Читать книгу The Colonization of Australia : The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building - Richard Charles Mills - Страница 7

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The chief industry of these islands was the production of sugar. Their prosperity had been built upon the two pillars of slave labour and monopoly of the English sugar market, each of which was now dangerously insecure. The English evangelicals who had in 1807 abolished the slave trade to English colonies made no secret of the fact that the abolition of colonial slavery was their next aim [10] and they were within measurable distance of success. In addition, the discredit into which the mercantile system had fallen seriously threatened the sugar monopoly.

One advantage possessed by this group was that, in the unreformed Parliament, the sugar planters were a well-recognized interest, capable of urging the colonial point of view on English legislators. [11] Their views on slavery, monopoly, and sugar duties were ably voiced in Parliament. The Marquis of Chandos, for example, when asking in the House of Commons in 1830 for a reduction of the sugar duties, called "on all those gentlemen who had obtained seats in that House through West India property—and he knew that there were many—to assist him in relieving that interest." [12]