THE unhappy contest which has now arisen between the local legislature of Jamaica and the mother country, has recently attracted a large portion of public attention, both in consequence of it having been the cheval de bataille on which the two parties which divide the state have come to a decisive conflict, and from its involving within itself the great question of the government of our colonial dependencies by the reformed legislature. The powerful excitement of the first of these circumstances, was that which in the outset brought it so prominently forward; but to the thoughtful and far-seeing, the last is the one which gives it such a momentous and enduring character. Recent events, both in Canada and the West Indies, have made it but too apparent, that the capability of the new constitution to withstand the shock of adverse fortune, and maintain inviolate the unseen chain which binds together the vast fabric of the British empire, is ere long to be put to the test; and that the time is rapidly approaching when the strain is to be applied to its dependencies, under which all former maritime dominions, from the beginning of time, have been snapped asunder.

The slightest acquaintance with history must be sufficient to convince every well-informed person, that colonial jealousy and discontent is the rock on which all the great maritime powers of the world have hitherto split. As the formation of a great maritime dominion without colonies is altogether impossible for this plain reason, that the carrying trade is generally enjoyed as much by foreigners as natives, and the only traffic which can be permanently relied on as a nursery for seamen, is that which is carried on with your own dependencies, and of which foreign jealousy or hostility cannot deprive you-so the loss of such colonies has invariably been the certain forerunner of approaching ruin. To trust to the carrying trade, as a resource which can be relied on when colonial dependencies have been severed from the mother country, is of all delusions the most deplorable. Experience has every

where proved, what reason might a priori have anticipated, that trade with independent states, how extensive soever, invariably comes in the later stages of society to fall more and more into the hands of foreign shipowners, and that, in the very magnitude of a great manufacturing state, foreign commercial intercourse, is laid, but for the intervention of its own colonies, the sure foundation for its ultimate subjugation. The reason is to be found in the lower value of money, and consequent higher price of shipbuilding and seamen, in an old opulent commercial community than a young and rising one, which has the materials of a commercial navy within its own bounds, and the consequent cheaper rate at which goods can be transported and ships maintained abroad than at home. From this cause, the debility of advanced years necessarily and very shortly comes over every maritime community which is not perpetually reunited by the trade with its own colonies, just as the weakness of age prostrates every family which is not upheld by the growing strength of its own younger branches.

History abounds with the proofs of this great and leading truth, which strikes at once at the root of the reciprocity system, and demonstrates that it is to our own colonies, and not the trade with independent states, that we must look for the means both of upholding our maritime superiority, and obtaining subsistence or employment to our numerous and rapidly increasing population. But it is sufficient to refer, amidst a host of others, to two facts which are of themselves decisive of the position. America and Canada are both rising states of European descent, with the same language, habits, occupations, and external circumstances; but the one is a colonial dependency of Great Britain, and the other is an independent state. And what is the result? Why, our North American colonies, with a population of only 1,500,000 souls, employ 560,000 tons of British and 530,000 of native shipping; while America, with a population of 14,000,000 of souls, only gave employment, in 1831, to 91,000 British tons; though the exports to it, in

1836, rose to L.13,000,000. The whole remainder was taken off in American bottoms, which amounted to 250,000 tons, proving thus, incontestably, how rapidly an increasing trade with a foreign state, in an old commercial community, comes to glide into the foreign in preference to the home vessels. Again, the tonnage of Great Britain employed in the trade with all the states of Europe, is now considerably less than it was thirtyfive years ago; while that with our own colonies, during that period, has increased more than five-fold. In fact, it is the vast extent and rapid increase of our colonial commerce, which has compensated the decline of the foreign trade with independent states, and rendered the nation blind to the rapid strides which the reciprocity system is making in destroying our shipping employed in such intercourse with other states; and yet, by a singular perversity of intellect, the reciprocity advocates continue to refer to the sum total of our exports and shipping returns, as evidence in their favour, when it is produced only by the progressive growth of the system they deprecate over that which they sup

port.

