Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/44

36 chiefly of individual cases, which it is of course impossible to meet one by one; and I will not meet them by replies of a similar order from planters and attorneys. I shall avoid the practice which I have blamed in my opponents, and out of those very books I shall utterly confute him (unless where it has been done by my hon. friend the Under Secretary for the Colonies already) upon every point that he attempted to raise.

He raised a point upon a decrease of population, with an enormous increase of produce: a decrease which he admits he cannot prove, and an enormous increase which I can disprove. Sir, the average import of sugar from British Guiana was, in the years 1832-4, 41,790; in the years 1835-7, it was about 47,978 tons. There may be a slight inaccuracy in this return. It exhibits an increase of one-eighth, for which I account by the following not imaginary causes: The increased investments in works and machinery—the succession of three remarkably fine seasons—the circumstance that sugar cultivation in British Guiana has been gradually, for a series of years, supplanting every other,—and, lastly, the introduction of several thousands of additional labourers.

He complained next, that the distance to the field was taken out of the time of the negro. He seems to be quite ignorant that Lord Glenelg has long ago declared that it should be computed as a part of the time due to the master, and that Lord Glenelg