Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar: A Letter to the Members and Friends of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery SocietyRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
History
Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar: A Letter to the Members and Friends of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Slave trade; Slavery; Sugar trade
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London: Blackburn and Pardon, Printers, 6, Hatton Garden.
FOOTNOTES.
{6} Vide the attack on George Thompson and John Bright, in the
_Standard_ of Saturday, May 18.
{7} Vide Report of Select Committee on West Coast of Africa. Part I.
{11} Vide Colonial Gazette, Nov. 1842.
{12a} Bandinell, p. 222.
{12b} Ibid. p. 161.
{20} Philanthropist, No. XI. page 163.
{21} Vide the Supplement to the Spectator newspaper, April 15th, 1843.
{23} Vide “Antigua and the Antiguans.”
{24} Vide “The Effect of an Alteration in the Duties on the Condition of
the People of England and the Negro Slave, considered. By Macgregor
Laird, Esq.”
{26a} This is no mere supposition. At a public meeting held since this
pamphlet was written, consisting of West India Proprietors, the Earl of
Harewood stated that he had latterly been losing twelve hundred a-year by
his estate in Jamaica, and that in consequence, he had ordered it to lie
fallow.
{26b} Vide Jamaica, by the Rev. Mr. Philippo.
{31} Porter’s Progress of the Nation, vol. iii.
{35} The following report of a speech by Mr. Cobden, in Covent-garden
Theatre, is taken from the _League_ of October 14th. The honourable
gentleman said:—“What, then, is the pretence set up? Why, that we must
not buy slave-grown sugar. I believe that the ambassador from the
Brazils is here at present, and I think I can imagine an interview
between him and the President of the Board of Trade. His excellency is
admitted to an interview with all the courtesy due to his rank. He
delivers his credentials; he has come to arrange a treaty on commerce. I
think I see the President of the Board of Trade calling up a solemn,
earnest, pious expression, and saying, You are from the Brazils, we shall
be happy to trade with you, but we cannot conscientiously receive
slave-grown produce. His excellency is a good man of business (most men
are, who come to us from abroad to settle commercial matters.) So he
says, ‘Well, then, we will see if we can trade together in some other
way. What have you to sell us?’ ‘Why,’ returns the President of the
Board of Trade, ‘cotton goods; in these articles we are the largest
exporters in the world.’ ‘Indeed!’ exclaims his excellency. ‘Cotton did
you say? where is cotton brought from?’ ‘Why,’ replies the minister,
‘hem—chiefly from the United States;’ and at once the question will be,
‘Pray, is it free-grown cotton, or slave-grown cotton?’ Now I leave you
to imagine the answer, and I also leave you to picture the countenance of
the President of the Board of Trade. Ay, these very men, and their
connexions, who are loudest in their appeals against slave-grown sugar,
have landing warehouses in Liverpool and London, and send their sugar to
Russia, to China, to Turkey, to Poland, to Egypt; in short, to any
country under the sun.”
{38} Economist, Sept. 16, 1843.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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