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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.


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