There never was a country so evidently destined by Providence, so nobly endowed by nature, with all the gifts requisite to make it the heart and soul of all the European colonies over the globe, as Great Britain. Placed on the edge of the European States, cradled in the Atlantic waves, she is "the midway station given" between the energy, wealth, and enterprise of Europe, and the boundless realms of future greatness and population in distant parts of the world. Abounding to overflowing with coal and ironstone, she possesses within herself, in inexhaustible profusion, the means of creating both the moving power and the manufacturing implements necessary to cover the earth with her fabrics. Blessed for ages with a free constitution, teeming in all quarters with the ardour of freedom, singularly tempered with moderation and ultimate sobriety of judgment, she is powerfully moved by the ardour and energy which are the great characteristics of democratic societies; and yet she has hi

therto, as if by a miracle, been protected, by aristocratic foresight, from the ruinous explosions which in almost every other instance have torn asunder the state machine where such a power has been generated within its bosom. The consequences of this extraordinary combination of popular energy with patrician direction, of natural advantages with adaptation of character, have been, that here trade has been raised to a colossal magnitude, amounting last year to one hundred and five mil lions of exports; that her flag is seen, and her influence is felt, in every quarter of the earth; that in the east, in the west, and in the south, vast empires are arising out of her overflowing numbers; and that it is already the boast of her transatlantic descendants, that to the Anglo-Saxon race is destined the sceptre of the globe.

Numerous are the evils, both social, physical, and political, which have arisen, perhaps unavoidably, from so extraordinary a destiny being reserved for a little island in the Atlantic; and obvious as are the dangers, both external and internal, which now menace the very existence of society, and the duration of all those blessings and this godlike career of usefulness in the British islands, there is yet none of them which does not admit of an easy ultimate remedy, by a due attention to our colonial dependencies; nor any one which may not be converted into a source of strength, if the obvious destiny of Great Britain, as the propagator of Christian principles and the European race through the globe, is not forgotten, amidst the insane jealousy or monstrous folly of the dominant multitude in these islands. we overwhelmed with a redundant and rapidly increasing population? Do we find twenty-four millions-an enormous multitude of inhabitants-in two islands of such limited extent as Great Britain and Ireland? Are we reasonably anxious how such a prodigious crowd of human beings, increasing at the rate of a thousand a day, in a great degree dependent, directly or indirectly, on foreign commerce, are to be maintained, if the outlets of that commerce come to be impaired or closed up amidst the vicissitudes of future war, or the fast increasing decay of

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national strength? Let us turn to our colonies, and there we shall find young and rapidly growing states, to which all that surplus population would prove the most inestimable of blessings, and whose boundless wastes invite the hand of laborious industry, and the powers of European art, to convert them into fruitful fields.

Do we fear, in the rapid progress and keen rivalry of European manufactures, and the uniform and immovable jealousy of European governments, the decline or extinction of the accustomed vents for our manufactured produce, in the old world?-Let us look to the east, the west, and the south, and we shall see empires rising up, with the strength of an armed man, in whose industry, wealth, and prosperity, is to be found the surest guarantee, not merely for the continuance, but the boundless increase, of our manufactured exports and maritime strength all over the world. Do we observe with dread the progress of anarchical principles amongst us, and mark the advent of that second, and well-known, and often-predicted period in revolutionary progress, where the working-classes who continue, are striving to revolt against the rule of the middle classes who command, the movement?-Even here, too, the handwriting on the wall of ages, while it marks our danger, points also to the only specific by which a remedy can be applied. These widespread discontents-this monstrous revolutionary ambition, which would convert the illiterate, and rash, and too often corrupted and profligate operatives of great cities, into the rulers of the state, is chiefly dangerous, because it is pent up within narrow limits; it is by opening the safety-valve that the danger of the explosion is to be prevented. This violent democratic spirit is the mainspring of emigration-this impatience of control, this desire to rule, is the centrifugal force intended by Providence to overcome the cohesive effect of habit and civilized enjoy. ment; and send forth the burning democrat to the wilderness of nature, with the Bible in one hand and the axe in the other, to attempt in new worlds those fabled dreams of liberty and equality which never can be realized in the old, and seek on distant shores that freedom, of which, in his apprehension, Europe has become unworthy.

