Mr. Secretary HUSKISSON Confessed that he was unable to understand the nature of those pure abstract principles, which were to prevent them from interfering where the interests of humanity were at stake. He could not conceive the meaning of those general principles, which should never bend to circumstances. The honourable gentleman seemed to doubt whether Government had received any documents upon which they could found the proposed measure. Now, during the short time that he had been in his present office, a variety of documents had reached him upon the matter, and amongst others a letter from that gallant officer, Sir James Kempt, who was commander on the Halifax station. He wrote, that during the last season the ship James' arrived there from Ireland, with emigrants. She sailed with a hundred and sixty on board, of whom five died on the passage, and thirty-five were left at Newfoundland, being unable to proceed. The remaining hundred and twenty, with the crew, arrived at Halifax, all labouring under typhus fever. At that time, the population of Halifax amounted to seven thousand, and in the lapse of ten months eight hundred had fallen victims to the contagion. Last year nearly two-thirds of the emigrants from Ireland had been carried off by fever. Care ought to be taken to prevent the crowding of these poor people into a smaller space than was compatible with health and comfort. All he asked for, however, was,-and he stated this to allay the fears of those who were adverse to an alteration in the present system,-not that unnecessary regulations should be introduced, which must, necessarily, have the effect of throwing obstacles in the way of the improvement of the colonies, but that care should be taken to provide sufficient quarters and sufficient diet, so as to prevent the introduction of those dangerous fevers, which were often fatal to the parties themselves, to those employed in navigating the ships carrying the emigrants, and to the people amongst whom the emigrants went to reside. All this might be avoided, by adopting necessary precautions; and he might be permitted to observe, that regulations were enforced in various of the British colonies, much more strict than any that this law would impose. With respect to the way in which these poor people were sent out of Ireland, it was, in many instances, most lamentable. The law had no power to interfere, and the consequences were horrible. In one instance, the passengers, in a state of despair, had taken possession of the vessel, and a melancholy shipwreck was the consequence. He therefore thought it absolutely necessary to introduce some measure to rectify so great an evil. Leave was given to bring in the bill. March 18. On the order of the day for the second reading of the Bill, it was supported by Mr. Villiers Stuart, and opposed by Mr. Warburton and Mr. James Grattan, on the ground that it was calculated to impede emigration rather than promote it, and that a previous committee on the bill was necessary. Mr. Secretary HUSKISSON said, he wished to call the attention of the House to the real question before it. He was not disposed to enter into a discussion upon the general question of emigration. That was a subject which would require a more extended line of argument than honourable members would be inclined to listen to, at that late period of the evening. He could not agree that the question of emigration was one so extremely simple, that the House would be justified in saying—" if it be right to encourage emigration, then it is unnecessary to take any care of the manner in which the parties emigrating are transported to the country of their destination." The honourable member for Bridport had spoken of those parties as if they had no claim whatever upon the consideration of the country in which they had been born, and in which they had devoted many years of their lives to labour, until peculiar circumstances of change in the condition of that country, rendered their further services superfluous, or inapplicable. Under such circumstances, he could not consent to speak of these people-the most helpless and uninformed of the community—as of a mere commodity, which was the subject of export from one locality to another. It had surprised him to hear the honourable member for Bridport lay down those doctrines of political philosophy and medical science which he had brought forward, and especially to hear him argue upon them as upon principles to which no person could object. The honourable member's argument amounted to this-that where typhus had broken out on board the emigration ships, that malady had not arisen out of any crowded or unclean state of the vessel, but must necessarily have proceeded from the emigrants themselves having been put on board in a state of disease. This might be a discovery made by the honourable member, but certainly it was directly contrary to the opinions of all those who had paid the most attention to such subjects. But, how did the facts appear from the reports upon the table? The letters from New Brunswick distinctly attributed the disease in the ships which had reached that port to the crowded state of the vessels themselves, and to the entire want of order and cleanliness which pervaded their arrangements. The authority of this correspondence could not be questioned; but the honourable member had garbled it a little, in order to make it serve his own peculiar theory. Where the letters spoke of a particular parcel of emigrants, as the most miserable and squalid on their arrival that the writer had ever beheld, the honourable member at once jumped to the inference, that the people must necessarily have been in that state when they embarked from Europe. Now, it was at least as likely, and certainly better proved, that they had fallen into this condition in the course of the passage. It was need less to go into detail upon the state of particular ships, when the writer in this correspondence, a captain in the navy, who had been employed in the preventive slave service on the coast of Africa, declared that the condition of many vessels which he had seen arrive at Newfoundland with emigrants, beggared all the descriptions of the state of the captured slave ships, even under the accumulated miseries belonging to the existing system of contraband trade. This then being the case, it was the duty of ministers, and their imperative duty, to call upon Parliament for power to put a stop to these enormities; and with his best exertions, even in the teeth of science and philosophy, he would oppose the proposition for going into a committee, which would allow the opportunity of their perpetration during another season. He protested, that if the proposed committee were carried, he would himself recommend all the colonies to pass bills, in their own defence, to prevent this system of general disembarkation; for we had no fair right to inundate them with such a population as they were receiving under the existing system. Honourable gentlemen spoke of the Passengers Act as being calculated to check the flow of voluntary emigration; but he was certain that nothing could be more likely to prevent it than the accounts which parties now received of the miserable fate of those who had gone before them. He agreed entirely with the honourable member for Waterford, that it was at least the duty of Government towards emigrants to see that they were not shipped, in any case, without a competent supply of food and water. The food might be of the very commonest description, but a sufficient quantity of it he would have. He would insist that the water should be of a drinkable quality, shipped in a condition fit for the use of human creatures; and not in old casks which had recently contained molasses or salt hides, which he was ashamed to state to the House had been the case in more than one instance. It was too much to talk of there being no necessity for these regulations. Even in the time of the Slave-trade there had been a law regulating the number of slaves, by the tonnage, upon the middle passage; and that which we had thought it right to do for the negroes of Africa ought we to refuse to do for our own countrymen? Honourable gentlemen talked of its being hard that ships should be put to the trouble of furnishing an account of every passenger that they carried out. Why, they were compelled to furnish an account of the smallest parcel that they took out; and that which they did for a bale of goods, they might surely make shift to do for a living man. He wished to throw as little difficulty in the way of the shipping trade as possible; but he would insist upon having such a quantity of provision and water always on board, as should guarantee the emigrants from famine, in case of a protracted passage; and the state of the vessels, as to numbers, should be such as was reasonably conducive to the health and common safety of the human beings who were on board of them. With these views he resisted the appointment of a Committee up stairs, and should press his own measure, as rapidly as the forms of the House would allow him to do. SLAVERY IN THE WEST-INDIES. On the presentation of a petition from the Surrey Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Brougham said, he was anxious to learn from the right |