Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar

Notwithstanding a duty of 63s. in their favour, the monopolists complain of the low price of sugar. From the circular of Messrs. Truman and Co., we find that, whilst the highest price of British sugar (West India middling to fine) is 68s. per cwt., the highest price for foreign (Havannah white) is only 28s. per cwt.; and thus they are getting nearly 150 per cent. more than we are paying for foreign sugar. Again, the lowest price of English sugar (Bengal brown) is 48s., whilst the lowest price of the foreign article (Java) is 16s. 6d., and thus getting nearly 200 per cent. more than foreign sugar can be got for, they have the impudence to grumble about low prices! Pretty cool! considering the shameless system of plundering they have been carrying on.

This immense difference in the cost of the two articles is equalised by the heavy duty imposed on the one, and the light duty upon the other: that on the highest foreign produce being 238 per cent. on the value of the sugar, whilst the duty on the highest-priced colonial sugar is but 37 per cent.; and the lowest-priced colonial sugar pays but 50 per cent. duty, whilst the lowest-priced foreign sugar actually pays 400 per cent.! Be it remembered, this goes not to the government at home, but is so much money put into the pockets of the West Indian monopolists. It is reckoned by a writer in the League that “the sum paid for sugar at the monopolists’ shops, more than it could be bought for at the Brazil shop, is £7,000,000 per annum.” The same writer gives the following statement of the case: —

And thus an article of consumption, that has now become an essential, is raised to an extravagant price to maintain a monopoly, of which even the monopolists themselves complain.

Considered as a question of revenue, it is extremely desirable that our differential duties on sugar should be abolished. The increased price we pay goes not to government, but into the monopolist’s pocket; he alone is benefited by it; the consumer pays 20s. a cwt. more than he otherwise would do to the grower of the favoured produce. Equalise the duties, and, as was exemplified in the reductions that took place in the duties on coffee, by making a decrease of price to the consumer, we get an increase of revenue. It may not be amiss to state that Mr. M‘Gregor Laird declared, in a late speech before the anniversary meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, that, if the people of England consumed sugar at the same rate per head as the population of New South Wales, the annual consumption would be 900,000 tons. The Editor of the Economist has so fully proved this part of the subject, that we cannot do better than give his own words. We quote from an article headed “Free Trade and the National Debt,” that appeared in that paper on the 7th October last: —

“Our consumption of sugar last year was 3,876,465 cwts., at a cost of 65s. per cwt. (wholesale price), and, consequently, at that rate, the country paid for sugar £12,598,511. Now, there is every reason to believe that, if sugar were cheaper, the same sum would still be expended upon it, and a correspondingly increased quantity consumed. In this opinion we are supported by the very extraordinary fact that the annual consumption of sugar, which, in 1811, averaged 23¼ lbs. per head on the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland, was reduced, in 1842, in consequence of the restriction of quantity, to the rate of 15⅞lbs. per head, while the paupers in our workhouses are allowed at the rate of 23¾lbs., and the seamen in her Majesty’s service 34 lbs. per head.

“Well, then, assume that the duty on foreign sugar were reduced to 24s., the same as we now pay on colonial sugar, the price of sugar would be lowered thereby to 45s. per cwt. instead of 65s.; then the sum of £12,598,511, which we last year expended on sugar, would command 5,599,338 cwts., in place of 3,876,465 cwts., being an additional consumption, at precisely the same entire cost. Now, at present, all the revenue which is derived from sugar is from the duty of that on 24s. on that of colonial grown (the high differential duty excluding all other), and on the quantity consumed last year yielded the sum of £4,651,758. By the proposed equalisation of duties this sum would remain untouched, but an additional quantity (which at present gives no revenue at all) of 1,722,873 cwts. would, at the rate of 24s. per cwt., raise the revenue to £6,719,205.

“The result, therefore, would be, that for the same sum of money which the country expended last year in sugar, an additional quantity of 1,722,873 cwts. would be enjoyed by the community, which would only restore the average consumption of 23¼ lbs. per head of 1811, an additional revenue of £2,067,447 would be given to the State, and an increase of trade amounting to nearly £4,000,000 annually would be experienced by the dealers, merchants, and carriers of sugar.”