Is Ireland a source of incessant disquietude?- Has experience now proved, that all the efforts made to engraft civilisation and order on its semi-barbarous Celtic, priest-ridden population, are ineffectual?-that we have given them emancipation of which they were unworthy, and reform which has been prolific only of ruin?—that conflagration, rapine, and murder, are steadily advancing before the breath of an aspiring hierarchy, and atrocities the most frightful daily committed under the eyes of a democratic government, by a reckless, bloody-minded, infuriated peasantry? Even in these melancholy circumstances-the darkest stain which the history of the world has yet affixed to the Catholic faith, and the cause of freedom and toleration-a ray of hope, opening a vista of ultimate felicity, is yet to be found in the capabilities for receiving the surplus population of the country which the colonies afford. Here, as in almost all other cases where priestly ambition combined with revolutionary passion fires the torch, it is agrarian distress and wide-spread misery which has laid the train; and, if we would apply the only effectual remedy to the mul tiplied evils which have so long fastened on that devoted land, we must commence with affording a vent to the overwhelming multitudes who now overspread its surface, and finding employment to the industrious poor who may be left behind. Here, again, the colonies start up to lend a helping hand to the empire, when almost sinking under the load of that passiondesolated land in the waves. The innumerable bands of half-employed, half-civilized, half-starving bigots, who now encumber its surface-the ready instruments, within its narrow and wasted bounds, of priestly ambition or democratic vengeance-possess qualities which, if properly directed, might be productive of prosperity, wealth, and comfort, to themselves and all around them. Diffused over the boundless wastes of America, Southern Africa, and Australia, they would find ample employment in reclaiming the wilderness to the first stage of improvement; converted, by comparative comfort, to industrious habits, they would cease to follow the hideous trade of assassination and conflagration; enabled to bring up, in rude plenty, a numerous offspring, they would be

come the progenitors of a bold, and hardy, and independent yeomanry. Insensibly, in the course of a few generations, their ferocity would be converted into valour, their restlessness into activity, their indolence into exertion, their disregard of human blood into the love of country and home. From elements the most discordant, from materials the most unpromising, from passions the most desolating in their native seats, Great Britain possesses the means, not only of effectually liberating her own territory from the dreadful evils under which it labours, but of realizing in distant lands the beautiful vision of the poet :

"Come, bright Improvement, in the car of time,

And rule the spacious world from clime to clime;

Thy handmaid Art shall every wild explore,

Trace every wave, and culture every shore. On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along, And the dread Indian chants a dismal song; Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,

And bathe in brains the murdering toma. hawk

There shall the flocks on thymy pastures

Is money awanting to carry these generous designs into effect?-are the resources of the state, and more than its resources, required to meet the numerous foreign and domestic enemies by which its independence and tranquillity are menaced?-and is government unable to lay its hand upon any funds at all commensurate to the magnitude of the remedies which require to be applied to the state? Here, too, the colonies afford a certain source of strength; and, in providing for their growth and protection, the surest foundation is laid for the independence and security of the parent state. How was it that the Romans, for so many ages, held together the vast and unwieldy provinces of their empire, and established a dominion which, from

the wall of Antoninus to the foot of Mount Atlas, and from the river Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, was actuated by one spirit, governed by one set of laws, and inspired by one unanimous sense of experienced obligation? Simply because they conquered for the interest of the provinces even more than themselves; because they consulted their wishes and desires even more than those of the ruling state, and employed the vast army which the resources of the empire enabled them to keep on foot, in executing great public works, constructing bridges, and forming highways, to connect together their mighty dominion. Why is not the navy of England employed in similar beneficent purposes, to cement together its vast colonial empire, embracing the globe in its circuit, by the strong chain of experienced obligation? Why are the royal ships of England employed during peace merely in naval parades, useless cruises, or inglorious observation of insult to the British flag, when their co-operation is so loudly called for to relieve one part of the empire of its superfluous load of inhabitants, and transfer to another the muchneeded supply of civilized industry? Could foreign nations entertain any jealousy of the British navy, if employed in great part in such a work of manifest necessity and utility? Could fifty sail of the line, a hundred frigates, and two hundred smaller vessels, be better employed than in such a transference of the resources of the empire from those places where they are superfluous to those where they are required? If such a system was judiciously adopted, how rapid beyond all that the world has ever seen, would be the growth of the British colonies? What would it signify that our European trade was declining under the withering embrace of reciprocity treaties, if new fields of adventure were daily arising, and new markets opening on the shores of the St Lawrence, the wilds of Australia, or the mountains of New Zealand? How soon would disappear the discontents of the colonies, thus constantly supplied by the gratuitous efforts of the parent state, with what to them is a perennial source of strength, of wealth, and prosperity -a continued influx of skilled and civilized labourers? And what need we fear either the armies or navy of Rus

