ally ruined. One property which had cost
118,000l., so totally lost its value, owing to these changes in the
law, that its price fell to 16,000l. In Demerara, the sugar produce
sank from 104,000,000 lbs. to 61,000,000 lbs., and coffee from 9,000,000
lbs. to 91,000 lbs., while 1,500,000 lbs. of cotton disappeared
entirely.

These are no fictions, they are plain facts, borne testimony to in many
instances by the governors of the colonies; and I might quote an
infinite number of similar statements, all tending to prove the rapid
growth of idleness and vice in the emancipated slaves, and the equally
rapid ruin of the unfortunate proprietor. The principles upon which we
legislated when removing the sugar duties is a mystery to me, unless I
accept the solution, so degrading to the nation, "that humanity is a
secondary consideration to _L s.d._, and that justice goes for nothing."
If such were not the principles on which we legislated, there never was
a more complete failure. Not content with demoralizing the slave and
ruining the owner, by our hasty and ill-matured plan of emancipation, we
gave the latter a dirty kick when he was falling, by removing the little
protection we had all put pledged our national faith that he should
retain; and thus it was we threw nearly the whole West India sugar trade
into the hands of Cuba, stimulating her energy, increasing her produce,
and clinching the fetters of the slave with that hardest holding of all
rivets--the doubled value of his labour.

Perhaps my reader may say I am taking a party and political view of the
question. I repudiate the charge _in toto_: I have nothing to do with
politics: I merely state facts, which I consider it requisite should be
brought forward, in order that the increase of Cuban produce may not be
attributed to erroneous causes. For this purpose it was necessary to
show that the ruin we have brought upon the free West Indian colonies is
the chief cause of the increased and increasing prosperity of their
slave rival; at the same time, it is but just to remark, that the
establishment of many American houses in Cuba has doubtless had some
effect in adding to the commercial activity of the island.

I have, in the preceding pages, shown the retrogression of some parts of
the West Indies, since the passing of the Emancipation and Sugar-Duty
Acts. Let me now take a cursory view of the progression of Cuba during
the same period.--Annual produce--

Previou