Now, with us all this seems very reasonable, and we are not a little surprised to find, as we certainly do, many intelligent and philanthropic men joining in the outcry against slave-grown sugar which the West India planters, those paragons of excellence and humanity, have had wit enough to raise, and which has answered their purposes remarkably well. We are told it is slave-grown. What of that? Half the Brazil slave-grown sugar is bought by British money, and refined by British skill, and then sold by British merchants all over the globe. Our cotton is slave-grown – tobacco, which yields a revenue of three million pounds and a half, is slave-grown. From the southern states of America and Mexico we import slave-grown rice, indigo, and cochineal; of the manufactures we export, half are of cotton, imported from the slave states, and upon their produce the millions of our manufacturing population depend for their subsistence. It would require no little impudence for any of the English monopolists to tell the Brazilians that we were so squeamish that we could not deal with them, because their sugar was slave-grown, when every one knows that our merchants gladly trade in and allow every one to have it cheap and good except our own hungry, wretched, and perishing poor.13 They are to be taxed and fleeced to keep up the West India monopoly – their bone and blood are to be preyed on by the harpies that lust for human gore. That their desires may be gratified – that the value of their estates may be unnaturally kept up – that their vested rights, the rights of the robber and the pickpocket, if such a term can be applied to them, may be preserved – the English labourer, from a state of honest independence, is degraded into pauperism, dies in the parish workhouse, and rots in the parish vault. Shame on this Christian land, with its stately churches, its noble mansions, with its swarms of well-paid luxurious priests, with its peers of unrivalled wealth and power, with its sons boasting their royal blood – shame on such men, that for one hour they suffer so wretched a system to continue! It is well that they should talk of their love to religion and law, but the religion and law that connive at crying abuses and monstrous wrongs, can neither please Heaven nor bless man: they evidently are unworthy of the name they claim for themselves.

To those who are really in earnest in the cry against slave-grown produce, we say, that it is abundantly proved that the West Indian monopoly tends directly to keep up slavery. If that were abolished, we might expect to see slavery destroyed. The monopoly enables the West Indian planter to pay an unreasonably high price for labour, in consequence of which there is an importation of labour into the market – an unnatural demand is created. The high price the West Indian planter gets for his sugar, makes it answer his purpose to pay more for hire than his rivals can, and the consequence is, that the neighbouring European colonists are afraid to emancipate their slaves, knowing well, that directly they would leave them for the monopoly market, and they would be left without a hand to till the soil. For instance, we give the following case: – A large slave-owner, in Dutch Guiana, thus addressed the editor of the Economist, when that gentleman was at Amsterdam. “We should be glad,” said he, “to follow your example, and emancipate our slaves, if it were possible; but as long as your differential duties are maintained it will be impossible. Here is an account-sale of sugar produced in our colony, netting a return of £11 per hogshead to the planter in Surinam; and here is an account-sale of similar sugar sold in London, netting a return of £33 to the planter in Demerara; the difference ascribable only to your differential duty. The fields of these two classes of planters are separated only by a few ditches. Now, such is the effort made by the planter in Demerara to extend his cultivation, to secure the high price of £33, that he is importing free labourers from the hills of Hindostan, and from the coast of Africa, at great cost; and is willing to pay higher prices than even labour will command in Europe. Let us then emancipate our slaves, which, if it had any effect, would confer the privilege of the choice of employer, and Dutch Guiana would be depopulated in a day – an easy means of increasing the supply of labour to the planters of Demerara, at the cost of entire annihilation of the cultivation of the estates in Surinam. But abandon your differential duties; give us the same price for our produce, and thus enable us to pay the same rate of wages, and I, for one, will not object to liberate my slaves to-morrow.”14

We would not damp the sympathy which is felt for the enslaved producer of sugar in Brazil; but we would claim some portion of that sympathy on behalf of the toil-worn consumer at home. The Lancashire operatives, starving in our midst, have ties on us which we must not and cannot overlook. Let their case be considered – let their prayers be heard. Let justice be done to them. They are our brethren, and their case is ours. Let us seek for them the abolition of all monopoly – for one does but involve another – they are all the results of the same impure system – they all stand and fall together. In every country under heaven the friends of the people are ranged on the one side, and their foes and the friends of monopoly on the other. If a monopoly of legislation had never existed at home, a monopoly of trade would never have existed in favour of any colony or nation under the sun. Let the legislative monopoly continue, and we shall not only peril our trade abroad, but our very existence at home, and England’s glory shall vanish as a dream. All that has been written by historians, and said by orators, and sung by poets, of a nation’s gradual decline and ignominious extinction, shall we realise in her hapless fate.

The Mayor of Liverpool, at a public meeting there, was heard to say, that our legislators were gentlemen. Whether this was said ironically, or otherwise, we know not. The assertion certainly contains a great deal of truth. We cannot look at one single act of theirs without finding it full of blunders and bulls. By their own folly we lost half our American market. Brazil, the fourth foreign market we have, we are about to lose. Our artizans are overworked to raise annually four or five million pounds’ worth of goods, which are then taken, and, as it were, drowned in the bottom of the sea. What a man might have for once buying, the legislature, in its wisdom, makes him pay for twice. It decrees that a man must toil all day for that which he might otherwise have for half a day’s work. What admirable policy! Blessed are its effects, in the misery it has shed over the homes of our operatives – in the life-blood it has wrung from the labourer’s heart! It is time that whatever of manhood there is left in this Saxon and once happy land – whatever of stern valour that once distinguished us from the nations of the earth, and which the struggle for the pittance that barely keeps up life has not frittered away, or which the Union House has not starved out – should arouse and join in that cry which demands that man’s rights should be given back to him – that his serfdom be abolished – that his brotherhood be owned – that England should no longer be one vast poor-house – that life should no longer be a source of sorrow, but of joy – no longer what priestism and class legislation have made it, a thing to be feared and shunned, but a boon to be desired – that that should be a blessing, which in times past, was a bitter curse.