people more than eighteen hundred years ago; but he did not think that House was a proper place in which to make such an allusion. He should at all events say that, from that event, the most solemn which man could contemplate, there was one lesson to be derived which should not be forgotten. They should remember that the greatest crime ever committed upon earth was committed by men who knew not what they did under the influence of religious intolerance. For his own part, he should say that, on every occasion in which an attempt was made in that House to take away any civil disability imposed upon men in consequence of their religious opinions, it should receive his most strenuous support.

THE SUGAR DUTIES AND THE SLAVERY

QUESTION.

MAY 11, 1841.

On Lord John Russell's Motion that the Speaker leave the chair for the purpose of the House going into Committee upon the Sugar Duties.

UNWILLING as I am to stand in the way of my hon. friend (Mr. Gisborne), who has the right in point of strict regularity to address the House, the House will feel that it would be difficult for me, after what has been said in this debate, not to take, if possible, the first opportunity of offering myself to your attention. It happened that I was not in my place last night. Had I been here, although at that hour, and in the state of the House, I should have had some difficulty in commanding attention, I should, notwithstanding, have trusted that, for the very few minutes I felt it necessary to offer myself, I should have experienced that courtesy which, in the midst of the most exciting political discussion, an assembly of English gentlemen were ever ready to afford to any person whose personal feelings may be naturally excited. I am glad, however, that it was otherwise. I am glad that until this morning I was unacquainted with some part of the debate which occurred last night. The consequence is, that I come here without, I trust, any feeling of irritation. I will not say that the hon. member for Newark (Mr. Gladstone), whom I will still call my hon. friend, could have intended to be personally offensive to one from whom he never received any personal provocation. I am satisfied of the contrary; and the more so, as some part of the expressions imputed to the hon. gentleman were of a nature so

gratifying to my feelings, that they more than compensated for the pain which was given by a censure which was not deserved.*

Avoiding, therefore, any irritating expression of my feelings, avoiding any recrimination or retort, I shall request the attention of the House for a very few minutes to an explanation of the part which I mean to take in the decision of the question before it. I do not intend to touch upon the general principles involved in this debate. I willingly leave them to rest on the luminous and eloquent exposition of my noble friend (Lord J. Russell) to which I feel it would be difficult to add anything. The questions of detail I with equal pleasure leave to my right hon. friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Baring), and the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Labouchere), and to other gentlemen whose intimate knowledge of the commercial and manufacturing interests of the country enables them to speak with an authority and ability to which I cannot pretend. I only offer myself to a point on this question with regard to which it is impossible for me to continue silent. I shall endeavour to state, as soberly and as temperately as I can, those reasons which may lead a person who has, according to his situation and the measure of his ability, made exertions and sacrifices to remove from our laws the stain of slavery-a person who is sensible of the peculiar responsibility which lies on him for exertions and sacrifices, not his own, on this great question-honestly and properly to support the measure of her Majesty's Government.

My hon. friend (Mr. Gladstone), if I rightly understand him, imputes to me, and to those who take the same view of this motion, some dereliction of principle. Nay, he speaks of our laxity of principle, and a certain infatuation amount

* Mr. Gladstone, in referring to the parts formerly taken by several members of the Administration with regard to slave-grown sugar and the slavery question, said, “There is another name still more strangely associated with it. I can only speak from tradition of the struggle for the abolition of slavery; but if I have not been misinformed, there was engaged in it a man who was the unseen ally of Mr. Wilberforce and the pillar of his strength a man of profound benevolence, of acute understanding, of indefatigable industry, and of that self-denying temper which is content to work in secret, to forego the recompense of present fame, and to seek its reward beyond the grave: the name of that man was Zachary Macaulay, and his son is a member of the existing Cabinet."

I

ing to a judicial blindness, which marked the conduct of those entertaining the same opinions as I do with regard to slavery, in giving their adhesion to the views of the Government. What is this principle which we have lost sight of? I am utterly at a loss to discover any that we have violated. I have listened to speeches in this House: I have read the newspapers: I have looked at the resolution of the noble lord (Lord Sandon)* for the purpose of lighting upon the great principle of humanity and justice which we have been accused of violating; and I have examined all these sources in vain. As to the resolution which has been laid before the House, I do not complain of it. I do not say that it is not a justifiable mode of political warfare; but with any statement of a moral principle it is clearly not chargeable. It, on the contrary, appears to me to be a skilfully contrived party motion, the object of which is to perplex and dispossess the advisers of the Crown, without committing their successors. see nothing in that motion which, if it be carried, can impede the success of that principle of free trade which I devoutly hope may be ultimately sanctioned, or which can prevent those now opposed to such large and enlightened views coming down on some future occasion to the House with exactly the same proposition as that submitted by her Majesty's Government. I have read, as I have said, controversial writings-I have looked into debates, and still I try in vain to find out the great moral principle which we are accused of violating. Is it intended to set up as a law of morality that we ought not to take slave-grown produce? Clearly not. That we may use the slave-grown cotton of the United States, and slave-grown coffee and tobacco, is not contested. And with regard to sugar itself, that which is the product not only of slaves, but of the slave-trade, is not found to be interdicted in large portions of the British empire. We do not deny its use to the Canadians or to the people of the Cape of Good Hope-nay, we

* Lord Sandon had moved an amendment to the effect that, considering the sacrifices the country had made for the abolition of slavery, the House was not prepared to adopt the ministerial measure for the reduction of the duty on foreign sugar.

do not deny it to the inhabitants of these very West-Indian islands. What, then, is this moral principle-this great general law of humanity and justice, which permits a man to wear slave-grown cotton on his feet, and not taste slavegrown sugar in his tea-which permits him to smoke slavegrown tobacco, and denies him a palatable beverage to drink with it—rather, which permits him the enjoyment of a cup of slave-grown coffee, but does not allow him to sweeten it with slave-grown sugar? Nay, to make the absurdity more complete, which permits slave-grown sugar to be imported into Newfoundland and Barbadoes, and declares it shall not be admitted into Yorkshire and Lancashire?

I can perfectly understand that hon. gentlemen opposite may have reasons of good weight why they should tolerate one, and not the other; but I altogether deny they can rest the distinction on any great general law of morality. And I must say when I contemplate the whole case got up on the opposite side, it seems to me that the distinction which has been drawn partakes very much less of moral feeling than of party interests. As to my conduct, and that of those who think with me, I shall, perhaps, best defend it by stating the considerations which weighed with my own mind in taking the course on which I have decided. Suppose any philanthropist were persuaded himself of the justness of the step, and called on us to exclude the cotton of the United States: suppose he were to draw-and I fear he might draw with great truth-a very melancholy picture of the moral, social, and physical evils connected with the system of slavery in the Southern parts of the United States. Suppose he were to ask whether we could consent to receive three or four million pounds of cotton annually, every ounce of which was the produce of slave labour, and then call on the House to pass a law interdicting by a direct prohibition, or by a duty so high as to amount to a direct prohibition (which is the case of the foreign sugar), the importation of cotton from such a quarter--the right hon. member for Tamworth, the hon. member for Newark, and the right hon. member for the Tower Hamlets, would, with one voice, pronounce such a proposition inadmissible.