t does to the _sugar_ and
_coffee_ produced in that country;--it must apply with equal force to
the _cotton_, the _rice_, the _indigo_, the _cochineal_, and the
_tobacco_ of the Southern States of America, and Mexico, as it does to
the _sugar_ and _coffee_ of Cuba. To be in any way consistent in
carrying out this principle, we must exclude the great material on which
the millions of Lancashire, the West of Yorkshire, and Lanarkshire
depend for their daily subsistence; we must equally exclude tobacco,
which gives revenue to the extent of 3,500,000_l._ annually; we must
refuse any use of the precious metals, whether for coin, ornament, or
other purposes. But even these form only one class of the obligations
which the affirming of this principle would impose upon us. If we would
coerce the Brazilians by not buying from them, it necessarily involves
the duty of not selling to them; for if we sell, we supply them with all
the means of conducting their slave labour; we supply the implements of
labour, or the materials from which they are made; we supply clothing
for themselves and their slaves; we supply part of their foods and most
of their luxuries; the wines and the spirits in which the slave-owner
indulges; and we even supply the very materials of which the implements
of slave punishment or coercion are made;--and thus participate much
more directly in the profits of slavery than by admitting their produce
into this country. But if we supply them with all these articles, which
we do to the extent of nearly 3,000,000_l._ a year, and are not to
receive some of their slave-tainted produce, it must follow that we are
to give them without an equivalent, than which no greater encouragement
could be given for a perseverance in slave-holding. But the truth
is--whatever pretensions we make on this subject--we do, in exchange for
our goods, buy their polluted produce; we employ our ships to convey it
from their shores, and ourselves find a market for it among other
countries already well supplied with cheap sugar, where it is not
required, and where it only tends the more to depress the price in
markets already abundantly supplied. Nay, we do more; we admit it into
our ports, we land it on our shores, we place it in our bonded
warehouses, and our busy merchants and brokers deal as freely on our
exchanges in this slave produce as in any other, only with this
difference--that this cheap sugar is not permitted to be consumed by our
own