[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’.

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. 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.’