tish West Indian planters and proprietors are
grumblers, who complain without adequate cause."[180]

Great Britain has shown no little solicitude to ascertain the real state
of things in her West India colonies. For this purpose, she appointed,
in 1842, a select committee, consisting of some of the most prominent
members of Parliament, with Lord Stanley at their head. In 1848, another
committee was appointed by her, with Lord George Bentinck as its
chairman, to inquire into the condition of her Majesty's East and West
India possessions and the Mauritius, and to consider whether any
measures could be adopted for their relief. The report of both
committees show, beyond all doubt, that unexampled distress existed in
the colonies. The report of 1848 declares: "That many estates in the
British West India colonies have been already abandoned, that many more
are in the course of abandonment, and that from this cause a very
serious diminution is to be apprehended in the total amount of
production. That the first effect of this diminution will be an increase
in the price of sugar, and the ultimate effect a greater extension to
the growth of sugar in slave countries, and a greater impetus to slavery
and the slave-trade." From the same report, we also learn that the
prosperity of the Mauritius, no less than that of the West India
Islands, had suffered a fearful blight, in consequence of the "glorious
act of emancipation."

A third commission was appointed, in 1850, to inquire into the condition
and prospects of British Guiana. Lord Stanley, in his second letter to
Mr. Gladstone, the Secretary of the British colonies, has furnished us
with the following extracts from the report of this committee:--

"Of Guiana generally they say--'It would be but a melancholy task to
dwell upon the misery and ruin which so alarming a change must have
occasioned to the proprietary body; but your commissioners feel
themselves called upon to notice the effects which this wholsale
abandonment of property has produced upon the colony at large. Where
whole districts are fast relapsing into bush, and occasional patches of
provisions around the huts of village settlers are all that remain to
tell of once flourishing estates, it is not to be wondered at that the
most ordinary marks of civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that
in many districts of the colony all travelling communication by land
will soon become utterly impracticable.'

"Of the Abar