THE TARIFF OF CONSCIENCE:Free Trade in Slave Produce Considered

THE TARIFF OF CONSCIENCE: Free Trade in Slave Produce Considered

A three-part sketch serialized in the Friends' Review

A DIALOGUE

Consumer of Slave Produce.--I see neither sense nor beauty in this agitation against slave produce, which you style the "Free Labour Movement." I look upon your principle as a benevolent crotchet, incapable of being reduced to practice, involving manifest inconsistencies, and not more impracticable than inexpedient.
Abstainer from Slave Produce.--I believe the difficulties which appear at first sight will generally vanish on closer examination. If you will put your objections into a tangible form, I shall do my best to answer them, and perhaps a little friendly discussion may bring us nearer to one mind.
Consumer.--You will admit that sugar and coffee, for example, are the good creatures of God, intended for the use and benefit of man. The Spaniards and Brazilians choose to cultivate them by slave-labour, but that is their business and not mine, neither does it alter the intrinsic value of these productions. I cannot see that it would be right to reject them on this account, or that we should be held guiltless in allowing God's blessings to go to waste.
Abstainer.--My objections to these articles are entirely relative, and not based on any thing inherent in their nature.
1st. I cannot consume slave-produce without encouraging slavery, and slavery is a cruel and unrighteous system. If no one would consume slave-produce, there would be no slaves; consequently I am bound to reject slave-produce.
2nd. Slave-produce is of the character of stolen goods. Labour forms a principal item in the value of every commodity. Reason and Scripture alike declare that the labourer has a right to the wages of his own toil. But as the slave is robbed of his wages, slave-produce is clearly the result of stolen labour, and as far as it is so, must be stolen goods. Consequently if it be wrong to buy stolen goods, it must also be wrong to buy slave-produce.
Here, then, is our principle, and our mode of working is equally intelligible. As the legislature has abolished the prohibitory duties on slave-produce, we appeal to the individual consciences of the people to replace them by a wide-spread voluntary abstinence.
With regard to the rejection of God's blessings, I would ask, is not a man of more value than a bale of coffee or a bag of sugar? And if consuming the produce cause the enslavement or destruction of the producer, am I not justified in rejecting it? It is estimated that during the last 40 years, tem millions of our fellow-creatures have been either kidnapped or destroyed by the operation of the African Slave Trade. If Christendom had universally refused slave-produce, all this sin and suffering might have been spared. When David's three captains brought him water from the well of Bethlehem, he said, "Shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy?" and though parched with thirst, he poured it out before the Lord. The same self-denying spirit animated the apostle Paul when he used the memorable language, "Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth." Thus you will see we have high examples for rejecting that which makes our brethren to offend, or which is watered with the blood and tears of our fellow creatures.
C.--I freely admit that the movement may be useful in relieving individual consciences, but I do not see how you can expect to make it tell upon the slave system. The deepest wound you thus inflict upon the monster is like "th sting of a bee in the hide of an elephant." If I were to refuse to buy a slave-grown sugar, my neighbour would buy it; and if all England were to reject it, France and Germany would buy it, and thus the demand would be kept up, and the slaveholder encouraged. Sugar, both free and slave-grown, would still be produced. The only difference would be that the former would come to us, and the latter would be sent to those who had no conscience in the matter.
A.--If all the world do wrong, it is no excuse for my not doing right. If free-grown sugar be as cheap as slave-grown, I have not even a pretext for buying the slave-grown; and if the slave-grown be actually cheaper, it is clear that any saving I may effect by purchasing it must be [?] from the slave.
As Great Britain has emancipated all her own slaves, rejection of slave-produce is, speaking generally, the only direct means we have of opposing slavery. Doubtless it is well to use other means. Let us have no religious fellowship with the slaveholder. Let us plainly tell him that until he turn from his enormous sin, he is to us but as a heathen man and a publican. Let the pulpit on every fitting occasion denounce the system. Let the press holds up a faithful mirror to the slaveholder; let it also reflect upon him the righteous indignation of a civilized European community. The free-labour movement will still be required to give effect to the whole. Depend upon it our most emphatic protests will be little heeded so long as our own hands are not clean, which they can never be whilst we continue to participate in the gain of oppression. 
