ABSTRACT
The retribution which attended the colonial interest for their vote against agricultural protection was swifter than the most prophetic vengeance could have dreamed. Within a month of his accession to power, at the end of an exhausting session, the new minister announced a sweeping measure which was at once to admit sugar the produce of slave labour, to the British market. In the course of this debate a follower of Lord George Bentinck, lamenting the destruction of our colonial system and expressing his belief that we should ere long have to reconstruct it, observed that it was a characteristic of our history that country generally retraced its steps. Lord George Bentinck met the motion of the government with an amendment couched in very temperate and guarded language. It did not express so much as he himself felt, but he wished to unfurl a flag which might rally many round it.
