THE LONDON GLOBE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.
We find the following frank and explicit admission in the Globe of 10th
July, 1856:
"Our own West India Islands are fast relapsing into primitive
savageness. When the rich lands of Jamaica are being yearly
abandoned, and when in Trinidad and Guiana cultivation has almost
ceased, it is not likely that England will care to extend her
sovereignty further over tropical territory, which can only be
brought into use by a system which has been solemnly condemned."
Now, let us rigidly examine and ascertain what is the condemned system,
what the approved system, that has been generally adopted in its stead,
and why this system is approved, and the free negro system condemned as
a failure.
There is no doubt the writer alludes to the system of domestic slavery,
in the general, as the condemned system; and especially, to that serfdom
or villienage which lately prevailed, but is now abolished throughout
Western Europe. In asserting that the system of slavery has been
condemned, and yet admitting West India emancipation to be a failure, he
in effect maintains that the liberation of the villiens has been no
failure. He means that it has been no failure, because the liberated
villiens do work: aye, just twice as hard and as long as their
ancestors, the serfs. He means it is no failure, because they not only
work harder and longer, but work for half the pay or allowance of their
servile ancestors. He means it is no failure, because the once masters,
now employers, get their labor for half what it cost to support them as
slaves. He means it is no failure, because free labor in England is more
plentiful and far cheaper than slave labor in America. He means it is no
failure, because the employers, besides getting cheaper and more
abundant labor, are relieved of all the cares and anxieties of governing
and providing for their laborers, in health and in sickness, in old age
and in infancy. In fine, he means it is no failure, because the laborers
of England are not half so free now as before their pretended
emancipation. They have lost all their rights, half their liberty (for
they work harder than before,) and their former masters have been
relieved of all their legal obligations and responsibilities.
No--British emancipation has not failed, if we look solely to the
selfish interests of the property class. And British liberty, we shall
show in another chapter, means the unlimited right of the property class
to oppress the laboring class, uncoupled with the obligation to provide
for them. But this writer well knew, that looking to the effect of
emancipation on the condition of the laboring class in England, it has
been a cruel and monstrous failure, from first to last. They are almost
as savage and ignorant as West India negroes, know nothing of the Bible,
and live in a state of continued destitution, hunger, and excessive
labor, from generation to generation--from infancy to old age.
West India emancipation was a blunder of swindling philanthropy. People
were told that the negroes, after emancipation, would work harder, work
for less, and be more of slaves than before, just as had happened with
emancipated English. But philanthropy "hath bad luck." It overlooked, or
forgot, the few wants and indolent habits of the negro, the abundance of
mountain lands, the fertile soil, the volunteer fruits and mild climate
of Jamaica. The negro _is really_ free, and luxuriates in sloth,
ignorance and liberty, as none but a negro can. The mistake and the
failure consisted in setting him really free, instead of nominally so.
Hinc illae lachrymae!
What vile hypocrisy to shed crocodile tears over the happy negro, and
boast of British Liberty, which is daily and hourly consuming, by
poverty, and cold, and foul air and water, and downright starvation, the
lives of ten millions of your white brethren and neighbors!
But this system, which carried to untimely graves three hundred thousand
Irishmen in a single season, has not been _condemned_. No; it is
profitable to the oppressors, and will not be condemned.
In all countries where a few own the property and the population is
tolerably dense, laborers relieved from domestic slavery are remitted to
the exploitation of skill and capital, which renders them less free and
worse situated in all respects after emancipation than before. To prove
this great truth, is the chief object of our present work. We know that
the philosophy of the subject is intricate and complex, and that we have
the prejudices, fanaticism and prepossessions of a world to oppose and
conquer. We therefore indulge in frequent iteration, and adduce numerous
proofs, examples and illustrations.