The united kingdom, which probably contains less than a fiftieth part of the world's inhabitants, consumes, according to recent statistics, from one-third to one-fourth of the world's crop of sugar. This year, we are expected to take about a third, as the total production is below an average. It must surely be some discouragement to the slave-holder to be shut out, even partially, from such a market. But should there be no evident mercantile result from our rejection of the blood-stained produce of slavery, still the moral influence of such a testimony would be incalculable. The wrongs of the slave can never be forgotten at the table of an abstainer from slave-produce. The coffee-pot, the sugar-basin, and the pudding dish, all become eloquent in his cause, and continually stimulate to fresh efforts for his emancipation. Our little children thus drink in anti-slavery principles with their daily sustenanc, and should the present race of abolitionists be defeated in teh struggle, the next generation may be more successful.
But this agitation may tell more rapidly on the slaveholder than you think. We will suppose a family party at the breakfast table. A dear little girl, addressing her mother, says, "Mamma do speak to the grocer, and tell him to send us none but free-labour sugar and coffee. I cannot enjoy my breakfast for the thought that the poor slave may have toiled and bled to provide it." Possibly mamma's conscience is not quite so tender, but she has no desire that her daughter should be made uneasy, and therefore at her next visit to the shop, she gives her orders accordingly. Perhaps the grocer has no scruples of his own; but he has a hundred customers, and ten of them refuse to take slave-grown sugar, while not one among them objects to the free. Being in general equally cheap, next time he makes his purchase, to save further trouble he takes care to select the free descrption. Again, the wholesale traveller as he goes his rounds, finds several of his samples objected to by the shopkeepers, and he ventures to suggest to his employers that they should only supply him with such as all will buy. The objection next penetrates the recesses of Mincing Lane. It reaches the Broker's sale room and the Merchant's counting house. At length the importer begins to find that while the dock-ware-houses are cleared of British colonial sugar, the produce of Cuba and Brazil is suffered to accumulate. We may be sure the lesson will not be lost upon him, for the students of the ledger are pretty long-sighted. And now for the upshot of the whole. The child's simple protest, half whispered at the breakfast table, will be rung in the ears of the foreign slaveholder, in tones that he cannot misunderstand, and which may at last be reverberated from so many quarters as to shak the slave system itself to its foundations.
C.--I would have more respect for your practical protest, if it only were consistent; but total abstinence from slave-produce, in a country like this, is an impossibility, unless you betake yourself to the woods, and live on roots and berries. The gold in your purse is, in all probability, slave-produce. You cannot handle a penny without being in danger of using slave copper. Banish every grain of the polluted thing from your table, and it meets you in the form of fibre on every shelf of your wardrobe. Even if you succeed in proscribing American slave-cotton, and substituting East Indian or South African in its stead, your work is only half accomplished. You perhaps feel thankful that you have cleared your conscience, and are not as other men. You then thoughtlessly sit down upon a chair of Cuban mahogany, before a desk of Brazilian rosewood, and dipping your pen into an inkstand of slave-grown ebony, proceed to write upon paper made partly of slave-cotton, a philanthropic tirade against the use of slave-produce.
A.--The value of a principle is not to be judged of by the obstacles in the way of its application. Our present difficulty of applying the free-labour principle arises entirely from our long neglect of it. We are like a man who has trespassed on his neighbour's fields, and is suddenly seized with compunction on discovering that he is damaging the crop. He cannot even go back without treading down corn, but if he go forward he will tread down more, and surely a good man will never hesitate which course to take. The principle against trespass is a good one, although he cannot act upon it at once. Having once diverged into a wrong path, it takes him some time to get back into the right one.
