On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    has had the same effect , only , in coming after the British recognition ^ it not only constitutes a fresh precedent , bat 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 . Cliamerovzow , the Secretary for the Anti-Slavery Society .-brought forward some

    ¦ s tatistics 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 Lagos , iu Africa , has assisted Mr . Chanierovzow to « ome 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 lOd . or Is . 3 d . a day ; the price of a slave has risen from 4 / . 10 s ., or 5 / . 12 s . 6 d ., to 16 / . 17 s . 6 d .,

    sequence of the increase of legitimate commerce ; but it has been artificially enhanced in tropical America by a species of protection , the joint slave trade squadron having operated to keep up the price of slaves by the freque . nt . losses of negro cargoes . It has been calculated that if one vessel in three succeeds in evading the squadron , the owner is paid . Gne slave therefore , m the West Indies is worth more than three negroes on the coast of Africa . According to the statistics furnished by Consul Campbell to Mr . Chanierovzow , 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 price 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 . Tlie 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 functus officio , the treaties for its maintenance of 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 tlie . part of its own citizens , tlie purely useless fleet 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 which 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 .

    • with the consequence that slaves , male and female , at Lagos , are incited to save in order to purchase their own redemption . Freedom therefore , is begining to rise in Africa , while its value is .. increasing in the West Indies . Mr . Stephen Cave , chairman -of the West Indian Committee , in London , establishes the fact that the West India planters continue to confront ruin ; and the rejoinders of Mr . Chamerovzbw , 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 . Mr . CJhamerovzow wants to know how many hours a

    • day , Mr . Cave requires . He appears scarcely 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 rereentry emancipated from it , aDpears not to fall under the industrial pressure offered by wages as the European does ; and , whatever the rate oi pay ,

    lie 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 has 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 . a less certain and continuous use of labour .

    They now seem likely to be exposed to a much more formidable competition . The system of -free black emigration appears to have been definitively established by France j 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 way expect the trade to be 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 France ; and , while Spanish traders in slaves are liable to be seized bv British 4 l « , KMV /* fJ M . MA t ? AMTWM M 4 V A * Ulk # Jl « J VU MW HU 1 AUU UJ , f ^ AJLUA 0 AI

    • cruisers for piracy , it is more than probable that the Spanish West Indies will Bee the advantage of dropping the slave-trade , and supplying themselves by means of the French free black emigration . Possibly , for all her alliance with Great Britain , « 3 pain will find it convenient , and certainly profitable , to fall in with the new regime , and to adopt her own branoh of free emigration , Holland has contemplated the emancipation of her slaves , but it has been deferred from time to timo , and the present state of the negro trado in French ships on the coast of Africa may either defer the Dutch emancipatipn or expedite it , with such laws and regulations it would facilitate the adoption of the new scheme . Such results wp anticipate from the mere effect , conmm eroial and moral , of the advantage whioh Franco has evidently gained . Tlie price of slaves has risen in Africa in con-

    Untitled Article

    arbitrary principles of his past political life ; he had outlived the errors of his youth , and onl y needed time and opportunity to show himself in his truer and newer colours as the practical leader of progress . He couldnot have been unconscious , when reiterating these vows of penitence and- improvement , how vividly many of his hearers must have recalled their former utterance , and how speedily they were falsified . Wholesale recantation of opinions needs either profound earnestness of spirit , or rare selfpossession iu the convert . But when the soi-disant proselyte lias gone through the process more than once , and people stand by and look him straight in

    the face who remember him in opposite parts not very long before , it takes no ordinary amount of hardihood to go through further acts of renunciation . In all this , however , Marshal O ' Donnell seems to have executed his difficult task with address and even with success for the moment . Many of the old chiefs of the Liberals stood 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 lie encounter anything like opposition , and from many quarters he received disinterested , though necessarily circumspect , support . From the cutset it was felt on all hands that an appeal tb the constituencies would be the real test of his influence at Court , and touchstone of his sincerity towards the people . If 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 dealimr with the elections he

