ittitt in flit Eifitnr.
LORDS STANLEY AND CHANDOS AT MANCHESTER.
North Brixton, _November 4, 1859. Sin—Lord Stanley once hastily travelled through Jamaica. Ho knows how many thousands of acres of the finest land in the world for the growth of cotton, lie waste in that island. He knows how much the people need capital, and skilled labour, such only as Anglo-Saxons can supply,—in fact, the stimulating example and expenditure of industrious, enterprising, vir- tuous English and Scotch labourers. The Marquis of Chandos has perhaps never seen his Jamaica estates—never talked with the free children of those slaves whose unrequited labours gave to the estates of Hope and Middleton their former value.
How one wishes that those patriotic and sensible noblemen had thought of Jamaica, when they were counseling the men of Lancashire as to the best means of raising themselves in the social scale. The continued prosperity of all these people—their very existence—may be said to depend on an ample supply of cheap cotton. The women and grown-up children of Jamaica, aided by the steam-plough, could produce a million bales of cotton every year, if they were employed in its cultivation. And why not ? I wish these statesmen would tell us why. The manufacturers of Lancashire depend on cotton now produced by the labour of slaves, and enrich the owners of those slaves, by their never-failing and increasing ready-money demand for an article, which, if the attention of capitalists and intelligent men were attracted to the subject, could be supplied both cheaper and better by the employment of the free labourers now in want of occupa- tion in our own Colonies.
Between Kingston and Spanish Town, towards the healthy mountains of Leguanier on the right, and the sea on the left, there is land enough lying waste to produce at least a hundred thousand bales of cotton of the very best kind; and there are people enough, unemployed, or unprofitably employed, in the city of Kingston and Spanish Town, the seat of Government, to fit it for the Manchester manufacturers within the next ten months, if money and energy, which the Jamacia people have not, could be supplied. And this would be easily obtained and applied if Lord Stanley and his friend could be induced to inquire into, and think about the facts. No doubt the insurrection amongst the Negroes in America has ere this been put down with a high hand, and so were those of Jamaica and De- merara ; but how long after those insurrections, and the prosecution of Bun- hill and Gardiner in the one, and Smith in the other, could slavery be maintained in those colonies ? How long do our Manchester friends think it will last in America ? They had better look in time for another field, whence supplies may be obtained adequate to their increasing demands. If they do not, they may awake some morning to find that the sources of their prosperity have been dried up. What will then become of their insti- tutions for social and national improvement ?
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