Mr. HUSKISSON said, he would state very shortly the grounds upon which he differed from the honourable gentlemen. If he understood that the bill was calculated to have the operation which the honourable gentlemen had ascribed to it, he should think it was highly objectionable on the general principle. There might be some ground for the objection to the precipitancy with which it had been brought forward; but the honourable gentleman who spoke last, had argued as if the effect of the bill would be, to secure the whole trade of the West-Indies to the Company proposed to be formed. He had stated, that it could not fail to raise the price of sugar, because the Company were to become great dealers in it, and, with a capital of four millions, to unite in themselves a monopoly both as planters and as traders.

This was, however, by no means, the intention of the Company, as far as he understood it. They did not propose to trade at all. They never intended to become either the buyers or sellers of sugar; but to be in precisely the same situation as what were now called WestIndia houses of agency; that was to say, they were to receive the consignments of the produce of West-India estates, as West-India agents did, and in that capacity they were to sell them; but they were not, in any case, to go into the market as dealers, or to employ their capital for the purpose of dealing in West-India commodities. Any number of persons who might choose to unite as partners for the same purpose, would be at liberty to do so; there could be no means of limiting the numbers of such partners, and they might, by establishing a West-India agency, place themselves in precisely the same situation as this Company.

The authorities of Adam Smith and the Abbé Maury had been arrayed against it, and all the arguments usually

urged against monopolies and joint-stock companies had been applied to this. It was, however, not only no monopoly, but when the circumstances in which the West-India interests were placed should be fully considered, he thought the House would be induced to permit the plan to be carried into effect, in the hope of relieving those interests. He would not support any Company, whose object it should be to raise the price of sugar by means of a monopoly. But was there, he asked, at this moment, nothing in the condition of the West-India proprietors that made it desirable for the House to encourage-if they could do so without the violation of any sound principle-any measure which should appear likely to afford them relief, by furnishing them with a loan of money? The occasional unproductiveness of their estates, and the consequently insufficient security, had prevented the owners from borrowing money at the legal rate of interest. He appealed to the landed interest of England, and would ask them whether, if such circumstances prevailed here-if they were in a similar state, pressed by their creditors, and without the means of raising money, owing to the incumbrances on their estates-they would think it either extraordinary, or impolitic, to adopt an expedient which should be devised for affording them relief, by a mortgage of those This was the whole intent of the present bill. The West-India proprietors had come last year to the House with a statement of their distresses, which could not be more urgent than they were. It was proposed to relieve them by means of Exchequer bills; but the objection to that was, that the Government could not lend money upon such security as was offered. But as it was admitted that the loan of money would be an immediate and important relief to the West-India interests, and that individuals were now disposed to furnish that relief, he was at

estates?

a loss to guess upon what ground it could be objected to. The claim of those interests to assistance became still more urgent, when it was remembered, that their distress had ensued, not in consequence of any fault of their own, but of the proceedings of that House and of Parliament. It had been said elsewhere, that nothing could be more likely to produce the amelioration of the condition of the slaves than the distress of the West-India proprietors. If he entertained any such belief, he might, perhaps, be induced to pay some attention to this reasoning, and oppose the bill; but he besought the House to look well at the situation of the planters, and say whether, unable as they were to live but by means of loans at exorbitant interests, the slaves were more likely to be taken care of, than if a more prosperous state of things could be restored to the colonies. One of the consequences of the distress of the masters was naturally to aggravate the distress of the slaves; and any relief which should be afforded to the former would be a relief to both; because it would at once enable and induce the masters to co-operate with the Government at home, to alleviate the lot of that class of beings, for the improvement of whose general and physical condition no man living was more anxious than he was. Any opposite measures might drive the planters to despair; but it was not likely, that they would thereby remove the distress of the slaves.

With respect to the capital of the proposed Company, he believed there were agency houses now in England who employed nearly as large an amount. Upon these grounds, and without pledging himself wholly to the support of the Bill, he thought that it ought to be suffered to proceed to the second reading. When he was applied to by the parties with whom the Bill originated, he told them that they ought not to ask any thing from the House beyond

what any persons were fairly entitled to, whose numbers were so large that it might be inconvenient to them to sue and be sued in their own names. He distinctly stated, that he was not disposed to grant them any protection against the operation of the bankrupt laws, nor any other of the exclusive privileges of a corporation. Having said thus much, he should reserve his opinion on the merits of the Bill to its further stages.

The House divided: For the second reading, 102. For the amendment, 30. But the Bill was not proceeded in further than the committal.

MR. WHITMORE'S MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE BOUNTIES PAID UPON THE EXPORT OF SUGAR.

May 13.

Mr. Whitmore called the attention of the House to the subject of the Drawbacks granted on the exportation of Sugar. He contended, that there existed a system with regard to them, entirely at variance with those principles of free and unrestricted trade, upon which his Majesty's Government professed to act; and moved, "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Bounties paid upon the export of Sugar."

Mr. HUSKISSON said, that so large a portion of the able dissertation of his honourable friend had been addressed to the great question of slavery, and so small a portion of it to the very narrow question of which he had given notice; namely, the drawbacks on the exportation of sugar, that he was sure the House would agree with him in thinking, it would have been much more properly addressed to the House, when that great question was under their consideration, if his honourable friend was not prepared with some practical measure to be introduced in the present session, with reference to this portentous question, and all the con

siderations growing out of it. After the feeling which had been generally expressed on the subject in that House, and the mode in which it had been determined to approach it, he thought it would have been much better, if his honourable friend had left the subject, where Parliament had, by mutual consent, confided it, in the hands of the Executive Government.

His honourable friend had stated somewhat at large his abstract views, founded upon moral considerations, on the subject of the relative value of compulsory and of free labour; which latter he had again subdivided into work by task, and work by day. In the general principle it was impossible not to agree with his honourable friend; but for the reasons which he had just stated, and in which the House seemed to concur, he must repeat, that this was not the proper time, nor the proper mode, for such discussions. And he had further to complain of his honourable friend, in the first place, that he had shaped his motion in such a way, that the House had been taken by surprise, and had not come down prepared for the discussion of this important subject; and in the next, that having discussed it, he had not come forward with some practical measure.

It would not, therefore, be expected of him that he should follow his honourable friend through his details; and he should confine his observations shortly to what had fallen from his honourable friend, respecting the labour of cultivation in the West-Indies being carried on by human beings in a state of slavery, and that the consequence was the destruction of the real interests of the proprietors, as well as the misery inflicted upon those under them. His honourable friend had affirmed the general rule to be, that distress was the habitual condition of West-Indian property, and prosperity the exception; and then, to illustrate his position, he had referred to the history of the West-Indies