Though I should rejoice to see the day for a total universal rejection of every grain, filament, and particle of slave-produce, I am conscious that to cleanse our hands from it, as a nation, must be a work of time. But the nation is made up of individuals, and I would say to each, "let us begin at home." In the department of cotton goods, let every friend of the negro be careful to select the free description and where it is not to be had, inquire for a substitute. There is already some variety of free cotton in the market, and if we had never struck hands with the American slaveholder, we should probably by this time have had a large supply from the East and West Indies; and if any deficiency of clothing materials had still existed, we should have stimulated the industrial resources of Ireland for the cultivation of flax. The gains of the American slaveholder would have been less, but the poverty of India and the destitution of Ireland might not have been so manifest.
Consistency is doubtless a good thing, but our inability to do all the good we wish is but a poor excuse for not doing all we can. We shall not be held responsible for that over which we have had no power. Should I ever hav a vote on the exclusion of slave-gold from the mint, I shall know how to exercise it; in the meantime I shall have no great qualms of conscience about the few grains that may be rubbed off in my pocket. The same with ornamental woods. Our houses are perhaps already furnished, and a piece of furniture will last a life-time. It would do no good to go round and inquire into the pedigree of every chair and table, discarding all of suspicious origin. Yet if we ever buy furniture again, consistency requires that we prefer the mahogany of Honduras to that of the Spanish colonies or other slave states. But the most strenuous efforts ought certainly to be directed to the two great staples of slavery. If the broad brand of European condemnation could be stamped on every package of slave-grown sugar and cotton, there is good reason to believe that slavery in the west would quickly come to an end; for slave-labour would be rendered so unprofitable that the system would fall to pieces by its own weight.
C.--I should like to know how you mean the public to discriminate between the precious and the vile. There is so much trickery in trade that as soon as ever a preference for free goods is manifested, there will be many counterfeits. Shopkeepers will be tempted to tell untruths--marks and labels will be forged--and people will be gulled into the belief that they are dealing a blow at slavery, whilst unconsciously consuming the productions of slave countries.
A.--What good thing is there that has not its spurious imitations? Christianity itself has many counterfeits, yet who dares to object to our Holy Religion on this account? The obvious remedy for imposition on the free-labour purchaser, is to deal only with honourable tradesmen. A disregard of this rule would lay you open to many frauds besides that under consideration. Let the housekeeper who doubts her grocer's testimony, confine her purchases to a few descriptions of goods, and learn to distinguish them. In buying sugar, let her inquire for fine Bengal, Dhobah, Cossipore, or Chrystallized Demerara, none of which I have ever seen imitated in slave-grown. In lump sugar, let her ask to see the manufacturer's certificate. Coffee is difficult to discriminate, but it is of less consequence, as there is very little slave-grown consumed in this country. The free plantation Ceylon is a very useful sort, and to be found in most shops; it may generally be known by its short thick berries. An ordinary observer may distinguish Patna and Italian rice from the slave-grown Carolina. No grocer, who buys his foreign produce in original packages, need have much difficulty in identifying the slave-grown. The custom-house papers, furnished to the person who pays the duty, contain the name of the port of shipment. A reference to the map, and a glance at the list of free and slave-produce, which has been widely circulated, will generally solve the question.
With respect to cotton, the evidence is less direct, but the merchants, brokers and agents, now identified with the movement, are exercising great vigilance against deception. Even from America, excellent free cotton may be obtained under the guarantee of the "Philadelphia Free Produce Association," whose devoted agent traverses the slave States, ascertains which plantations are worked by free-labour, and sends off shipments of untainted produce from the very heart of the slave dominion. The question is thus agitated on many southern plantations, but in so open and business-like a manner, that the slaveholders themselves have failed to make a handle of it.
All that can be expected of the consumer is to select an honest tradesman, and see that the fabric, whether piece-goods or hosiery, bears the stamp of "free-labour," and the name of a respectable manufacturer. It is true that with the greatest caution we may still be liable to impositions, but such would probably, in most instances, be quickly exposed, and if not, they would still serve to give prominence to the slave question, which is one great end of the free-labour movement.

