express any opinion on the merits of the houses in 1853-4 was composed of eminent men. They sat at uncertain and distant intervals, sometimes one, sometimes another Member was absent, and, in the end, they made a report, the responsibility of which nobody seemed to undertake, and which had never been acted upon. In that case, too, as would probably happen if a Committee were appointed now, the inquiry, instead of being quiet and impartial, was a conflict of partisans. The present was not the time to discuss the law on this subject; but he quite admitted that the time had come for inquiry-not such an inquiry as would elicit the evidence of interested and prejudiced persons only, but one which would guide the House to a definite conclusion. The last speaker had said that a Commission would be a roving Commission. So, to a certain extent, it would. But it would not go into any little village. It would visit all the large towns and many of the country districts. By this means many persons, not feeling violently on either side, but taking a just view of the matter, would offer themselves for examination; whereas if a Committee sat, only extreme partisans of either side would be brought up to London. He believed that a Commission would act in a judicial manner, and furnish the House with information upon which it might safely legislate. MR. BAXTER said, he was of opinion that the decision come to by the Government in this matter would give satisfaction to the people of Scotland. If the inquiry was to be by Committee, the proceedings would be a conflict between the teetotallers on the one hand, and the licensed victuallers on the other; and the opinions of the great majority of the public, and of the magistrates, clergy, and police would not be ascertained. The operation of the Act in Glasgow, and the mode in which it had been put in force by the magistrates of that city, could not very well be inquired into by a Committee up stairs. On the other hand, a Commission would very soon fa- arrive at the truth of the matter. He had heard very few complaints of the operation of the present Act, and he could not shut his eyes to the beneficial effect which had resulted from it to the lower classes of society, nor had he met with one impartial thinking man who took a different view of the question. Those complaints which were made had their origin amongst the spiritdealers and manufacturers. No doubt there were some defects in the Act, but MR. HARDY said, that, if the hon. Member who had just sat down had heard no reason in favour of a Commission, he (Mr. Hardy) had heard none in favour of a Committee. He thought that the result of previous Committees which had sat upon questions of this description was unfavourable to such a mode of inquiry in the present instance. The Committee on public they could be investigated, and where proved could be remedied by the Bill which would be brought forward after the inquiry was over. LORD JAMES STUART said, he had presented to the House a number of petitions from the County of Ayr in favour of the present Act. Every one of those peti tions were from towns of considerable importance, and they were all in favour of an inquiry by Commissioners. He had also presented a petition from Buteshire asking for such an investigation, and he fully coincided in the view taken by the Govern ment. MR. E. ELLICE (St. Andrews) said, he had had some difficulty in making up his mind as to the form of inquiry which should take place. He was one of those who were in favour of the existing Act; still he thought there were some of the minor provisions of it which might possibly be amended. The Act generally had been most beneficial to the working classes, and he believed the feeling was that the Act should be maintained. He believed also that the spirit-dealers and manufacturers had given up any intention of obtaining an alteration of the Act so far as it regarded the restrictions upon the sale of spirits. In Glasgow and Edinburgh there might be some aggravation of the complaints, but in the rural districts no complaints at all existed. It had appeared to him at the first blush to be a matter of little consequence whether the inquiry were conducted through the medium of a Committee or a Commission, but that he had ultimately arrived at a decision in favour of the latter, as he found the field of inquiry was to be larger than he originally supposed. No doubt all accusations ought to be inquired into on the spot, where the evidence could be properly taken, and where the parties -the accusers and the accused-could be brought before the Commissioners. There were four sufficient reasons which compelled him to come to the conclusion that a Commission, and not a Committee, would be the best form of inquiry. First, the Government had accepted the responsibility of the task, and he for one did not wish to relieve them of that responsibility. Secondly, there were the strongest possible grounds for believing that the labours of the Commissioners would be concluded very shortly. Thirdly, greater justice would be done to all parties. And, fourthly, the inquiry selected was that generally in favour in Scotland. VOL. CLII. [THIRD SERIES.] VISCOUNT DUNCAN said, this was a question which affected the welfare and interest of the working classes of Scotland by whom, a few years ago, a large quantity of spirits were consumed. Some parts of the Act might possibly require amendment, but all that the House had now to consider was whether the inquiry should