“Your Lordship may observe, in the instructions of the President, that
onlv certain modes of rewarding the labour of the free American Black
are mentioned, viz. renting land already improved, working in the field
to share the produce with the labourer, or, by being proprietors of
land, to cultivate on their own account without either rent or purchase,
having land from the free gift of the Government.
“The ordinary mode of rewarding the labourer by the payment of wages.
as in England or the East Indies, where the country is fully peopled,
is never once mentioned or alluded to by President Boyer, who may
be fairly supposed to understand the situation of the country which he
governs.” (1)
For the sake of the Haytians, we hope that Boyer understands the
country which he governs better than the Major understands the subject
on which he writes. Who before, ever thought of mentioning the renting
of land as a mode of rewarding the labourer? The renting of land is a
transaction between the proprietor of the soil and the capitalist.
Can Major Moody possibly imagine, that, in any part of the world, the
labourer, as a labourer, pays rent, or receives it? He surely must
know, that those emigrants who rented land, must have rented it in the
capacity, not of labourers, but of capitalists; that they must have
paid the rent out of the profits of their stock, not out of the gains of
their labour; that even when a man works on his own account, the gains
of his labour, though not generally called wages, are wages to all
intents and purposes, and though popularly confounded with his profits,
follow a law altogether different. But Boyer, says Major Moody, never
mentions wages. How can wages be better defined, than as the share of
the produce allowed to the labourer? Does Major Moody conceive that
wages can be paid only in money, or that money wages represent any thing
but that share of the produce of which the President speaks? he goes on,
however, floundering deeper and deeper in absurdity at every step.
“In the present constitution of Hayti, as administered by President
Boyer, in “Titre sur l’Etat Politique des Citoyens,” I find, under the
act, that the rights of citizenship are suspended, as regards domestics
working for wages (par l’etât de domestique à gages), in that very
republican country, where a person, ignorant of the effect of physical
causes, would naturally conclude that it would be most unjust to deprive
a man of his right of citizenship, because he preferred one mode of
subsisting himself to another, which the Government wished to encourage.”
(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 32.
Physical {401}causes again! We should like to know whether these
physical causes operate in France. In the French Constitution of the
year 1791, we find the following Article.
“To be an active citizen, it is necessary not to be in a menial
situation, namely, that of a servant receiving wages.”
It seems, therefore, that this law which, in the opinion of Major Moody,
nothing but the heat of the torrid zone will explain--this law, which
any person, ignorant of physical causes, would consider as grossly
unjust, is copied from the Institutions of a great and enlightened
European nation. We can assure him, that a little knowledge of history
is now and then very useful to a person who undertakes to speculate on
politics.
We must return for a moment to the North American emigrants. Much
mismanagement seems to have taken place with respect to them. They were
received with cordiality, and pampered with the utmost profusion, by
the liberal inhabitants of Port-au-Prince. They had left a country where
they had always been treated as the lowest of mankind; they had landed
in a country where they were overwhelmed with caresses and presents.
The heads of many were turned by the change. Many came from cities,
and, totally unaccustomed to agricultural labour, found themselves
transported into the midst of an agricultural community. The Government,
with more generosity than wisdom, suffered them to eat their rations in
idleness. This is a short summary of the narrative of Dr. Dewey, who was
himself on the spot. He continues thus.
“Although these and other circumstances damped the ardour of some of the
emigrants, and rendered them dissatisfied with their situation, yet I
have uniformly found the industrious and the most respectable, and
such as were fitted to be cultivators of the soil, contented with their
condition and prospects, and convinced that great advantages were put
within their reach. By far the greater part of the emigrants I saw were
satisfied with their change of country, and many were so much pleased
that they would not return on any consideration, and said, that they
never felt at home before, that they have never felt what it was to be
in a country where their colour was not despised. But these were such
as went out expecting to meet difficulties and not to live in the
city; and they are so numerous, and pursuing their course with so much
enterprise, that I feel there is no more reason for surprise at the
industry and contentment which they exhibit, than at the dissatisfaction
which has brought back 200, and will perhaps bring back a few more.” (1)
(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 35. 26
All {402}this statement the Major quotes as triumphantly as if it were
favourable to his hypothesis, or as if it were not of itself sufficient
to refute every syllable that he has written. Those who came from towns
shrunk from agricultural labour. Is this a circumstance peculiar to any
climate? Lei Major Moody try the same experiment in this country with
the footmen and shopmen of London, and see what success he will have.
But those who were accustomed to tillage, applied themselves to it
with vigour; and this though they came from a cold country, and must
therefore be supposed to have been peculiarly sensible of the influence
of tropical heat. It is clear, therefore, that their desire to better
their Condition surmounted that love of repose which, according to the
new philosophy of labour, can, in warm, fertile, and thinly peopled
countries, be surmounted only by the fear of punishment.
