tion of the empire by the British Commons, which brought about the American Revolution: it was the reckless sacrifice of the whole British West India Islands to the dreams of immediate emancipation, which has occasioned the present deep-rooted exasperation of the white inhabitants of those possessions; and nothing is wanting but the oft-projected and apparently approaching homage to the ten-pounders of England, by the equalisation of the duties on Baltic and American timber, to fill to the brim the cup of Canadian discontent, and convert the Anglo-Saxon race, hitherto the firm supporters of the British connexion, into its most powerful and inveterate enemies.

But although the sacrifice of their material and patrimonial interests to the jealousy, selfishness, or caprice of their numerous rulers in the parent state, is one cause, and a most prolific one, of the discontent of the colonies of all republican communities, it is not the only, nor, in some cases, the most powerful. It is the denial to one part of the empire of the privileges and forms of government which are enjoyed by another-the stern resolution to deny to one class of citizens the privileges which themselves enjoy-which is often the more immediate cause of the rupture. Power is more dearly prized than even property; to forms of government an ideal importance is attached, greater than belongs even to the actual realities of life. When the inhabitants of the colonies of a republican government read the debates in the ruling councils of the commonwealth, and the effusions of its daily press, they see nothing but praises of the unbounded blessing of popular rule, and the incalculable advantages, social, political, and moral, which ever spring from the practical application of the great principles of general freedom and selfgovernment. Great as are these advantages, where sufficient strength is at the same time provided for the framework of government, they are magnified to the imagination of the colonists by distance and want of experience, and the desire for them rendered uncontrollable by the perception of how rapidly they would all fall into their bands, if the great step of separation from the mother state were once accomplished. So natural is the tendency of the human mind to become

inflated with these wishes, and actuated by these principles, that it may safely be asserted, that in progress of time they will become irresistible; and that the independent spirit, engendered in the parent democratic state, will in all cases rend the colonial empire asunder, if due attention is not paid to it, in the cautious but steady concession of privileges analogous to those enjoyed by the inhabitants of the ruling power to its colonial dependencies.

The most obvious way of effecting this object, would be the extension at once of the central constitution to the colonial dependencies; and the conferring of a seat in the great council of the nation on a certain number of representatives from all its colonies, wherever situated. But, though the equity of this has much apparently to recommend it, and the principle of some sort of representation in the central parliament appears by no means unworthy of attention; yet experience has every where demonstrated, that it is by the appointment of a local legislature, elected on principles suited to the varying circumstances of each colony, that both its wishes are most likely to be attended to, and its interests best consulted. Such is the variety of character, physical circumstances, intellectual cultivation, and original race or intermixture of blood in different colonies, that no uniform system of representation could be established without speedily throwing the empire into combustion; and, if the representatives of all the colonies were to sit in the ruling assembly, the result would inevitably be, either that its time would be entirely absorbed in discussing details of great local but little general importance; or that the most material separate concerns of each colony would be overlooked and forgotten in the vehemence of party strife, or the vast national concerns of the whole empire. The ruinous effects which have already resulted from the extension of the same representative system to Ireland as Great Britain, and the woful obstruction of general business which has resulted from the magnitude of its separate concerns, sufficiently demonstrates the extreme danger of overlooking the vast difference in the preparation of different races or nations for free institutions, and the risk of the utility of a

general assembly being in a great degree destroyed by the magnitude of the subordinate details thrown upon it from a particular part of the empire.

But although, for these reasons, the establishment of separate local parliaments, or houses of assembly, in different colonies, is probably the only way of combining their multifarious interests and wishes with one central ruling government; yet it must ever be recollected, that the utmost delicacy is requisite in dealing with these separate and in some degree independent assemblies; and that, if the central legislature, trusting to the force of the national strength, relying on the omnipotence of the general government, requires absolute and implicit obedience in the provincial assemblies, a discontent fatal to the integrity of the empire will speedily be generated in all its colonial dependencies. The more democratic that the central parliament is the more popular the system of election in the mother state-the more indispensable it is that a corresponding spirit should be tolerated in the colonial assemblies for it is from the heart of the commonwealth that its wishes and public opinion comes, and the subjects of a democratic legislature will reasonably expect that the home parliament will concede that liberty to others which they take to themselves. It may be true that it is difficult to do this; it may be true that no rulers are so despotic in their administration-so peremptory in their demands -so tyrannical in their measures to any but their own constituents-as those who are elected under the most popular institutions; and that Aristotle's maxim still holds good, that the rule of a mob is the worst of tyran nies. All this may be perfectly true; but it will not alter the nature of things it will not remedy the internal weaknesses of a popularly governed colonial empire-it will eradicate none of the seeds of dissolution which are sown in all establishments where the interests and passions of one body of men are brought to bear directly upon the welfare of another.

