FATE OF THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

WHILE most of the Ministerial and Free-trade journals have been mystifying their readers with fallacious statements of the West India question, the Examiner has put forth a distinct re- cognition of principles, which, if our Government had acted on them some years ago, would have averted the ruin impending over the planters, saved the British people many millions ster- ling, spared the present Ministers their perplexing responsibility, and greatly advanced the wellbeing of the race on whose behalf the benevolent crusade, that threatens to prove in every way so disastrous, was set on foot. Whether a resort, now, to the policy indicated in the following extracts, would not be too late to save the West Indies, may perhaps be doubted ; and we more than

doubt the disposition and courage of the Government to attempt anything so comprehensive and bold.

"Africa has a population as disposable for emigration as that of Ireland; and to receive it, the West India islands are as near and as congenial to the Africans as North America is to the Irish. The vague objection is the encouragement of the slave-trade. But this slave-trade, in spite of all our Sue schemes—our lines of forts, our free colonies, our Niger expeditions, and our blockades—has increased , and is sure to continue to increase as long as Africa is barbarous, has labourers to export, and the West Indies are underpeopled. When we abolished our own slave- trade, and emancipated our African slaves, we had done cur duty to humanity and civilization. Our intermeddling in the affairs of other irtions, in attempting an unobtainable object, contrary to the principles of good and international

law, has in fact only exposed us to hatred or ridicule. * * * •

" We would suggest, then, at once, that the exports , Negro emigrants from Africa should be made as free and unshackled as that ei Irishmen from Ire- land. The cost of their transport would be defrayed by the <2rvice of an appren- ticeship; which is, in fact, the course now pursued with captured slaves when emancipated. The only restraints oa emigration that would be necessary would be a security that the members of a family should not be separated, and that a due proportion should be observed with the sexes. If the blockading squadron were removed, the sum of 300,0001. would, without putting the Government to any additional expense' be at its disposal to pay in bounties for the importation of labourers, should such a plan be deemed advisable. At the rate of 201. a head, 15,000 emigrants might be yearly brought to the West Indies through such a fund, or at 101. twice that number. "Under such a system of freedom, the mortality in the barracoons and middle passage would diminish, in so far as concerned the slave-trade; and in the case

of those parties transported in our ships, it need not exceed, and probably, from

the constitution of the Negro and the nature of the climate, it would not equal, that in our ordinary emigrant-vessels; the regulations, of course, being the same. " The emigrants would, in the majority of cases, be either those born slaves or made so by the fortune of war; for such is now, and ever has been, the case. In

that event, their transportation would be equivalent to their emancipation. They would simply lose Africa and slavery, and gain the congenial climate of the West Indies and freedom."—Examiner, January 22.

The writer proceeds to show, further, that the natural extin guisher of slavery is density of population ; an extinction which is delayed, not hastened, by our Anti-Slavery apparatus. We have long and often maintained the same view. But practical reasons for a wiser course are nut those which prevail : in Downing Street the substantial welfare of ihe Colo-

nies and the treatment of actual circumstances are not the objects of consideration, but the maintenance of certain dogmatic usages peculiar to " the Office," though they be as figrnentary as the per- sonages of a mythology. As the Japanese thinks it necessary to maintain a sacred sovereign who is sublimely incapable of using any article twice, and is therefore fobbed off with the most wretched wares—as the Hindoo thinks it meritorious to roll through dust and mud from the Jumna to the Ganges—so the in- habitant of the Colonial Office thinks it necessary to keep up a squadron of British war-ships on the coast of Africa, with no re- sult but to aggravate the horrors of the slave-trade, and merito- rious to prevent the success of the only free Negro community.

In vain you show that the slave-trade is aggravated, or that the

West Indies are hastening to ruin : that is not the point ; expe- rience—precise conclusions on tangible data—distinct, coherent,

consecutive ideas—practical plans based on actual circumstances— are not the things held in esteem ; but the predetermined theories of closet-men, the fancies and "supposes" ' of ingenious wrang-

lers. Last week we saw from a grave and earnest paper in the

Globe, that among other Government objects in the West Indies, one is, to keep down the population to an official standard. Some

theoretical project of avoiding the necessity for a poor-law in future generations is one of the considerations which regulate the actual government of the West Indies; a starved labour-market, not pauperism, being the actual difficulty. Statesmanlike views

of the subject are to be met, under various shapes, in newspapers of any party, from the Times to the Examiner—in the manifestoes

of private or trading bodies, like the recent report of the West India Committee—anywhere but in Downing Street, or in the didactic despatches thence emanating. So, notwithstanding the Growler steam-ship and Lord Grey's amenities of phrase, we con- clude that the great want of the British West Indies—an ample supply of labour—is not to be made good : and such being the

case, we come to the further conclusion, that Ministers have made up their minds to the abandonment of our own free colonies, and to the preference of foreign slave-grown sugar.