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1162 THE LJAD E B. [No. 449, October 30,...
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THE SPANISH ELECTIONS. The hopes which u...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Further Destruction Of The Slave Trade T...
has l ) ad the same effect , only , in coming after the British recognition , it not only ; constitutes a fresh precedent , but forms a second in a series of precedents ,- and appears to give continuity of legal sanction to the practice . This newly established law / will most likely bring about consequences so important that they can at present scarcely be appreciated by the British public . Amongst the first effects is likely to be a very curious competition , to which the West India colonies will be exposed . At the recent meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of
Social Science , Mr , Chamerovzow , the Secretary for the Anti-Slavery Society , broixght forward some statistics to prove that free labour in the "West Indies is becoming a great deal cheaper than slave labour used to be ; and he argued that if estates have been thrown out of cultivation by hundreds in Jamaica , or other colonies , the produce in the remaining estates is more considerable , and at a lower prime cost . A letter from Consul Campbell , at jLag-os , in Africa , has assisted Mr . Chamerovzoy to some further statistics of the same tendency . Since the growth of legitimate commerce wages have risen in Freetown , Sierra Leone , from 4 d . a day
to 3 Od . or Is . 3 d . a day ; the price of a slave has risen from 4 d . 10 s ., or 5 / . 12 s . 6 d ., to 16 / . 17 s . 6 d ., ¦ wi th the consequence that slaves , male and female , « . t LagoSj are incited to save in order to purchase their own redemption . Freedom therefore , is beginihg to rise in Africa , while its value is ^ increasing in the West Indies . Mr . Stephen Cave , chairman of the West Indian Committee in Iion ~ don , establishes the fact that the West India planters continue to confront ruin ; and the rejoinders of Mr . ChameroFZOw , that the protective power of free labour renders it cheaper than slave labour , scarcely applies , -since the essential for certain processes in the
manufacture of sugar is continuous labour . . JVfr . CJhamerorzow wants to know how many hours a day , Mr . Cave requires . He appears scavcely to comprehend such peremptory necessities as the keeping a blast furnace constantly hot , or keeping all hands at work towards the . close of harvest ; he could hardly understand how a few days ' holiday , if the men choose to take it , would ¦ compel the owner of the blast furnace to let it blow out . The negro , while still in slavery , or but recently emancipated from it , appears not to fall under the industrial pressure offered by wages as
the European does ; and , whatever the rate of pay , he throws up his employment for a little rest or pleasure , to the utter destruction of processes which cannot be broken off except at immense loss . The British West Indies have been competing in the sugar trade with other colonies—French , Spanish , Portuguese , or Dutch—in which there lias been a less manufacturing and commercial sharpness , so that the British colonies have maintained their ground to some extent , notwithstanding the fact that they commanded & less certain and continuous use of labour .
They now seem likely to be exposed to a much more formidable competition . The system of dfree black emigration appears to have beeii definitively established by France ; the protest of England and the interference of Portugal having had the effect of an action at law , which tries the validity of a title . Under these circumstances , we may expect the trade to bo prosecuted with greater activity than ever . The French sugar colonies in South Africa and America will be supplied with hosts of free emigrants under such regulations that even a French operative would regard as slavery . ' Other colonies , which desire
similar supplies , are not likely to abstain from copying the example of Franco t and , while Spanish traders in slaves are liable to be seized by British cruisers for piraoy , it is more than probable that the Spanish West Indies will see the advantage of dropping the slave-trade , aud supplying thomsolves by moans of the French free black emigration . Possibly , for all her alliance with Groat Britain , S pain will find it convenient , and certainly
profitable , to fall in with the now regime , and to adopt her own branch of freo emigration . Holland has contemplated the emancipation of her slaves , bat it has boon deferred from time to timo , and the prosont state of the negro trado in Frenoh ships on tlio coast of Afrioa may either defer the Dutch emancipation or expedite it-, with suoli laws and regulations ifc would faoilitato the adoption of tho new Bolieine . Such rosults wo antioipato from tlio mere effect , oomm eroial and moral , of tho advantogo which Franoo has ovidently gainoa . Tli © price of slaves has risen in Afrioa . in
