he contest to a successful issue, cannot be properly
appreciated or correctly understood.

The value of what is technically called colonial produce at present
produced in the British colonial possessions, the East Indies included,
is about L10,000,000 yearly, from a capital invested to the extent of
L150,000,000. The trade thus created employs 800 ships, 300,000 tons,
and 17,000 seamen yearly. This is the yearly value of the property and
produce of the British Tropical agricultural trade, now dependent upon
free labour.

Against this we have opposed, in the western world alone, nearly
L60,000,000 of agricultural produce, exportable and exported yearly,
requiring a trade in returns equal to L56,000,000, and a proportionate
number of ships' tonnage and seamen. In the trade with Cuba and Port
Rico alone, the United States have 1600 vessels employed yearly,
(230,000 tons of shipping,) making numerous and speedy voyages, and from
which trade only, these states, in case of emergency, could man and
maintain from twenty to thirty sail of the line.

On the part of foreign nations there has, since 1808, been L800,000,000
of fixed capital created in slaves, and in cultivation wholly dependent
upon the labour of slaves. On the other hand, there stands on the part
of Great Britain, altogether and only, about L130,000,000 (deducting the
value paid for the slaves) vested in Tropical cultivation, and formerly
dependent upon slave labour, and which has in part been swept away,
while the remainder is in danger of being so.

Let us have recourse to a few returns and figures, in order to show what
is going on, especially by slave-labour in other countries, as compared
with British possessions, in three articles of colonial produce, namely,
sugar, (reducing the foreign clayed sugar into muscovado to make the
comparison just,) coffee, and cotton; and as regards a few foreign
countries only, nearly three-fourths of which produce, be it observed,
has been created within the last thirty years.

SUGAR--1842.

_British possessions._ _Foreign possessions._

cwts. cwts.
West Indies, 2,508,552 Cuba, 5,800,000
East Indies, 940,452 Brazils, 2,400,000
Mauritius, (1841,) 544,767 Java, 1,105,757
--------- Louisiana, 1,400,000
Total, 3,993,771