sea, for the suppression of slavery, and that increased the difficulty of our position. In all that had been said by Lord George Bentinck respecting the abomination of the traffic in slaves, it was impossible not to agree. Nevertheless, entertaining such opinions, and having great apprehensions of the measure now proposed, and fearing that it would give a great stimulus to the slave-trade, he had come to the conclusion, though not without great hesitation and reluctance, that he must give it his support. In coming to that conclusion, he was obliged to consider the present position of parties, and the prospect of forming another Government. He agreed with Lord George Bentinck, that no sham or delusive opposition ought to be offered to these resolutions, and that, if an opposition were offered to them, it ought to be one intended to be successful and fatal. He believed that by a combination of parties it would be possible to displace Lord John Russell, or, at any rate, to prevent his success upon these duties. He felt that it was practicable to give the noble lord a temporary defeat on these resolutions; but then he could not refrain from asking himself, whether it would be consistent with his character to lend himself to such a combination; and his conviction was, that it would not be consistent. Lord John Russell had made a proposal for the final adjustment of this question, and he was not surprised that the noble lord had done So. The noble lord might have adjourned the consideration of it to another Session; but he thought that it was better that the noble lord had made it at once, as he would otherwise have kept the country in great uncertainty. He

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then reminded the House, that those who should compel Lord J. Russell to abdicate power, were bound to ask themselves whether they were prepared to take it. Two Governments had existed in the last three weeks. Should a third be now formed? principle? Should it be on the principle of restoring the late Government? He said, No." Should the Protectionists be called to power, who would not only defeat this measure, but would also revoke the measure which had just been passed? The House and the country both said, "No." Considering, then, that if an opposition were made to this measure, it ought not to be a sham, but, if possible, a successful opposition, he declared that he was not prepared to take upon himself the responsibility and the consequences which must attend success. therefore, felt bound to support these resolutions from a conviction that, so long as uncertainty prevailed upon them, there would not be that stimulus given to the employment of labour and capital in the British sugar colonies, which was essential to their success. Entertaining a conviction that at no remote period these resolutions, if obstructed now, must be carried hereafter, and that the noble lord was best entitled to the credit of carrying them, he had come, though not without reluctance, to the conclusion to support them in principle, and not to embarrass the Government by any opposition to them in detail.

He,

Sir T. Acland expressed great indignation that Sir R. Peel had rested his vote on this occasion upon the state of parties in that House, and upon the mode in which the Government would be

affected by it. He should certainly vote against throwing the English market open to sugar obtained we cruelties, which we had endeavoured to put down at every cost, save that of character.

Mr. P. Miles supported Lord G. Bentinck's amendment, on the ground that the measure of the Government was calculated to encourage the slave-trade. He then proceeded to lay before the House the state of the West Indian Colonies, and the probable effects of the measure upon them. It would throw a vast number of estates out of cultivation, especially those which were not well situated for communication with the shipping. It was not owing to any fault of the West India proprietors that several of their estates had already gone out of cultivation; but it was owing to the want of labour, and to the high price which was paid for it since the emancipation of the slaves had been carried into effect. The West India proprietors asked for an unlimited supply of labour; and, instead of a scanty supply from that part of the coast of Africa where the British flag was flying, they wanted a supply from the whole coast of that continent, as the natives of that continent were best qualified to sustain tropical labour. With such an amount of labour an ample supply of sugar might be provided for the consumption of Great Britain at its present price. They also wanted free trade to be carried out to its full extent, and therefore they demanded free access for their commodities to the breweries and distilleries of this country. The Government refused compliance to that demand for reasons of excise-reasons which convinced him that the Government

was more in the hands of the Excise than the Excise was in the hands of Government. The West India proprietors also called for an equalization of the duties on spirits, and he trusted that in a future Session Lord J. Russell would accede to that call. After expressing his opinion, founded on what he had seen in Cuba and Louisiana, that free labour was cheaper than slave labour for the production of sugar, he quoted the authority of Governor Light, to prove that the introduction of free labour into our West Indian colonies would not reduce the rate of wages now paid to the negro free labourers. He concluded by expressing his sorrow that Sir R. Peel had last night declared his intention to support this introduction of slave-grown sugar into the British market. For, as it must give a stimulus to the slave-trade, how could we call upon other nations to stop it, whilst we were ourselves undoing with one hand what we were doing with the other?

