hereafter have to contend for their rights. ***** THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845. On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the order of the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means should be read, Lord John Russell moved the following amendment:--"That it is the opinion of this House that the plan proposed by Her Majesty's Government, in reference to the Sugar Duties, professes to keep up a distinction between foreign free labour sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years extremely uncertain and improbable." The amendment was rejected by 236 votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made. Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question. I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations, we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade (Mr Gladstone.), has distinctly admitted this. He says that the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade, the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course recommended by the Government. The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows that we ought to adopt his amendment.