. The reason of the difference was twofold. First, in the United States the mass of the slaveholders were proprietors resident upon their own estates. The great

mass of the West Indian properties were held by proprietors resident in England, and were managed by overseers. "Monk" Lewis has recorded his horror when he visited his own Jamaica estates, fully believing that the negroes were well treated, and found that what at first sight had appeared to him

to be " a perfect paradise" was really "a hell upon earth."

He says, If I had not come to Jamaica myself, in all probability I should never have had the most distant idea how abominably the poor creatures had been ill used." He soon discovered, however, that they were not worse used than those of his neighbours. The owners, no doubt, gave strong and positive orders that the slaves should be kindly treated. But they were often embarrassed, and, whether they were or not, they expected and required that their estates should pay as well as those of their neighbours. Mr. Helps points out that the early governors of the Spanish possessions in America were placed in a difficulty. The Royal government sent out the most stringent orders that all possible care should be taken of the natives, and that more gold should be sent to Spain. The result was that in a very few years the island of Hayti, which Columbus had found swarming with prosperous inhabitants, had not one single native left. The overseers of West Indian estates were much in the same predicament, and the same result was rapidly drawing nearer and nearer. Again, the number of slaves in the United States was kept up, because in Virginia and Kentucky, slaves were bred for exportation to the cotton and sugar States of the South. On the sugar plantations of Louisiana the decrease of the slaves was very considerable, and was made up only by this domestic slavetrade.

As things were then, the abolition of slavery alone saved the slave colonies from utter ruin. That it was abolished suddenly was not the fault of those who appealed to the English people against the system. They were anxious that the abolition should be gradual, and their desire was thwarted by the infatuation of the planters themselves. Sudden as it was, it no doubt produced, like other sudden changes, much immediate confusion and difficulty. But all accounts agree that this difficulty had been surmounted, and that prosperity had returned before the dreadful period of West Indian distress, which we all remember, and which the Times and those who adopt their views from it, now represent as the result of emancipation.

The real cause of that distress was the throwing open the sugar-trade of Great Britain to the produce of the whole world. We are not saying that this was wrong, or that the

principle of free-trade is not sound. But it was impossible that its application should not produce wide-spread ruin in the West Indies. It would be highly unwise and unjust to pass a law obliging London to buy only the coals of one proprietor, say of Earl Vane. But no doubt if such a law had existed for years, its repeal would be a grievous loss to the earl. Now, for centuries, the West Indian colonies had had an absolute monopoly of the British market. The free trade policy of 1847 not only took away this, but admitted the competition of countries in which sugar was produced by slave-labour, fed by the slave-trade; and exactly under those circumstances in which, as we have already seen, slavery and the slave-trade combined are profitable; because they had a supply of fertile uncultivated lands virtually unlimited. What wonder that the West Indian proprietors suffered a grievous blow! "West Indian sugar, which in 1840 (exclusive of duty) sold in bond for 49s., had sunk in 1848 to 23s. 5d., a fall of twenty-five shillings and sevenpence out of forty-nine shillings! or to take a wide area, sugar in the eight years ending with 1846, had averaged (exclusive of duty) 37s. 3d. per cwt. In the eight following years it averaged only 24s. 6d. per cwt. From the same return it also appears, that during the first twenty years of the century, sugar fetched 48s., all but double its price from 1846-55. No wonder West Indian property has fallen in value since these good old times. And mark the consequence.

"In the eight years ending with 1846, the whole production of the West Indies was just twenty million cwt. In the eight years following it had increased by four millions and a half cwt. Now, had this sold at the previous price, it would have fetched nearly fifteen millions and a half more than it actually did fetch. Whereas in reality it sold for seven millions less than the smaller crop of the first period had sold for. By a fall of price from 37s. 3d. to 24s. 6d., not only was the profit on the sugar swept clean away, but a dead loss ensued wherever a loose system of mismanagement by agents, instead of proprietors, existed, and where a heavy interest on mortgages had to be paid. This heavy fall in price is a fact which. demands the most emphatic notice, if we would understand the reason why the West Indies passed through the valley of the shadow of death during these years."

Mr. Bigelow, in his book entitled "Jamaica in 1850," devotes several chapters (page 70 to 112) to the causes of the decline of that island. He maintains that the measures of the British Government "did not cause, but only precipitated a result which was inevitable." We have not space to go

through his arguments, which seem to us to make out his case. It was a case like that of the Irish proprietors about the same time. A severe blow, under which any set of men would have reeled, found them wholly unprepared to resist. They fell, and great was the fall.

But this ruin, lamentable as it was, had really nothing to do with the supposed indolence of the negro. If the climate had been suitable to English labourers, and if the West Indies had been cultivated by the best labourers England could supply, great suffering must have resulted from the causes which we have traced. We think, therefore, that we have fully answered the practical argument, that, (let ingenious men argue as they may,) the fact remains that the West Indies, which were once one of the most prosperous parts of the British empire, have been sunk in the deepest distress since the emancipation of the negro. The fact is, that argument is merely an example of the fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc. The result has existed, but it has been owing to wholly different causes.

We have already shown, by copious statistical extracts, that this period of distress has passed away. No system will secure uniform prosperity in a country where a drought causes the total loss of the crop. This is the case in some of the West Indian Islands, as it is also in some parts of the East Indies. The negro is no more responsible in the one case, than the Hindoo is in the other. But the recovery from a long period of distress has been so general in the islands, and has continued so long, that we may confidently say the ruin of the West Indian colonies, of which we always hear when the demerits of the negro are discussed, is a thing of the past.

The fact is, that the experience of the negro in the West Indies (lamentable as it has been in many respects), proves that he possesses a capacity for adapting himself to the laws of European civilized life, which, so far as we know, has not been found in any other savage race. Savage races have been found in almost every country in which Europeans have planted colonies. But what has been their fate? They have melted away like snow before the sun. In a very few years there will be no remains of the natives of Tasmania, an island once very fairly inhabited, and about the size of Ireland. Australia being nearly the size of all Europe, the process is, of course, slower. But we much fear it is not less sure. Tasmanian and Australian savages were, perhaps, the lowest in all respects of any savage nations within our knowledge. But the natives of New Zealand were as decidedly the highest,

The