sia, if fifty British line-of-battle ships, and twice as many frigates, regularly employed in the transport of emigrants to our colonial dependencies, were ever ready, with their crews which have braved every breeze of the ocean, to protect the majesty of the empire from injury or insult?

The British empire exhibits at this moment, on the opposite side of the ocean, a social aspect so peculiar and remarkable, that the intention of Providence in regard to it, the purposes it is destined to serve in the moral improvement of mankind, and the means which remain for the delivery of itself from impending ruin, are as clearly marked out as if they were declared in thunders from the clouds of Mount Sinai. On the one side of the ocean, is an old, densely peopled, and highly civilized nation, teeming with energy, buoyant with spirit, but cramped by want of territory, and suffering under numerous real, and still more numerous imaginary, evils. On its opposite shore, at the distance of many thousand miles, other provinces of the same empire are to be seen, boundless in extent, teeming with riches, overflowing with fertility, but covered with the jungle and the forest, the abode of the tiger and the rhinoceros, yet requiring nothing but the superfluous hands of the parent state to convert them into a terrestrial paradise. To give effectual relief to the old empire, nothing is needed but to adopt the measures which would at once give life and vigour to the new. Between the two lies the British navy, raised upapparently by providential eare to universal dominion, and once numbering a thousand pendants on the ocean; capable, while it protects the integrity of the whole empire, of affording the means of rapid, safe, and gratuitous transmission of the surplus of one part to supply the wants of another. Yet, oh, incredible blindness of mankind! this navy, at once the glory, andcement, and strength of this mighty empire, which could convert the ocean into a secure paved highway encircling the globe, has, under democratic influence and direction, been suffered almost to become extinet, and not a king's ship has ever been employed in that useful labour which could at once enrich, strengthen, invigorate, and mutually endear every part of the empire.

But it is not only by sins of omission that the British Government has been found wanting to its colonial subjects; its sins of commission have been still more serious and flagrant; and there is perhaps no parallel to be found, in the long annals of human misrule and oppression, to the catalogue of injuries with which the dominant multitude in the British islands have alienated the affections of their West Indian possessions. In treating of this momentous subject, we shall not immerse our readers and ourselves in a sea of details: we shall not quote angry resolutions of the House of Commons, or semi-rebellious speeches in the House of Assembly; we shall not go into details of prison acts, or complaints against Baptist missionaries, or misdeeds of prejudiced stipendiary magistrates. All these are important topics, which are the proper subject of consideration for Government or the Legislature, when the specific subjects to which they relate are brought under consideration; but they are not the real causes of the discord. Like the last angry notes in a diplomatic correspondence which terminates in war, they bespeak a previously excited rancour and state of exasperation, and may be held out as the ostensible causes of difference, but they are not the real grounds of hostility. It is in previous injuries, in deep and irremediable wounds inflicted by the injustice of the parent state, that the real cause of discord is to be found.

It is evident that the rule of a distant parent state, over powerful, and vigorous, and distant colonies, can only continue for a succession of ages if founded on three principles:-1st, A fair and equal reciprocity of advantages between the central empire and the colonial possessions. 2d, The esta blishment in the colonies of the same general frame of government as obtains in the parent state: under such modifications only, as necessarily are suggested by the difference in their physical or social situation. 3d, The maintenance of such an armed force, naval and military, by the mother country, as may compensate to its remote offspring the want of independence by the certainty of protection.

It is remarkable, that while democratic institutions in the parent state are the mainspring of all colonial adventure-the centrifugal force by which,