In regard to the first, fresh labourers can be procured in the Spanish colonies, but cannot in the British; and in regard to the second, there must surely be some difference in the working of a measure when the amount of capital to be withdrawn varies in the proportion of 20,000_l._ in the one case, to a few hundreds in the other. CHAPTER VII. RESPONSIBILITY ATTACHING TO MINISTERS IF THEY ENFORCE COMPULSORY MANUMISSION. Whoever notices the levity of manner with which this question is treated, would imagine that our constitution had undergone a change, and that His Majesty’s advisers were relieved from responsibility for the acts of the executive. On any occasion it is a rash step to counsel the crown to important measures before a full investigation has been instituted. But when a step is taken so contrary to the laws of the realm, as, by eminent law-authorities, Compulsory Manumission, in regard to mortgaged property, is conceived to be, _responsibility_ ceases to be an idle term, and circumstances may arise from it to disturb the peace of a minister of state much longer than he anticipates. It can never be too often repeated that, so far as legislation for the negroes is concerned, what is once done is irrevocable. In other public measures, an opportunity is afforded to a minister, when he makes a false step, to change his policy by a dexterous manœuvre. But no such resource being afforded in the West India Question, we should conclude that more cautious deliberation would in the first instance be exercised, and that a _full examination_ would take place before excitement was created by announcing even the heads of a new measure. The proceedings hitherto have been on a principle directly opposite. While the Irish Question remains undecided, though more than a generation has passed by since it commenced; and while the Corn Question has stood over until argument on the subject is exhausted: In the West India Question—where, wrong measures being once taken, all remedy is hopeless—the parties whose whole property is at stake cannot be allowed more than the lapse of a few weeks, to put on record all their objections to the most essential innovations.