be before a Committee or by a Commission; and he humbly thought that the Lord Advocate and the Government had most wisely adopted the latter course. The inquiry could be much more impartially carried on by a Commission, and therefore he should vote for it; but he begged to protest against its being supposed that all those hon. Members who voted for a Commission were teetotallers. MR. KINNAIRD said, he wished to re. mind the right hon. Baronet the Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey) that under very similar circumstances last year he proposed that a Commission, instead of a Committee, should be appointed. He (Mr. Kinnaird) referred to the inquiry into the Universities of Scotland. A Royal Commission would go down to Scotland and settle the question; but a Committee sitting in London would effect nothing. The objection taken by the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Wilson) as to the expense of a Commission, might be answered by referring him to the inquiry into the Harbours of Refuge. The inquiry before a Committee entirely failed, for they made a most unsatisfactory Report, and then a Commission had to be appointed, and a very able Report was the result. Therefore, on the point of economy, the objection utterly failed. MR. BUCHANAN said, whilst acquiescing in the appointment of a Commission, he wished to express a hope that the evidence taken would be reported from day to day. VISCOUNT MELGUND said, he wished to signify his readiness, after the discussion which had taken place, and the views which had been enunciated on the part of Her Majesty's Ministers, to withdraw his Motion. [Cries of No, no!"] 46 Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question,' put, and negatived. Words inserted. Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to. Resolved-That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that She will be graciously pleased to appoint 2 R a Royal Commission to inquire into the Laws regulating the Sale and Consumption of Excisable Liquors in Scotland. THE WEST INDIES. MR. BUXTON said, that in rising to move for a Committee to inquire into the present state of the West Indies, and the best means of promoting immigration into them, he would first of all touch on the former part of his Motion. It was very common to hear it said that the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies had been a failure. He read not long ago in one of our leading periodicals that the philanthropists had been the ruin of the West Indies. There was a floating impression in the public mind that freedom had destroyed the production of the staple of the West Indies, had plunged the planters into hopeless penury, and the negroes into a kind of voluptuous barbarism. It was not surprising that such a notion should prevail. No one could deny that in 1847 and the ensuing years the owners of West Indian property were thrown into a state of the utmost distress, and, of course, since slavery was done away in 1834, and that crash fell within thirteen years afterwards, the world could not but assume that emancipation had caused the events that followed so hard upon it; the more so, because the abolition of slavery caught the eyes of the whole people; every one bore it in mind, whereas that which really came like a thunderbolt upon the planters was much less within ken. That which really struck the planters down was the enormous fall in the price of sugar, which in 1840 was 49s. per cwt. (without the duty), and in 1848 had fallen to 23s. 5d., a fall of more than one-half. He had given a long and minute study to the history of the West Indies during the last fifteen years, and the thing which had most struck him, and which could not have failed to strike any one who made the same investigation, was the close parallel between the history, during that period, of the West Indies and of Ireland. In each country the very same causes had wrought the very same effects-had brought about the same ruinous, the same rotten state of affairs. Each country was at length overtaken by a great calamity, which at the time seemed fatal. Each country-the old order of things having been swept away by that calamity-each country was now rising steadily and swiftly to a high degree of wealth. In the West Indies, just as in Ireland, but to an even greater extent, the proprietors used to be absentees, but what made that more disastrous in the case of the West Indies was that the planter could not let his sugar estate, but was obliged to carry on the costly and precarious processes, not merely of cultivating the sugar cane, but of manufacturing the sugar at his own cost, under his own hand, by means of agents. And so hard was it to find any man who at once understood the management of a sugar estate, who was willing to live in the West Indies, who was trustworthy, sober, and energeticso hard was it to find such agents that he believed in five cases out of six the estates were scandalously mismanaged. Those who had gone deeply into the history of the West Indies were, he believed, of one mind-that it was this, far more than any other cause, that cut the very roots of West Indian prosperity. The absenteeism of the planters led to a host of other evils, and as one of the most judicious observers, Mr. Bigelow, the American traveller, declared, it could not have failed some day to bring about general bankruptcy and ruin. There was another trait of West Indian society, just like that of Ireland in the days gone by. Almost