(To be continued.)


THE TARIFF OF CONSCIENCE
Free Trade in Slave Produce Considered.
A DIALOGUE.
(Continued from page 795.)

Consumer.--If your scheme were ever so practicable, I do not think it would be expedient. By refusing to buy slave-produce, you impoverish the slaveholder, and deprive him of the means of making his slaves comfortable. Such a principle, extensively carried out, might even deprive the slaves of their means of subsistence.
Abstainer.--I have no fear of any catastrophe. The fertility of most slave countries is proverbial, and forms indeed their great attraction to the slaveholder. It is a complaint frequently brought against free negroes that they prefer the cultivation of their own provision grounds to that of their masters' fields, doubtless because the former presents an easier or more remunerative means of livelihood. So attached are the negroes in the West Indies to their little plots, that some of them have been heard to say that they would rather have gardens and no wages, than high wages without gardens! If the slaveholder had not full employment for all his slaves, he would at any rate have no inducement to purchase more; and if he did not actually emancipate the surplus, he would have a strong inducement to divide a portion of his unproductive estate into provision grounds, and allow his people to raise yams and plaintains for themselves, when their services were not required for other purposes. In either case the negroes would be gainers by the change, for it is but seldom they obtain more from their masters than the most meagre subsistence that will maintain them in working condition.
C.--It seems to me that your object is good, but you do not go about it in the right way.
Instead of keeping ourselves at a distance from the Spaniards and Brazilians, and refusing to trade with them, it would be better to cultivate their acquaintance, and treat them with kindness and generosity. After we had in this manner won their confidence, they would be far more likely to listen to our counsel, and relax their hold on the victims of their avarice.
A.--Undoubtedly the slaveholder, like all other delinquents, should be dealt with in the spirit of Christian charity, but while approaching him with kindness, we must carefully avoid being partakers in his sin. It will be readily perceived that so long as we consume slave-produce, the slave is toiling and suffering for us! It has been calculated that every seven families employ at least one slave. The sincerity of our protest against any wickedness may well be questioned while we share the spoils! The Cotton Trade is a case in point. We have long been accustomed to denounce American slavery, yet have gone on increasing our purchases of slave cotton. The Americans, looking more to our deeds than to our words, have increased the number of their slaves in a corresponding ratio. How then can we look for the very opposite result from our trade with the Spanish and Brazilian slave-holders?
C.--I am still of opinion that a comprehensive view of the subject would lead to another mode of grappling with slavery. It strikes me that the free-labour movement argues a want of faith in the moral government of the world. If honesty be the best policy, free-labour must be preferable to slave-labour, and will prove itself so in the long run. But by establishing a system of exclusive dealing, and thus extending to free-labour the protection of an artificial preference, you damage the great experiment which is to prove its superiority. You withdraw the free-labour planter from that healthful stimulus of competition, which, by inducing him to economise his resources, would enable him eventually to drive the slaveholder out of the market. For instance, in the article of cotton, let British colonists and other free cultivators be encouraged to produce it, but give them no expectation that their crop will command a preference until they can raise it cheaper or better than the slaveholder. Instead of keeping the free article distinct, let it be sold in the open market, and used indiscriminately with other cotton, the cultivator depending for his reward on the increased quantity or improved quality which the superiority of free-labour would enable him to produce.
A.--This objection sounds plausible enough, but when closely examined, I believe it will not stand. If virtue were so attractive as to draw all men after her, our gaols and penitentiaries might be safely levelled with the ground. And yet honesty is truly the best policy, though it may not always bring us the most gold. The labour market, like all others, is governed by the laws of supply and demand. Other things being equal, where free-labour is more plentiful than slave-labour, it is cheaper; where scarcer, it is doubtless dearer. But it must be borne in mind that the slave-planter has the most complete commnd over the people he employs. It may be presumed that a free labourer, under the stimulus of wages, will work a better day's work of eight hours than the slave. But you cannot expect the former to work 18 hours a day, on a sugar estate, as a slave is compelled to do in crop time, for months together. You cannot expect a freeman to work himself to death for wages, as the slave too often does for fear of the lash! Some cold-blooded planters have proved, it is said, to their own satisfaction, that the cheapest way of working an estate is to "use up" the negroes by hard driving, and buy more!
A writer of no mean authority* has come to the conclusion, on grounds purely scientific, that Cuba and the northern provinces of Brazil enjoy advantages of temperature for sugar cultivation not possessed by the British West Indies. Whatever be the cause, it is clear that the average cost of raising sugar is dearer in Jamaica than in Cuba, at the present time; and if even it were otherwise, I hold it to be quite legitimate that the moral sense of Great Britain should extend to free-labour merchandise of every kind the protection of a preference. You say the free-labour planter ought to be encouraged to cultivate cotton, but how can this encouragement be given except by a special call for his produce, and how can a special call be expressed, if, by mixing the blood-stained and the free, the shopkeeper and the public and precluded from discriminating? The cotton planters of America have always been open to the competition of the British colonies, several of which are well adapted for this article, yet so far from the slaveholder being driven out of the market, he has almost a monopoly of it. Why then wait for unaided competition to do that hereafter, which it has hitherto failed to accomplish?
The "exclusive dealing" recommended is only that which is practised with approval in other instances. What would be thought of the man who declaimed against robbery, yet shared the plunder, or who denounced smuggling and dealt in contraband? The slaveholders themselves perceive our inconsistency. In a pamphlet on "Slavery and the Slave Trade," by Stephen Cave, Esq., barrister-at-law, occurs the following passage:--
"When the writer was at Santa Cruz, in 1847, before the emancipation of the slaves there, an English proprietor, of whom there were many in the island, said to him, 'Several of us who have bought slaves since Lord Brougham's Act [6 and 7 Victoria, c. 98, which makes it felonious in British subjects to purchase slave property even in foreign countries] have not dared to put our noses outside the island, but I suppose that after the bill of last year [the Sugar Act of 1846,] we may safely go to England, for the receiver surely cannot indict the thief."
C.--If the free-labour principle were so

