starving population, but can only be sold to be refined in bond for
the consumption of the free labourers in our West India colonies and
others, or to be re-exported, as it is, for the use of "our less
scrupulous but more consistent" neighbours on the continent.

Consistency, therefore, requires equally the abandonment of all export
trade to slave-producing countries, as it does of the import of their
produce; and the effect will carry us even further. We know it is a
favourite feeling with Mr Joseph Sturge and others of that truly
benevolent class, that in eschewing any connexion with slave-producing
countries, we have the better reason to urge free-trading intercourse
with such countries as use only free labour,--with the Northern States
of America, with Java, and other countries similarly circumstanced. Now
of what does our trade to these countries, in common with others,
chiefly consist? Of the 51,400,000_l._ of British manufactures and
produce which we exported in 1840, upwards of 24,500,000_l._ consisted
of cotton goods, nearly the whole of which were manufactured from
slave-grown cotton, and partly dyed and printed with the cochineal and
indigo of Guatamala and Mexico. Consistency would therefore further
require that we abandon at least one-half of our present foreign trade
even with free-labour countries, instead of opening any opportunity for
its increase.

When men are prepared and conceive it a duty to urge the accomplishment
of all these results, they may then consistently oppose the introduction
of Brazilian sugar and coffee, and support the present West India
monopoly; but not till then.

But now, what effect must this argument have upon slave-producing
states, in inducing them to abandon slavery? Has it not long been one of
the chief arguments of the anti-slavery party everywhere, that free
labour is actually cheaper than slave labour? Now, will the Brazilians
give credit to this proposition, so strongly insisted upon, when they
see that the anti-slavery party conceive it needful to give support to a
system which affirms the necessity of protecting free labour against
slave labour, by imposing a prohibitory duty of upwards of 100 per cent.
on the produce of the latter? Will their opinion of the relative
cheapness of the two kinds of labour not rather be determined by our
actions than our professions?

We firmly believe that free labour, properly exercised, is cheaper than
slave labour; but there is n