We have now gone through the principal topics of which the Major has
treated. We have done him more than justice. We have arranged his
chaotic mass of facts and theories; we have frequently translated his
language into English; we have refrained from quoting the exquisitely
ridiculous similitudes and allusions with which he has set off his
reasonings; we have repeatedly taken on ourselves the burden of the
proof in cases where, by all the rules of logic, we might have imposed
it on him. Against us, he cannot resort to his ordinary modes of
defence. He cannot charge us with ignorance of local circumstances,
for almost all the facts on which we have argued are taken from his own
report. He cannot sneer at us as pious, benevolent people, misled by a
blind hatred of slavery, eager in the pursuit of a laudable, end, but
ignorant of the means by which alone it can be obtained. We have treated
the question as a question purely scientific. We have reasoned as if we
had been reasoning, not about men and women, but about spinning-jeanies
and power-looms.
Point by point we have refuted his whole theory. We have shown that the
phenomena which he attributes to the atmosphere of the torrid zone, are
found in the most temperate climates; and that, if coercion be desirable
in the case of the West Indian labourer, the stocks, the branding iron,
and the forty stripes save one, ought to be, without delay introduced
into England.
There {403}are still some parts of the subject on which, if the article
were not already too long, we should wish to dwell. Coercion, according
to Major Moody, is necessary only in those tropical countries in which
the population does not press on the means of subsistence. He holds,
that the multiplication of the species will at length render it
superfluous. It would be easy to show that this remedy is incompatible
with the evil; that the deadly labour, or, as he would call it, the
steady labour, which the West Indian sugar-planter exacts, destroys life
with frightful rapidity; that the only colonics in which the slaves
keep up their numbers are those in which the cultivation of sugar
has altogether ceased, or has greatly diminished; and that, in those
settlements in which it is extensively and profitably carried on, the
population _decreases_ at a rate which portends its speedy extinction.
To say, therefore, that the negroes of the sugar colonies must continue
slaves till their numbers shall have greatly increased, is to say, in
decent and humane phraseology, that they must continue slaves till the
whole race is exterminated.
At some future time we may resume this subject. We may then attempt to
explain a principle, which, though established by long experience, still
appears to many people paradoxical, namely, that a rise in the price of
sugar, while it renders the slave more valuable, tends at the same time
to abridge his life. We may then also endeavour to show how completely
such a system is at variance with the principles on which alone
colonization can be defended. When a great country scatters, in some
vast and fertile wilderness, the seeds of a civilized population,
fosters and protects the infant community through the period of
helplessness, and rears it into a mighty nation, the measure, is not
only beneficial to mankind, but may answer as a mercantile speculation.
The sums which were advanced for the support and defence of a few
emigrants, struggling with difficulties and surrounded by dangers,
are repaid by an extensive and lucrative commerce with flourishing and
populous regions, which, but for those emigrants, would still have been
inhabited only by savages and beasts of prey. Thus, in spite of all the
errors which our ancestors committed, both during their connexion with
the North American provinces, and at the time of separation, we are
inclined to think that England has, on the whole, obtained great
benefits from them. From our dominions in New South Wales, if
judiciously governed, great advantages may {404}also be derived. But
what advantage can we derive from colonies in which the population,
under a cruel and grinding system of oppression, is rapidly wasting
away? The planter, we must suppose, knows his own interest. If he
chooses to wear his slave to death by exacting from him an exorbitant
quantity of work, we must suppose that he gains more by the work than he
loses by the death.
But his capital is not the only capital which has been sunk in those
countries. Who is to repay the English nation for the treasure which has
been expended in governing and defending them? If we had made Jamaica
what we have made Massachusetts, if we had raised up in Guiana a
population like that of New York, we should indeed have been repaid. But
of such a result under the present system there is no hope. It is not
improbable that some who are now alive may see the last negro disappear
from our Transatlantic possessions. After having squandered a sum,
which, if judiciously employed, might have called into existence a
great, rich, and enlightened people, which might have spread our arts,
our laws, and our language from the banks of the Maragnon to the Mexican
sea, we shall again leave our territories deserts as we found them,
without one memorial to prove that a civilized man ever set foot on
their shores.
But we must absolutely conclude. This subject is far too extensive to
be fully discussed at present; and we have another duty to perform. With
the Major we began, and with the Major we mean to end. That he is a very
respectable officer, and a very respectable man, we have no reason to
doubt. But we do, with all seriousness and good-will assure him, that
he has no vocation to be a philosopher. If he has set his heart on
constructing theories, we are sorry for him; for we cannot flatter him
with the faintest hope of success. A few undigested facts, and a few
long words that mean nothing, are but a slender stock for so extensive a
business. For a time he may play the politician among philosophers, and
the philosopher among politicians. He may bewilder speculative men with
the cant of office, and practical men with the cant of metaphysics.
But at last he must find his level. He is very fit to be a collector of
facts, a purveyor of details to those who know how to reason on them;
but he is no more qualified to speculate on political science, than a
bricklayer is to rival Palladio, or a nurseryman to confute Linuæus.