ABSTRACT
As has been said already, it was in relation to the sugar colonies of the West Indies and Mauritius that the principles of free trade were most difficult to apply. Peel even in his last six months of office proposed to retain the discrimination against slave-grown sugar which he had made in 1844. The Assembly of Jamaica had delusive hopes of inducing the Imperial Government still to give some protection to colonial sugar into the bargain —if the duty could not be taken off it altogether ‘in accordance with the principles of free trade now acted upon in respect to other articles’. To many planters, indeed, free trade did mean ruin: but West India business had always been so speculative, West India estates had always been so heavily mortgaged, that the transition from one economy to another was certain to be an extremely painful process.
