A seemingly unrecorded retort to the proposed protections for West-Indian vs. East-Indian sugar, in light of the Corn Laws, American trade restrictions, and other arguments related to taxation and tariffs. The printer, Ellerton and Henderson, also put their name to Granville Sharp’s 1820 Memoirs, Wilberforce’s 1823 Appeal, various reports of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, as well as numerous other abolitionist texts.
The arguments were likely posed in response to the 1823 discussions in parliament over the re-evaluation of duties applied to East and West India sugar. Sugar from the British Caribbean had benefitted significantly from favourable taxation policy negotiations and protected by the powerful West India Lobby. This advantaged the British plantocracy and served to support this sector of British trade that relied so heavily enslaved labour. As the rhetoric of the anti-slavery movement encouraged consumers to forego the purchase of West India sugar, the same commodity produced in the East Indies was offered as an alternative. The easing of import duties for this and other products of the Indian subcontinent are posited in terms of an advantageous free-market as opposed to the monopoly which served to support the struggling plantations.
The tract is divided into two halves, with the first addressing ten numbered arguments against the continued protection of West-Indian imports. These touch on interesting questions including the vulnerability of monoculture farming in the context of American trade hostility to the West-Indies, and the economic folly of subsidising absentee landlords. The second part is headed “The following observations on the Trade to the East Indies have lately appeared at Manchester”. The statistics outline the unbalanced nature of the tariffs applied to East vs. West Indian commodities, including coffee, cocoa, turmeric, rum, cotton, dye wood etc. There is also a table outlining the value of the Indian market as an importer of British cotton, and the true cost of protecting sugar imports from the West Indies: “we are now paying £3 per ton in the Drawback allowed on Refined Sugar exported. To take off this bounty would be some saving to the Treasury, and a large saving to the people. It is not only a clear loss to the Nation of £3 per ton upon the Sugar exported, but […] is a Tax on the Nation paid to the Sugar Growers, of not less than six hundred thousand pounds per annum.”
Unlike the moral arguments that dominated much of the public abolitionist discourse of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this tract takes a dispassionately economic approach. By demonstrating that a freer market would benefit consumers, the author avoids the human impact of enslaved labour almost entirely, whilst still effectively attacking the West India Lobby’s influence over trade policy. This was a key strategy in the gradual passage of the Abolition Acts through British Parliament, whilst also indicating the increased importance of the Indian subcontinent in the British Empire of the nineteenth century.
No copies found through OCLC or other internet searches. The second section headed “The following observations” appears reprinted in a 14th August 1828 issue of the Singapore Chronicle and Commercial Register.
