We now arrived at the point,—or rather we had reached it in 1846,—when free trade interests, and those of colonial establishments, came into direct and unquestionable collision. The Whig party, taking their stand upon the maxim of “buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market,” thought fit to extend to the article of sugar the same immunity which Sir Robert Peel had previously bestowed upon corn. The Sugar Act, which received the royal assent upon the 18th August 1846, was, at all events, a bold and a decided measure. It utterly repudiated the principle laid down in former Sugar Acts, the last of which, contained in the Statute Book, (24th April 1845,) broadly recognised the distinction between sugars which were the produce of free and of slave labour. This distinction is now utterly and entirely done away with. There is, indeed, attached to the act, a schedule which, until the year 1851, provides for a reduced sliding scale of differential duties in favour of the British colonist. Thus, in the article of sugar, muscovado or clayed, there is a difference of duty, for the present year, in favour of the colonies, of six shillings per cwt., which is to decrease at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per annum, until the equalisation is effected. This difference, however, is, as we shall undertake to show, at the present moment merely nominal; and, even were it otherwise, utterly insufficient and unjust. But, at present, let us attend to the principle of the later act, which, as we apprehend, embodies two positions. 1st, That the sugar-growing colonies of Great Britain stand in need of no protection whatever; and, 2dly, That it is wrong to put any prohibitory duty in the way of the free use and consumption of slave-grown sugar in this country.