oonsequence of the increase of legitimate commerce but it has been artificially enhanced in tropical America by a species of . protection , tlie joint slave trade squadron having operated to keep up . the price of slaves by the frequent losses of negro cargoes . It has-been calculated that'if one vessel in three succeeds in evading the squadron , the owner is paid . One slave therefore , in the West Indies is worth more than three negroes on the coast of Africa . According to the statistics furnished by Consul Campbell to Mr . Chamerovzow , the increase in the value of slaves is scarcely three times what it used to be ; consequently if negroes could be
conveyed across the Atlantic without the loss of two in three , the trader will be paid fully his present profit , although he were actually to lower the t > rice of the slave—we beg pardon—of the free black emigrant . Now the new emigration plan affords the opportunity of transhipping negroes without the loss of two in three . Indeed , when once the free plan has been in full working , it is certain that , independently of the loss of whole shiploads , the mortality will diminish on board the emigrant ships , because there will be no longer the same necessity of crowding , which is the principal cause of . disease and death . Under such circumstances , the preventive squadron , which will be so often engaged in the ceremony of looking on while the free ships are carrying out their cargoes of blacks , will become comparatively
useless . The slave-trade will be put to deathnot by the squadron , nor even by legitimate commerce , but by the superior commercial safety and profit of the free plan . The squadron being funehes officio , the treaties for its maintenance ot course fall to the ground . This is so obvious that we may already foresee how European Governments will propose to relinquish the maintenance of a force which will then present itself in the light of a purely useless expense ; and should the United States , as a point of honour , maintain a home squadron to prevent the piracy of slave-trading on the part of its own citizens , the purely useless ileet on the coast of Africa would most likely be recalled . Under these circumstances , what are the British West Indies "to do ? Let us submit to this renewed
competition , and our own sugar colonies would be thrown wholly out of work . In that case , we relinquish the surest ground upon which the African slave can be trained in civilisation ; and the attempt to maintain the forcible suppression of the slave-trade in the teeth of impossibilities would result in abandoning the only course ¦ whi ch we can henceforth pursue for the purpose or teaching the African ; the spread of intelligence in any people being , after all , the only counteractive to the enslavement of that people .
1162 The Ljad E B. [No. 449, October 30,...
1162 THE LJAD E B . [ No . 449 , October 30 , 1858 .
The Spanish Elections. The Hopes Which U...
THE SPANISH ELECTIONS . The hopes which until lately lingered around the name of O ' Donnell have , one after another , died out , and popular feeling is once more setting in as strongly against the Minister as it did on the morrow o ( his treachery to Espartcro , A second tifhe the intriguing Marshal has essayed to play the samo manoeuvring part , obtaining pow ' ci' by the transitory favour of the Court , and seeking to fortify himself in its possession by simultaneous professions of sympathy with opposite opinions , and of zeal for tho advancement of interests tho most
antagonistic . To tho Moderados ho has been during tho last three months unbounded in his EroiYors of friendship , and lavish of his actual onefits . Many posts of importance at homo , and all tho most valuable appointments abroad , have been given or left to them . Without such concessions it is probable , indeed , that his administrative career , brief as it has hitherto boon , would have boon briefor . His aim , as ho pretended , was to propitiate tho French Court and allay the Absolutist misciviners of hia own ; and , remembering that
he had a Cortes paokod by his predooessors , to whom ho darod not appeal for effective support , and the Queen hesitated to give him at first the power of dissolving , the Progrcssititas generously loreboro to hamper him on account of those proceedings , and contented themselves with tlio promise of legislative measures of a truly liberal kind . To thorn ho affected in private an air of the utmost cordiality and unreserve . Ho pointed to his himlnincoa and diftloultios , and bogged of them to give liim time , His language , resembled closely that which lie hud hold when ontoring into his momorablo alliauoo with tho veteran I ) uko of Victoria in 1850 . As then , ho abjured all thoughts of reverting to the