    strove to imitate his factious predecessors in tlie Cabinet and to pack the representative body with his own creatures , instead of 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 liually and openly , and leave him to the mercy of that profligate power of . which he'had ' made- himself the tool , and of whose perfidy he must , sooner or later , prove to be tlie 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 , and declined to

    enter into any public alliance with him . lhe power of dissolving the Cortes was , indeed , exercised by Queen Isabella during her autumnal tour in the northern provinces of the kingdom j but the decree was prepared and signed so ' secretly that none o £ the other members of the Cabinet are said to have been aware of it until the very eve of its promulgation . It struck us at the time that this mystery augured ill for the coming elections . What it secret conditions were made between the monarch and his minister as to the course to be taken regarding the nomination and support of candidates ? ¦\ Vhafc if either O'Donnell or his royal mistress feared to disclose these conditions to the rest ot the

    THE SPANISH ELECTIONS . The hopes which until lately lingered around the name of O'Donnell have , one after another , died put , and popular feeling is once more setting in as strongly against the Minister as it did on the morrow of his treachery to Espartero . A second time the intriguing Marshal has essayed to play the same manoeuvring part , obtaining power 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 the advancement of interests the most antagonistic . To the Moderados ho has been

    during the last three months unbounded in his proffers of friendship , and lavish of his actual benefits . Many posts of importance at home , and all the most valuable appointments abroad , have been given or left to them . Without such concessions it is probablo , indeed , that his administrative career , brief as it has hitherto been , would have been briefer . Hia aim , as ho pretended , was to propitiato tlie French Court and allay the Absolutist misgivings of his own ; and , remembering that he had a Cortes paokod by his predecessors , to whom ho dared not anneal for effeotivo support , and the

    Queen hesitated to give him at first the power of dissolving , the Progressistas gonorously foraboro to hamper him on account of these proceedings , and contented themselves with the promise of legislative measures of a truly liberal kind . To them ho affected in private an air of the utmost cordiality and unreserve . Ho pointed to his hindrances and difficulties , and boggod of them to give him timo . His language rosoinblod closely that which ho hud held when entering into his momorablo alliance with the veteran I ) uke of Victoria in 1850 . As then , he abjured all thoughts of rerorting to the

    Cabinet , and trusted to chance or fraud to enable them afterwards to justify the unconstitutional course therein pursued ' t , Our worst anticipations have been since fulfilled by the reckless conduct of the Government , both respecting the ostensible preparations for the elections and likewise with reference to the press . Against the latter an open crusade has heen instituted by the authorities . Journals , professing even moderate opinions on the Liberal side , arc ciaily prosecuted undor the provision of the ieaotionary laws , framed by Nnrvaca and Sartorius when in power . The tribunals are continually crowded , wo arc told , with assemblages composed in a great degree of persons of the wealthier and more educated classes , who / lock to hear the eloquoivb invectives pronounced ngain&t the Government by the advocates of the poraccuteel

    press . Harangues the most exoiting arc thus dciivorod to limited , but influential , audiences ; ana the halls of justice arc turned into the urouus ot bitter and exciting political strife . ltosort , nicivnwhilc , is had , it is said , to every species ot intimidation and corrupt inducement , to socuro ino return of thoso whom the Minister bcliovos I hut ho may absolutely trust . Men of mark and worth like MM . Qlozasja , Esooaurn , and others , arc luboocii openly in tlio Government oirclos on account ; oi their known , liberality of opinions ; and so prolligaio is the uso made of tlio means of sinister . muuonco arrayed against thorn , Unit inoro than ono ol mo popular candidates avows his ottpeotaUou of doloai , and oxprossos his willingness to retire . ¦ " wu . ° not much misinformed , this fmntio mid ^ otious conduot of tlio Ministerialists is , in part at least ,

    Untitled Article

    1162 THE LEADER , [ No . 449 , October 30 , 1858 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 30, 1858, page 1162, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2266/page/18/