Mr. Borthwick said he should vote for going into Committee upon the resolution, but he should at a future period move that the differential duty of 9s. 3d. should be continued for a period of five years, in favour of our West Indian sugars against all other sugars, both slave-labour and freelabour sugar.

The Marquis of Granby said he should vote against the resolution on two grounds; first, because he was convinced that it was necessary to afford protection to our own colonies, and, secondly, because he was reluctant to increase the abominations of the slave-trade.

Mr. A. Oswald opposed the amendment.

Mr. Hume maintained that the admission of slave-labour sugar into the British market would produce no effect on slavery in the colonies. He also insisted that Sir R. Peel was not justified in asserting, last night, that this measure would increase slavery in Cuba and the Brazils. He contended that the horrid statements with which Lord G. Bentinck had harrowed the feelings of the House, had nothing to do with the question before it, and ought to be dismissed at once and for ever from the minds of all who heard them. He wished to have this question of the Sugar Duties permanently settled; and, though he considered these resolutions to be a deviation from principle, he should give them his support. He con

curred with Mr. D. Hume that, whilst Cuba and the Brazils had slavery and the slave trade, and whilst our planters were deprived of that means of raising their produce, the question of a free trade in sugar was taken entirely out of the category of free trade. In giving his assent, then, to such a deviation from principle, he must recommend the Government to remove every impediment to the supply of labour in our West Indian colonies, and to free those colonies at once from every commercial restriction now imposed upon them. Looking again at the question in a financial point of view, he was not satisfied that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not, in proposing this measure, sacrificing a large amount of revenue, without any benefit to the consumer at all. If you remit taxation, and do not give the benefit of the remission to the consumer, you throw away a certain amount of revenue for no useful purpose

whatsoever. Now, the last reduction in the amount of the Sugar Duties was of no use to the consumer; and he was afraid that the present reduction would not do do him much more good. He thought it would have been much better had the differential duties in favour of our own colonies been continued until the expiration of the present Corn Laws. It would have produced this benefit, if no other, that it would have encouraged those who were most interested in the change now proposed, to carry that change out in the spirit in which it was conceived by the Legislature.

Sir John Reid predicted, as the result of this measure, the total ruin of the West Indian colonies.

Mr. Bernal declared his intention to vote for the resolutions; but at the same time he should stickle for the admission of West Indian spirits on the same terms as English, Scotch, and Irish spirits; for the admission of sugar into the breweries and distilleries of Great Britain; and for the extension of the contracts which Lord John Russell now permitted the West Indian to make with the African negro in Sierra Leone, and other British possessions.

Mr. E. Denison felt anxious to impress upon the House the propriety of taking care that the great experiment which for some years past we had been trying in the West Indies did not become a failure. With that view he called the attention of the House to the course which we had pursued on the western coast of Africa, and to the conduct which we had adopted towards our West Indian colonies. He then established, by reference to a mass of public documents,

that our efforts to suppress the slave-trade on the coast of Africa had been completely ineffectual, and that they had been attended by an enormous expense of money, health, and life. Having observed that it was lamentable to add that those efforts had, from their failure, aggravated the horrors of the slave-trade, he proceeded to contend that the best arm which we could employ against slavery was the promotion of free labour in our colonies. He then gave a history of the different measures which had been taken for the purpose of admitting free labour into the West Indies, and read a recommendation given by a committee of that House to the Government, to make the importa tion of free blacks into those colonies a Government measure. He, therefore, entreated Her Majesty's Ministers not to allow any vague fears of being accused of doing wrong, when they were conscious that they were doing right, to prevent them from encouraging that immigration. The West Indians had right to demand such a supply of free labour; and he for one should be prepared to support a grant of 50,000l. to them for such an object, and to deduct it from the grant annually made for the support of the naval force on the coast of Africa.