The West Indies, with respect to that vital po nt of colonial prosperity -a constant supply of agricultural

labourers-stand in a very peculiar situation; and the magnitude of the injustice which they have experienced from the legislation of the parent state cannot be appreciated, unless the singular circumstances of their situation in that respect is taken into consideration. Devoted chiefly to the cultivation of an article of rude produce, which can be reared only in a tropical climate, and yet has become an article of necessity to most European nations, they cannot carry on its cultivation but by means of negro labourers, or others equally habituated with them to bear a tropical sun. Experience long ago proved, what recent attempts have still more clearly substantiated, that the European race is, generally speaking,* incapable of labouring in the fields in the West Indies, and that field hoeing of the canes, without which no crop of sugar could be reared, speedily proves fatal to the descendants of Japhet. Among all the varied expedients which the necessities of their situation have compelled the West India proprietors of late years to adopt, in order to supply the vacuum. occasioned by the measure of negro emancipation, the obvious expedient of supplying their place by the redundant population of Ireland has never been thought of; because every body practically acquainted with the subject knew, that their transportation would be merely lost money; and that the yellow fever and marsh miasmata would speedily consign even the most robust of them to an untimely grave.

It is historically known, and matter of common notoriety, how the desideratum of finding labourers capable of cultivating sugar in the West Indies, and producing the immense addition which it was capable of affording to the national wealth, was supplied. Negro slaves were, under the authority of various royal proclamations and acts of parliament, imported from Africa into the West India islands; and to such a length was this traffic carried, that not only did it for a long time occupy a considerable part of the British commercial navy, but it at length transferred above seven hun. dred thousand Africans to the oppo

sation. Doubtless, to this pleasing scene there were some exceptions; doubtless the lash was a dangerous implement to trust in the hand of hard-hearted Christians; doubtless the character of the master in a great degree affected the prosperity of his subjects, and the cruel and the unfeeling had ample means of wreaking their vengeance on a helpless race. But these instances were the exception, not the rule. In the great majority of cases, the negroes on the estates were in such easy and affluent circumstances, as to be hardly credible but on the most uniform and concurring testimony. They had generally two days a-week, besides Sunday, during which they were at liberty to work in their gardens, or at wages on their own account; and so prolific were the powers of nature in that benignant climate, and such the reward of industry and good conduct, that after being provided, themselves and their families, better than any peasantry in Europe, they could lay by with ease thirty pounds a-year. Their cottages were generally comfortable, often elegant; artificial wants, civilized vanities, were making rapid progress amongst them; and the cheering spectacle of forty thousand negroes in Jamaica alone, who had worked out or obtained their own freedom, and were prosecuting with respectability and success the paths of honest industry, proved that the sable race was capable, in the end, of bearing emancipation; and that, by permitting time to work out the great social change from bondage to freedom, with its usual slow pace and unerring wisdom, it might be effected, as in modern Europe, in so gradual a manner as to render it impossible to say when the one ceased and the other began.

In these circumstances, the course which a wise and paternal government, in justice alike to the negroes, the planters, and the empire, should have done, was clearly this: They should have lowered to a very moderate amount the duties on colonial produce, considering the sugar of Jamaica as just as much a part of the domestic produce of the empire as the wheat of Middlesex; they should have cautiously abstained from every thing calculated to excite the negro population, or precipitate or endanger the vast change from servitude to independence, and limited themselves to such moderate measures as were

calculated to improve the comforts of the slave, and ensure to him the blessings of marriage, home, and the acquisition of property. Provision might have been made for every slave being entitled to purchase his freedom from his master, as soon as he had amassed his own value, which, at the current price of from sixty to eighty pounds, might have been generally done by industrious men in three years, and that all should have two days in the week to work for them. selves. In this way, those only would have been liberated from the restraints of servitude who had afforded a convincing proof that they had acquired those of civilisation; full justice would have been done to the planters, by the receipt, in every instance, of the full market value of the slave; the negro population would have been gradually mingled with a free black race, capable of teaching them by their example, and influencing them by their habits; and the vast transition from savage to civilized life, from compulsory to voluntary labour, would have been accomplished, as it was in Europe, and some parts of southern America, so gradually as to be at once imperceptible and unattended with danger.

