have practically fallen the principle of protection in that country
altogether. That principle was a little complicated in regard to the
sugar duties and to the navigation laws. The sugar produced in the West
Indian colonies was allowed to enter that country at rates of duty much
lower than those imposed upon the sugar grown in foreign lands. The
abolition of slavery in the colonies had made labor there somewhat
costly and difficult to obtain continuously, and the impression was that
if the duties on foreign sugar were reduced it would tend to enable
those countries which still maintained the slave trade to compete at
great advantage with the sugar grown in the colonies by that free labor
to establish which England had but just paid so large a pecuniary fine.
Therefore the question of free trade became involved with that of free
labor; at least, so it seemed to the eyes of many a man who was not
inclined to support the protective principle in itself. When it was put
to him, whether he was willing to push the free-trade principle so far
as to allow countries growing sugar by slave labor to drive our
free-grown sugar out of the market, he was often inclined to give way
before this mode of putting the question, and to imagine that there
really was a collision between free trade and free labor. Therefore a
certain sentimental plea came in to aid the Protectionists in regard to
the sugar duties.

Many of the old Antislavery party found themselves deceived by this
fallacy, and inclined to join the agitation against the reduction of the
duty on foreign sugar. On the other hand, it was made tolerably clear
that the labor was not so scarce or so dear in the colonies as had been
represented, and that colonial sugar grown by free labor really suffered
from no inconvenience except the fact that it was still manufactured on
the most crude, old-fashioned, and uneconomical methods. Besides, the
time had gone by when the majority of the English people could be