arbitrary principles of his past political life ; he had outlived the errors of his youth , and only needed time and opportunity to show himself in his truer and newer colours as'the practical leader of progress . He could not have been unconscious , when reiterating these vows of penitence and improvement , how vividly many of his hearers must have recalled their former utterance , aud how speedily ihcy were falsified . Wholesale recantation of . ¦ op inions . needs cither profound earnestness of spirit , or rare selfpossession in the convert . 15 ut when . the ftni-diaaut proselyte lias gone through the-process ¦ more than once , and people stand bv and look him straight in the face who remember him in opposite part ' s not ¦ ord
very long before , it takes no ¦ inary ' amount of hardihood to go through further acts of renunciation . In all this , however , Marshal O'Donnell seems to have cxccuiccl his dillieult task , with address and even with success for ( ho moment . Many of the old chiefs of the Liberals si oocl aloof and * silently looked on , without committing themselves by any profession of ' confidence in his plausible and florid protestations , but from , no section of the party did he . encounter anything like opposition , and from many quarters he received disiuicrested , though necessarily circumspect , support . From the outset it was felt on ail hands that an appeal to the constituencies would be . the real test of his influence at Court , and iouchs ' tone of his
sincerity towards the people . Jt the faithless and fickle Queen should eventually refuse him permission to summon a new Parliament , a few months must terminate .-his second attempt to govern ; and if in the mode of dealing with the elections he strove to imitate his factious , predecessors in the Cabinet and . to pack 1 lie representative body . with . his own creatures , instead o . f . abiding-frankly and loyally by the free choice of the nation , it would obviously become the duty Of all true friends of good government in . Spain to repudiate him iinally and openly , and leave him to the mercy of that profligate power of which lie had made himself the tool , and of whose perfidy he must , sooner or later , prove to be the dupe . The events now . passing at Madrid , and elsewhere throughout , the Peninsula
go far to prove the wisdom of those who distrusted the recusant convert of June last , nml . declined to enter into any public alliance with him . The power of dissolving the Cortes was , indeed , exercised by Queen Isabella during- her autumnal tour in the northern provinces of the kingdom ; but 11 n * decree was prepared and signed so' secretly that none of the other members of the Cabinet ' are said 1 o have been aware of it until the very eve of its promulgation . It struck us at the lime thut this mystery augured ill for the coming elections . Wliat it secret conditions were mmle between ihc . monarch and his minister as to the course to be taken lrq-arding the nominal ion and support of caiuliilatcs r What if cither O'Donnoll or bis wvul mistress feared to disclose these conditions to the rest oi the Cabinet , and trusted to chance or fraud to enable them afterwards to justify the uneonsin uiionul
course therein pursued P .. Our worst anticipations have boon sniff lulfillod by the reckless conduct of U » u Government , " both respecting the ostensible preparations for the elections nml likewise with reference to the press . Aguiiist the hitter an open crusndo has been instituted by th" authorities . Journals , professing oven moderate opinions on me Liberal side , aro daily prosecuted under iln : provision of the reactionary laws , framed bv JN arnica and Sartorius when m power . The tribuiiii U aro continually crowded , wo are tokl , with luwmiil j liiffcs composed in a great degree of persons ol mo wealthier and more educated classes , who II" ™ 10 hoar tho eloquent iuvectives pronounced ii ^ iuiisl no Govornmoiit by tho advocates of the pi : rsccuteti press . Harangues tho most exciting arc : thus Heaim
livered to limited , but iiilluonliid , nudHMiir-. ; tlio hulls of justice aro turned into tlio arums oi bitter and oxciUng political strife . Kesort , meanwhile , is hud , it is said , to every specie . * oi intimidation and corrupt iiuluc . enie . nl , to seenro mo return of tlioso whom the Minister believe * I lin . ¦« may absolutely trust . Mou of murk iiml worth nuo MM . Olowurn , Escoaura , uiul others , jiro iiiIkiocu openly in tlio Government circles ou account o thoir known liberality of opinions j nml » o l . " ' . ' " ^"" is the u » o made of . tlic moiiiw of shnator 111 U" 1 ' ,, „ arrayed against thorn , 1 . 1 ml uwfro than «"""' ,.,, popular candidates avows hi * expectation <> J dolci" and expresses bis willingness to rotiro . it ut V not inuoli Hiibhilonnod , tins jmnlic nml l' « -u « u s conduct of tho Ministerialists is , m n « . » l at iousi ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 30, 1858, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_30101858/page/18/
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