without exception the sugar estates were heavily incumbered. Most of them were mortgaged far beyond their value. The owners of the estates were always struggling with an incubus of debt which they could not possibly shake off. The effect of all that was, that even when monopoly and slavery were at their zenith-when even the sugar of our own oriental dominions was not allowed to compete with theirs on the same level, even then, petted as they were by the laws of England, the West Indians were continually coming to the Government of the country with the most doleful lamentations. That state of things was the legacy which slavery and monopoly had left behind them; and then, when the price of sugar suddenly fell to less than one-half of what it had been a few years before, the effect was precisely analogous to that of the famine upon Ireland. The proprietors were thrown into deep distress. All society was unhinged. The crash was terrible. But there, as in our sister country, the conse quence was, that the ownership of the soil changed hands. It passed from those who were absentees, drowned in debt; it came into the hands of those who were for the most part resident and free from those trammels. And, now, what was the result? The result was, that although labour was still free, that although trade was still free, or rather he would say because labour was free, and because trade was free, the West Indies were now rising to a pitch of wealth and happiness unknown to them before. It would be impossible for him to lay before the House the immense mass of evidence which demonstrated that fact. He was assured of it by mercantile men in the city, and from proprietors of West India property; he found it strongly set forth in the reports from the Governors of the islands, which formerly full of dismay, were now bright with cheerfulness and hope; but the keystone of the arch consisted of the statistics furnished by the Board of Trade which showed that the imports and exports together of the West Indies and Guiana had amounted in the four years ending with 1853 to £32,500,000, and in the four years ending with 1857 to £37,000,000, an increase of £4,500,000 in four years; and further that the annual exports of sugar, coffee, cotton, rum and cocoa, were valued in 1857 at £500,000 more than the average of the ten preceding years. So much had been said of the ruinous state of these islands that perhaps the House would be surprised to learn that the exports from Great Britain to the West Indies in 1857 exceeded her exports, in that year to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greece, the Azores, Madeira, and Morocco, all combined. Or, perhaps, it would give a more vivid idea of the value to us of these islands, if he mentioned that our exports to them in 1857 equalled our exports to the Channel Islands, Malta, the Ionian Islands, the Mauritius, the Gold Coast, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and what are called our sundry possessions, all together. Con sidering what mere specks the West Indies look in the map of America it was astonishing that their trade to and fro should now actually amount to £10,735,000. That was the value of their commerce in the year 1857. He would only add that in 1857 the value of the sugar imported into this country from our West Indies amounted to £5,618,000. Surely all this demonstrated that free labour was holding its own in spite of the competition of slavery. Probably it would be said that all this was mainly due to the immigrants. In the last five years 25,000 immigrants had come to all our West Indies, including a large number of women and children. It 66 was altogether absurd to imagine that this great prosperity was owing to the labours of those few thousand men, and, in fact, the islands which had not received immigrants were quite as flourishing as those that had. Clearly, then, our West Indies were possessions of immense and increas. ing value. The Committee might inquire, however briefly, into this point, and report to the country whether it was true or not that in spite of free labour and free trade -or rather as he thought, because of free labour and free trade, the West Indian Islands were attaining a high degree of prosperity. He was aware that this proposal, would meet with strong resistance, for he had often noticed that nothing so vexed the soul of a West Indian gentleman as to be told that he was well off. And as those gentlemen had a great and legitimate influence with the Colonial Office, no doubt the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton) would appeal to the severely practical mind of this House, and would put the question, Supposing the hon. Member for Newport obtains this conclusion from the Committee, What will he do with it?" But, as the people of this country laid out £20,000,000 in emancipating our slaves, and as that great deed was not, as some said, the work of a few philanthropists, but was done by the whole people with all their heart and soul, it would be of some value to learn upon the authority of a Committee of that House what was the result of that great experiment. He thought it would be worth while, even at the cost of a few hours' labour to a few hon. Gentlemen, to have a Report as to whether the measure of emancipation had been successful or not; and whether it was true that the Negroes had sunk into a condition of indolence and barbarism or not. He was as certain as that he was standing there, however, that if that point were fully