a generosity for which we
never ceased to applaud ourselves, we voted an indemnity of twenty
millions to the owners. We imagined that we had acquitted our
consciences, but such debts are not discharged by payments of money. We
had introduced the slaves into the islands for our own advantage; in
setting them free we revolutionised society. We remained still
responsible for the social consequences, and we did not choose to
remember it. The planters were guilty only, like the Irish landlords, of
having ceased to be necessary to us. We practised our virtues
vicariously at their expense: we had the praise and honour, they had the
suffering. They begged that the emancipation might be gradual; our
impatience to clear our reputation refused to wait. Their system of
cultivation being deranged, they petitioned for protection against the
competition of countries where slavery continued. The request was
natural, but could not be listened to because to grant it might raise
infinitesimally the cost of the British workman's breakfast. They
struggled on, and even when a new rival rose in the beetroot sugar they
refused to be beaten. The European powers, to save their beetroot, went
on to support it with a bounty. Against the purse of foreign governments
the sturdiest individuals cannot compete. Defeated in a fight which had
become unfair, the planters looked, and looked in vain, to their own
government for help. Finding none, they turned to their kindred in the
United States; and there, at last, they found a hand held out to them.
The Americans were willing, though at a loss of two millions and a half
of revenue, to admit the poor West Indians to their own market. But a
commercial treaty was necessary; and a treaty could not be made without
the sanction of the English Government. The English Government, on some
fine-drawn crotchet, refused to colonies which were weak and helpless
what they would have granted without a word if demanded by Victoria or
New South Wales, whose resentment they feared. And when the West
Indians, harassed, desperate, and half ruined, cried out against the
enormous injustice, in the fear that their indignation might affect
their allegiance and lead them to seek admission into the American
Union, we extend the franchise among the blacks, on whose hostility to
such a measure we know that we can rely.

There is no occasion to suspect responsible English politicians of any
sinister purpose in what they have done or