*Edinburgh Review, April 1849, page 399.

good, it clashes with another of still wider application, and which I hold to be indispensable to the happiness of mankind. I allude to the cardinal principle of Free Trade, which gives every man a right to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.
A.--It is not my intention either to assail or defend the great maxim of free trade, but until you can show that there ought to be free trade in stolen goods, I am prepared to maintain that it has nothing to do with the question. Let us suppose a case in point. I am in want of a house, and advertise for tenders. Several are sent in, and one is much lower than the rest. But I happen to know that the builder, who makes the offer, steals the timber out of Lord B.'s forest. Should I be justified in accepting it? Or would the case be mended if the builder paid for the timber, and kept back the wages, that is, stole the labour of his men? Such is the fact with slave-grown sugar. The planter may pay the rent of the land that grows it; the mill that grinds it may have been honestly obtained; but the manual labour, which gives value to the whole, is stolen from the negro. What the planter has obtained by robbery, he can have no right to sell, and what he has no right to sell, I can have no right to buy. But this is putting the case in the mildest form. The slaveholder is no common burglar or highwayman. It is not merely property he steals--it is not merely labour--he steals men. The negro has committed no crime, but because his skin is dark he is enslaved. He marries a wife, and she brings him children. His master wants money, or perhaps dies. The family are placed upon the auction-block, handled like cattle, knocked off to the highest bidders, and separated, perhaps dies. The family are placed upon the auction-block, handled like cattle, knocked off to the highest bidders, and separated, perhaps hundreds of miles, for life. Nor is the worst yet told. "Slavery," as John Wesley rightly expresses it, "is the sum of all villainies." The slaveholder not only pursues his victim in this life, but would place him under ban in the world to come! He makes it penal to teach a slave to read, and throws a man into prison for giving him a Bible! Shall the Christians of Great Britain freight their vessels with his wares, because they cannot find a cheaper market? Shall we make ourselves the accomplices of the slaveholder by furnishing him with the grand motive to his crimes--money?
The political economy which would enact free trade in slave produce is passing strange. Labour is the poor man's merchandize. Abstractedly, every man may have a right to buy in the cheapest, and sell in the dearest market; but if the Englishman, by buying his merchandise in the cheapest market, prevents the negro from selling his in the dearest, or, indeed, from selling it at all, the least that can be said of the transaction is that a good principle has been misapplied. If political ecnomists are prepared to ride free trade, roughshod, over the dearest interests of our race, we appeal to the political economy of the gospel, and deny their right. If human law allow of such procedure, we carry our objection to that high court of equity, which is presided over by an enlightened conscience--we appeal to the chancery of Heaven, whose injunctions are embodied in that book which says, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them."

