The connexions and friends of the West Indies in London
have been making a last effort to induce Government to do justice to those ill-fated colonies. They have been deprived of their slave- labour ; they have been debarred from making up for compulsion of labour by abundance of labour, since free immigration has been prohibited except under great restrictions; and now they are to be deprived of that fiscal " protection " which was a bad substi- tute for a healthier independence. Sir ROBERT PEEL argues against the Ten-hours agitators, that you cannot impose restrictions on labour and maintain the Corn-laws in importing England: con- vent) it may be said, you cannot impose restrictions on labour and enforce free trade in the producing West Indies. But justice might easily be done to the West Indies, if the subject were not compiicated with irrelevant considerations. We deprecate the political propagandism of France—the intervention of the United States in Ireland—the meddling of Ireland in foreign aids; forget- ting that we are guilty of intervention as gross in propagating Anti- Slavery doctrines : thus we keep alive a perpetual exasperation in France about the treaties of 1831 and '33; thus we keep certain citizens of the United States in constant trepidation about slave rebellions not unlike the fears of Orangemen in Ireland about Riband conspiracies ; and our embarrassment recoils on us here, in the shape of an incapacity to do justice to the West Indies. Why, if we begin to move towards putting the colonists on an equality with slave-countries in respect of fiscal affairs, can we not put them upon an equality with them in respect of the sources and supply of labour ? Forbidding slavery in our own dominions, our functions should cease : but we must needs meddle, not merely by precept and didactics but actively, with the slavery of other countries ; and so, if we were to allow the West Indies to obtain free labour as unre- strainedly as others obtain slave-labour, it would be " said " that we encourage a trade we forbid to others. Our harsh constructions make us timid in conscience ; our meddling ties our hands; and the West Indies must suffer incompatible exposure and restraint, because we attempt impracticable and inconsistent missions in countries ready to " suspect " us.
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