ee right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the
Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of
the Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No." And why not?
"Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is," they will
say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and by
slaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic in
defiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. True
it is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then
on the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty
of six hundred per cent., sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent.:
and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise
duty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of
revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and
make it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly." You may be
right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moral
obligation of which you talk so much be one which may with propriety
yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it be
paramount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British
snuff and cigars.

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors of
the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain
and Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws in
existence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrine
that many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, when
they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But what
will the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new
budget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already
existing in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowd
of new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with a
proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation of
raw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict
accordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that
it will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend
to vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown by
slaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common
sense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a