(To be continued.)

THE TARIFF OF CONSCIENCE.
Free Trade in Slave Produce Considered.
A DIALOGUE.
[Concluded from page 813.]

C.--I acknowledge there is some weight in your arguments, and shall feel myself bound to reconsider the whole question. One or two difficulties, however, are yet untouched. If I am to refuse slave produce on account of the oppression that is connected with it, I may also refuse the productions of many of our English operatives, who are doomed to a life of the severest labour, and too often receive only a scanty pttance, barely sufficient to keep soul and body together.
A.--With you, I deeply deplore the condition of many of our English labourers, industriously disposed, yet finding no one to give them work, or, when in work, to give them adequate wages. I lately heard a slaveholder from one of the Spanish islands assert that the "black slaves" abroad are better off than the "white slaves" in England! I admit that the negro in a state of slavery, may, in some instances, have more animal enjoyment and less physical suffering than some of our working men, yet his very contentment is a proof of his degradation. If the English labourer be dissatisfied with his employer, he can seek another; if ill-treated by his master, he can summon him to teh bar of justice, where the poor man's evidence will not be refused. his wife and child cannot be torn from his embraces, and sold like beasts in the market place. And so far from being kept in systematic ignorance, he is importuned to send his children to school. On all these points it is far otherwise with the slave! And with respect to the question before us, there is this essential difference. Purchase free produc, and you do the producers good; increased demand brings either increased wages, or employment for a larger number. Purchase slave produce, and you do the producers harm; increased demand means only harder work, or a larger number reduced to bondage.
C.--Could you convince me that your scheme is both practicable and praiseworthy, I do not know that I should give my co-operation. It seems to be too much of a piece with that telescopic phlanthropy, so much in favour at the present day. There is far too much disposition to neglect home questions. Why overlook the misery and oppression at our own doors to carry on a distant crusade, "the further off the fiercer?"
A.--Free labour is essentially a "home question." It is true that the objects of our sympathy are in another hemisphere, but, if our eyes are opened, we shall see that one end of the negro's chain is in our own lands. We cannot make our week's purchases over a grocer's or a draper's counter without giving a positive money contribution either to slavery or to freedom. We cannot sip our coffee, or sweeten our dinner, without either promoting or discouraging slavery and the slave trade. We can rarely complete our dress for the day without bestowing our countenance and patronage either on the honest cultivator or the ruthless slaveholder! We cannot escape our responsibilities if we would: then surely this must be a "home question."
Besides, so small is the amount of individual effort demanded of the public by this movement, that there need be no fear of its displacing other duties. We do not ask you to buy a pound of sugar or a yard of calico, more or less than you require, but merely to confine your purchases to articles of free origin, whenever such can be obtained.
As there seems to be such a charm in proximity, perhaps the question may be brought more closely home by a little exercise of the imagination. Let us suppose that in some great convulsion of nature, this island of Great Britain breaks loose from its moorings, and becoming bouyant like the Derwentwater islet, is drifted into the tropics till it meets with the gulf stream, which carries it across to the West Indies. At length Great Britain brings up alongside of Porto Rico, and becomes welded to its strand, the two form one large island. Let us further imagine that this Spanish colony, with its cane-fields and sugar mills, is merely separated from us by a thorn hedge. Allow me next to read from the Anti-Slavery Reporter for February, 1849, a brief sketch of the state of society in Porto Rico, written by a gentleman who had lately resided some months in the island:--