inquired into, it would be found that, whilst some of the negroes were indolent and some barbarous, yet the greater part of them were living upon their own properties in industry and comfort, and that, to a far greater extent than was generally believed they were willing to work on the estates of those who treated them with kindness, and paid them fair wages. But the main topic of inquiry for the proposed Committee would be what were the best means of promoting immigra tion into the West Indies. He did not propose that the Committee should inquire whether immigration be necessary or not. On that point he differed altogether be set on foot, under which the Coolie from some gentlemen for whom he felt the would not be bound to the planter who had greatest respect-namely, the Committee paid for importing him during a term of of the Anti-Slavery Society. Their views years. His anti-slavery friends had a strong were opposed to all immigration; but with feeling of the hardship to the immigrant of millions of fertile acres under a tropical being thus in reality a bondsman. But, if he climate lying untilled, it would be an un- made a contract, the law must keep him to mixed good if we could fill every island as it; and, although it might be galling to him, full of people as Barbadoes itself. The still there were woes enough in the world greater the influx of labourers, the greater without our moving heaven and earth to save the production of wealth, and that would him from a brief annoyance. Still the retell for the anti-slavery cause throughout sult of the system was to create a whole the world; and so far from the competition catalogue of what he might call artificial of the immigrants being any bane to the offences, to which penalties had to be atnegroes, it would be a wholesome spur to tached. There were penalties on the planter them. So far from denying the scarcity if he did not supply his immigrant with of labour, he could hardly conceive what proper medicine, nourishment, food, clothsupply of labour could ever meet the bound-ing, and due wages; penalties on those who less demand for it created by such a soil in such a climate. But the time had certainly come for an inquiry into the system upon which that immigration should be carried out. The first question into which, no doubt, the Committee would inquire would be what ground there was for the allegation so often made, that from 33 to 50 per cent of the immigrants perish. That had been stated repeatedly by gentlemen connected with the West Indies. In the Report of the Immigration Commissioners of 1857, the mortality on the voyage alone from Calcutta was reckoned at 17 26 per cent. Cases were also referred to, in one of which 40 per cent of the immigrants either died on board or had to be taken to the hospital on landing. Out of 2,411 Coolies taken to Guiana and Trinidad 349 died on the voyage and large numbers had to be taken to the hospital on landing. These, he felt convinced, were peculiar cases, and were not to be attributed to ill-usage of the immigrants, but they seemed to justify the demand for an inquiry. But, so far as the voyage was concerned, out of two ships that brought immigrants from Calcutta in 1858, the mortality was 7.12 per cent in one, and only 3.28 in the other. This led him to hope that the inquiries of the Committee on this head might have the very useful result of calming the indignation which had been felt in many parts of the country at the supposed waste of life among immigrants. But should it prove that the mortality was large, then the Committee would inquire whether it could be lowered by further precautions, or by a stricter enforcement of those now laid down. What might prove a still more important branch of inquiry was whether a free immigration could employed other planters' Coolies: penalties on the Coolies if they shirked their work; penalties on the Coolies if found two miles from their employers' estates; penalties on the Coolies if they damaged their employers' property; penalties on the masters of vessels if they carried Coolies away. The whole of this cumbrous system of penal law was the substitute for the ordinary and natural system under which an employer bought the labour that he wanted, and discharged the labourer who did not please him. It might be unavoidable, but he would like the Committee to examine whether a more free immigration would not be possible—an immigration that would simply bring in labourers, leaving them and the employers to make what bargains they pleased. Lastly, the Commitee would inquire into the question which now awakened a vast amount of bitter feling in the West Indies-the question by whom the cost of immigration should be defrayed-whether it should be defrayed wholly by the planter who used the labour of the immigrant, or in some part by the whole community. According to all the present schemes, including the last Act passed by the Jamaica House of Assembly, two-thirds of the cost was supposed to fall on the planters who received the emigrants, and the remaining one-third fell on the taxation of the whole island. It would, he thought, be easy to show that in reality one-half fell on the whole island. But, at any rate, the community paid one third; and what was the real result of that? Nothing else but that the State gave a subsidy to the planter. The planter wanted a certain amount of work done for him, but, instead of paying the whole cost as any other manufacturer would have to do, the State bountifully |