Mr. E. James expressed a qualified approval of the scheme, but thought that, if we admitted corn duty free, we ought to apply the same principle to sugar.

Mr. H. Barkly expressed himself in favour of free trade in sugar, but he made several objections to the details of Lord John Russell's very complicated scheme. He should, however, considering

the present position of parties, oppose the amendment and support the resolution.

Mr. Disraeli recapitulated the three propositions of Lord G. Bentinck's speech, and observed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his reply to it, had offered to the first an assumption, had met the second with an hypothesis, and had combated the third with a sophism. He then proceeded to substantiate that assertion, contending that Lord G. Bentinck had not over-estimated the supply of sugar from the West Indies, the Mauritius, and the East Indies, and had not underrated the consumption of the British market; that he had maintained the criticism which he had passed on the financial calculations of Lord J. Russell; that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had only upset those criticisms by producing a series of figures completely different from those of the First Lord of the Treasury, and by transmuting 20,000 into 30,000 tons of sugar, by a novel species of alchemy; and that the irrefragable arguments of Lord George Bentinck, respecting the promotion of slavery and the slave-trade, had only been met by the vain, delusive, and flashy sophism, that our efforts to put them down had been neither effective nor complete. He then proceeded to controvert the position which Lord John Russell had advanced in his opening speech on this measure, that it would not give any encouragement to the slavetrade, and to examine whether his lordship was justified in calling upon the House to accede to it for the sake of great commercial considerations and to secure the trade and commerce of the Brazils. He reminded the House that it

was only last night that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had read to it a letter from a Brazilian, whom he represented as a high authority, stating that that trade and that commerce were not in existence, and could neither be forfeited nor secured. Mr. Disraeli contended that our West Indian Colonies, even in their lowest fortunes, were better customers of our manufacturers at Manchester than the scattered population of the Brazils, and that the millions of men who obeyed our sway in Hindostan, consumed incomparably more of our productions than all the Fonsecas and slave-dealers in the world. He did not, however, oppose the resolutions of Ministers merely because they were antagonistic to our previous arrangements for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade; he opposed them because they were antagonistic to the fragment left of the old colonial system of England. He ventured to predict, that the House would soon retrace its steps, and reconstruct that now almost annihilated system. He said so, because the history of England was a history of reaction. Turning from this subject, he animadverted with great severity on the funeral oration delivered last night by Lord Sandon over the cause of abolition. It completed the picture of this eventful Session, to see the noble lord, who moved the resolutions of 1841, sitting on a hogshead of sugar in a white sheet performing penance, and crying "peccavi." Notwithstanding the defalcation of Lord Sandon from the ranks of colonial protection, he still thought that its friends might have fought its battle successfully had they been able to retain among them the late Prime

Minister. No one understood the West Indian question better than Sir R. Peel-no one could have been a more effective champion of West Indian interests. Great, therefore, was his mortification when he found Sir R. Peel delivering a speech fatal to all his hopes. The reasons, too, which Sir Robert had given for the conclusions at which he had arrived, were more ingenious and surprising than most of the arguments which the House had heard from his lips. He (Mr. Disraeli) appealed to the people of England, and asked them whether they thought that great Colonial interests were to be sacrificed for such minute considerations as who should sit on the Ministerial bench? If great principles were to be given up by members of Parliament against their conviction for party considerations, he should say, "Farewell to the Parliament of England." Sir Robert Peel had also said that he could not see how a Government could be formed supposing the present Ministry to be broken up. He did not set much value on that declaration of opinion, for he would tell Sir R. Peel frankly that his forte did not lie so much in the construction as in the destruction of a Government. He concluded by stating, that in resisting these resolutions he felt no hostility against the existing Government, that he was actuated by no factious motives, and that the friends of protection could take no other course than that which they had taken.

Lord John Russell said, it was impossible for him to accede to the amendment of Lord George Bentinck. He vindicated his resolutions from the objections which had been urged against them, in