"I have seen, in Ponce, a slave tied to a ladder by his master, and flogged at intervals from morning to night. In the hot, burning sun, throughout the day, did that poor slave lie bound, scorched and bleeding. The next day he died, and the wretch hoisted the Spanish ensign and boasted that he had sent a subject to the Devil. I have seen a negro flogged to death, and his carcas buried in a dung heap. I have seen a man compelled to flog his own wife, after which her master committed brutalities on her person too horrid to be mentioned. I have seen a runaway brought home in a state of starvation, tied to four stakes driven in the ground, and receive from two drivers, one on each side, 150 lashes with cartwhips. Very little blood came from his wounds. The blood had flown to the heart to support life. Two days after, the slave died, his back having become one mass of mortification. I was on an estate where, a little earlier, a negro was thrown into the boiling trick. It was said that he had jumped in himself, but such was not the case. I also saw a man severely flogged, and afterwards locked up in a close dungeon, under a scorching sun. When taken out he was raving mad, and died shortly after. In the district of Humicas lives a man named Jose Marie Rios, who suffers his slaves to die from want, should they happen to be so sick that their cures would be attended with expense. When dead, he has them tied to a mule's tail and dragged to a pit, where they are thrown in like beasts. In fact, it would take volumes to describe the horrible atrocities which are committed on the unfortunate negroes."
Now we will suppose that some of the scenes thus described by an eye-witness, come under our own notice from the windows of our peaceful domicile. We see the children of Africa toiling among the sugar canes the livelong day, under the burning sun of the tropics. We see also their cruel and imperious taskmasters. We hear at intervals the crack of the whip, the yelp of the blood-hound, and the groan of the lacerated wretch, writhing under the hands of his tormentors. We see the canes carried in bundles to the mill, and listen to the clack and roll of the machine as it crushes out the rich pulpy syrup. The shades of evening begin to gather, and we perceive the proprietor of the domain, heading a long file of half-clad negroes, and approaching our dwelling through a gap in the hedge. Every slave carries a basket of sugar, the produce of the estate, and we are invited to purchase. But do we purchase it? No! We have pried into the secrets of its production, and we spurn it from our presence. Lives there a man or woman in our island, in whose bosom beats a genuine British heart, who would not turn from the blood-stained condiment with disgust, and administer a sharp rebuke to the wretch that offered it?
But Porto Rico Sugar, as well as that of Cuba and Brazil, is frequently offered in England, and is bought and consumed by Britons! In the name of humanity, why and how is this? Is cruelty less real because we do not see it, or the groan less bitter because beyond our hearing? Let those who consume such produce bear in mind that they put into the gory palm of the slaveholder, though it be by proxy, the golden coin which fees him for his barbarity--the prize which tempts him to pursue his hateful calling--the premium for which he makes hearts sick and homes desolate!
C.-- I like your earnest mode of handling the subject, and assure you that this conversation will induce me to examine it more closely.
A.--Before we part allow me to impress upon you, two considerations:--
1. Although by the noble act of West India Emancipation, we struck the fetters off 800,000 blacks, there is reason to believe that at the present time above a million of slaves are toiling for us, the people of the United Kingdom.
2. Any inconsistencies which may attach to the present effort for dissolving this unhappy system, arise, not from any defect in the free-labour principle, but entirely from the false position in which we find ourselves placed by our long-continued disregard of it.

Friends' Review: a Religious, Literary and Miscellaneous Journal 2:50, p. 793; 2:51, p. 811; 2:52, p. 827 

9.1.1849; 9.8.1849; 9.15.1849