Colonies

Lord Grey and immigration to British West India Colonies 1850. Two printed Colonial Office circular dispatches: on ‘Coloured Emigrants from United States’ and ‘Immigration’ of ‘Coolies’ ‘Kroomen’ and Africans taken from captured Slavers’.

24264 — ONE: ‘Coloured Emigrants from United States’ Downing Street 16 October 1850. TWO: ‘Immigration’ Downing Street 30 October 1850. Two interesting items from the period leading up to the American Civil War. Both items are scarce: no other copy of either traced. In good condition lightly aged. Extracted from a volume of Parliamentary Circulars with the ownership signature "Frederick Peel" Member of Parliament from Feb. 1849 dated 1839-1851 very good condition. The context makes it plain that this Circular was sent to all Colonial Governors a gap in the text indicating where the name of a specific Governor would appear in MS. Disbound from a volume and paginated in manuscript.Both printed in copperplate font. ONE: Printed ‘Circular’ dated from Downing Street 16 October 1850. Headed in manuscript ‘Colonial Emigrants from United States’. In manuscript at end not in Grey’s hand ‘/sd/ Grey’. 2pp 8vo. Paginated in manuscript 239-240. Begins: ‘Sir / I have to acquaint you that it has been suggested to me that a desirable Class of Emigrants for the West India Colonies might be induced to come to them from among the Black and Colored Population of the United States whose arrival and location if they chose to come would I have no doubt be advantageous to themselves and to the Colonies.’ TWO: Printed ‘Circular’ dated Downing Street 30 October 1850. Headed in manuscript ‘Immigration’. In manuscript at end again not in Grey’s hand: ‘/sd/ Grey’. 7pp 8vo. Not paginated in type; paginated in manuscript 239-245. Divided into eleven numbered sections the first of which reads: ‘In the course of the long correspondence which it has devolved upon me to conduct with the Governors of the Sugar Colonies and others on the subject of the Immigration of Labourers it has been my endeavour to promote the establishment of such laws and regulations respecting Immigrants introduced at the public expence as should make the Immigration most conducive to the well being of the Immigrants themselves of the Colonists by whom their labour was required and of the Populations at large of the Colonies in which they were to be placed.’ The chief ‘descriptions of Immigrants’ discussed in the correspondence are: ‘1st Coolies brought or about to be brought from the East Indies to some of the West Indian Colonies by the aid of Colonial Revenues or Loans raised by the Colonies and guaranteed by this Country. - 2nd. Kroomen or Africans from Sierra Leone and those parts of Africa where Slavery does not exist brought to the West Indies by the same means. - 3rd. Africans taken from captured Slavers liberated under sentences of the Mixed Commission Courts and brought to the West Indies at the sole cost of this Country.’Printed ‘Circular’ dated from Downing Street 16 December 1842. Headed in manuscript ‘Crime in the high Seas’. At bottom in manuscript not Stanley’s hand: ‘/sd/ Stanley’. Twenty-nine lines in copperplate font. The first of four paragraphs reads: ‘The attention of Her Majesty’s Government has been recently called to various Laws enacted in the British Colonies for the prevention regulation or punishment of acts done in the High Seas as on the Seas within one League of the Shore of the Colonies in which such Laws have originated. After consultation with the Queen’s Advocate and the Attorney and Solicitor General Her Majesty’s Government have adopted the following conclusions on the subject.’ ONE: ‘Coloured Emigrants from United States’, Downing Street, 16 October 1850. TWO: ‘Immigration’, Downing Street, 30 Oc unknown