Instead of this, what have the British government, acting from first to last under the dictation of the masses, actually done? Their conduct may be reduced to three heads, which comprise the principal points of colonial misgovernment, and, more than the rashness of Lord Normanby or the prejudice of Sir Lionel Smith, have been the cause of the present disastrous state of those once magnificent settlements.

The first thing which they did, above forty years ago, was to lay a duty of thirty shillings a-hundredweight on sugar imported into this country, which was subsequently reduced to twenty-seven, and within these few years to twenty-four. A grosser instance of fiscal oppression, it may safely be said, never occurred, than in the imposition of so enormous a burden on an article of rude produce. In such a case, as it is well known, the producer cannot compensate the burden by superior skill or machinery in the production- little can be gained by that expedient in any department of field labour, as is clearly proved by the inability of he British farmer, with all the advantages

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of English skill, capital, and machinery, to rival the Polish, who is totally destitute of any of these advantages. The tax, therefore, required to be paid either by the producer or the consumer, and it is now clearly proved that almost the whole of it fell on the producers. The burden formerly of 30s., then 27s., and now of 24s. the hundredweight on West India sugar, was little felt during the war, when that article sold for forty or forty-five pounds the hogshead (from L.6 to L.6, 10s. the cwt.); but when, on the return of peace, prices fell to L.12 or L.15 the hogshead (from 50s. to 60s. the cwt. including duty), it became intolerably severe. It then became nearly a hundred per cent on the rude material; the same as if a duty of fifty shillings a quarter had been laid on wheat raised in England for the home consumption. Nor had either the planter or the refiner the means of eluding this tax to any considerable degree, by either raising the price of the article to the consumer, or diminishing by economy or machinery the cost of its production: the cost of raising rude agricultural produce can hardly ever be diminished to any considerable extent by the application of machinery; and the stoppage of the slave trade, necessarily, in the first instance at least, increased the cost of production, while the only way in which it seemed possible to render the burden tolerable, was by augmenting the quantity raised, which necessarily depressed to an undue extent the price which it bore in the market. Being unable to diminish the cost of production from these causes, all the efforts of the planters to make head against their difficulties, and defray the interest of their mortgages by raising more extensive crops of sugar, only tended to lower prices and throw the taxes as an exclusive burden on themselves. The proof of this is decisive: the price of sugar in America is generally higher than in England, if the duty be deducted, sometimes by fully a third. In 1831, the price per cwt. was, in Great Britain, 23s. 8d., excluding duty; while in America it was 36s. per cwt. in the same year. Taking into view the greater expense of freight to Britain than America from these islands, there can be no doubt that almost the whole tax has been paid in many years by the producers, amounting though it now does to 100 per cent. Nothing

more is requisite to explain the almost total ruin which has fallen on these splendid colonies, even before the last measure of emancipating the slaves was carried into effect.

In all fiscal measures on this subject, there is one principle to be constantly kept in view, to the neglect or oversight of which, more than any thing else, the ruin of the West Indies is to be ascribed. This is, that while many branches of manufacturing industry possess the means, by improvements in machinery or the division of labour, of compensating very heavy fiscal burdens, the raisers of rude produce can hardly ever do the same; so that, unless they can succeed in laying the tax upon the consumer, which is very often altogether beyond their power, they are forced to pay it entirely themselves, and it becomes a ruinous direct burden on industry. No doubt can exist on this head, when it is recollected not merely how slight is the improvement which agriculture has ever received from the aid of machinery; but that, while in the most highly civilized states, such as England, the cost of raising manufactures is always, notwithstanding heavy taxes and a plentiful currency, less than in ruder states, it is always much greater of producing agricultu ral produce. Great Britain can undersell the world in manufactures, but her farmers would be ruined without a corn law. If any one doubt that this enormous tax has, for the last twenty years past, fallen almost exclusively on the producers, would recommend that he should propose that a tax of fifty shillings a quarter should be forthwith laid on British wheat, and thirty on British

oats.

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If such a burden were imposed, we apprehend it would give little comfort to the British farmer to tell him, that he could not be injured by the tax, for that it all fell on the consumer! Now, this is exactly what we have done for the last forty years with the West India proprietors; and no one can wonder, after such a crushing direct tax on production, that they have, after a severe struggle, almost all become deeply embarrassed, and that creditors and mortgagees consume in every case a half, in many the whole, produce of the soil.

The next step of British legislation was to pass the Emancipation Act in 1834, by which, in consideration of