OF EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES.
The harmony of the universe is the result of a contest between equal
and opposing powers. The earth is attracted to the sun and from the
sun; and were either of these forces to be diminished or destroyed,
chaos would be the inevitable result. So is it everywhere on the
earth. The apple falls toward the centre of the earth, but in its
passage it encounters resistance; and the harmony of every thing we
see around us is dependent on the equal balance of these opposing
forces. So is it among men. The man who has food to sell wishes to
have a high price for it, whereas, he who needs to buy desires to have
it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the
necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish
suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the
farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and
largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a
gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a
similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the
anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the
competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together
and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent upon
the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell
labour. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it,
and the farmer may be ruined. Diminish suddenly the number of those
who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become the slave of the
farmer.
For almost two centuries, men possessed of capital and desirous to
purchase labour had been induced to transfer it to the colonies, and
the government secured to them the right to obtain labourers on
certain specified terms--such terms as made the labourer a mere
instrument in the hands of the capitalist, and prevented him from
obtaining any of those habits or feelings calculated to inspire him
with a love for labour. At once, all control over him was withdrawn,
and the seller of labour was converted into the master of him who was
thus, by the action of the government, placed in such a situation that
he _must_ buy it or be ruined. Here was a disturbance of the order of
things that had existed, almost as great as that which occurs when the
powerful steam, bursting the boiler in which it is enclosed, ceases to
be the servant and becomes the master of man; and it would have
required but little foresight to enable those who had the government
of this machine to see that it must prove almost as ruinous.
How it operated in Southern Africa, where the slave was most at home,
is shown by the following extracts from the work of a recent traveller
and settler in that colony:--[13]
"The chain was broken, and the people of England hurraed to their
heart's content. And the slave! What, in the meanwhile, became of
him? If he was young and vicious, away he went--he was his own
master. He was at liberty to walk to and fro upon the earth, 'seeking
whom he might devour.' He was free: he had the world before him where
to choose, though, squatted beside the Kaffir's fire, probably
thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable
dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the Boer's or
tradesman's kitchen. But he was fain to like it--he could get nothing
else--and this was earned at the expense of his own soul; for it was
given him as an inducement to teach the Kaffir the easiest mode of
plundering his ancient master. If inclined to work, he had no certain
prospect of employment; and the Dutch, losing so much by the sudden
Emancipation Act, resolved on working for themselves. So the
virtuous, redeemed slave, had too many temptations to remain
virtuous: he was hungry--so was his wife--so were his children; and
he must feed them. How? No matter."
These people will work at times, but they must have wages that will
enable them to play much of their time.
"When we read of the distress of our own country, and of the wretched
earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea of these same
Fingoes striking work (as Coolies) at Waterloo Bay, being
dissatisfied with the pay of 2s. a day. As their services are
necessary in landing cargo, their demand of 3s. a day has been
acceded to, and they have consented to work when it suits them!--for
they take occasional holidays, for dancing and eating. At Algoa Bay,
the Fingoes are often paid 6s. a day for working as Coolies."
These men have all the habits of the savage. They leave to the women
the tilling of the ground, the hoeing of the corn, the carrying of
water, and all the heavy work; and to the boys and old men the tending
of the cattle, while they themselves spend the year in hunting,
dancing, eating, and robbing their neighbours--except when
occasionally they deem it expedient to do a few days' work at such
wages as they may think proper to dictate.
How it has operated in the West Indies we may next inquire, and with
that view will take Jamaica, one of the oldest, and, until lately, one
of the most prosperous of the colonies. That island embraces about
four millions of acres of land, "of which," says Mr. Bigelow,--
"There are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to each other which
are not susceptible of the highest cultivation, while not more than
500,000 acres have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated."[14]
"It is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are from
twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be
mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture every thing
produced by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. Far less
expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in the United
States for manure, would irrigate all the dry lands of the island,
and enable them to defy the most protracted droughts by which it is
ever visited."[15]
The productiveness of the soil is immense. Fruits of every variety
abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and Indian corn, grow
abundantly. The island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the
greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in
the greatest variety. In addition to this, it possesses copper-mines
inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined
extensively before many years. "Such," says Mr. Bigelow,--
"Are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and
poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every
thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple
with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are
miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter
helplessness of abject want.
"'Magnas inter opes inops.'
"Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of
sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are
falling to decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to
industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her
inhabitants; and the day, I think, is at hand when there will be none
left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which
the Jamaica planter was once so distinguished."
The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high
for the price of sugar. This Mr. Bigelow denies--not conceding that a
shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to
show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he
receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really
far higher than in any part of the Union. Like the Fingo of Southern
Africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land all that is
indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little
more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. The
consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs
from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and
corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are
now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being
almost one for every three people on the island. All cultivators, they
yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the
fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard,
herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well
as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be
found among the unappropriated lands of the island.
It is impossible to read Mr. Bigelow's volume, without arriving at the
conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect
except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so
long as any thing remained. Sixteen years of freedom did not appear to
its author to have "advanced the dignity of labour or of the labouring
classes one particle," while it had ruined the proprietors of the
land; and thus great damage had been done to the one class without
benefit of any kind to the other. From a statistical table published
in August last, it appears, says the _New York Herald_, that since
1846--
"The number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally
abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number
partially abandoned to sixty-three; the value of which two hundred
and thirty-one estates was assessed, in 1841, at £1,655,140, or
nearly eight millions and a half of dollars. Within the same period,
two hundred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally,
and twenty partially abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in
1841, £500,000, or two millions and a half of dollars; and of
cattle-pens, (grazing-farms,) one hundred and twenty-two have been
totally, and ten partially abandoned, the value of which was a
million and a half of dollars. The aggregate value of these six
hundred and six estates, which have been thus ruined and abandoned in
the island of Jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted
by the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two
and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half million
of dollars."
As a necessary consequence of this, "there is little heard of," says
Dr. King, "but ruin."[16] "In many districts," he adds--
"The marks of decay abound. Neglected fields, crumbling houses,
fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery--these are common sights, and
soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in
succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which
is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the
wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that
parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes,
in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, 'to seek about the
bush to find the entrance into their houses.'
"The towns present a spectacle not less gloomy. A great part of
Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive
conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that
visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at
all diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing,
and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge
in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still
left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the
lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by
a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times
have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath."
"The finest land in the world," says Mr. Bigelow, "may be had at any
price, and almost for the asking." Labour, he adds, "receives no
compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to
find the way to market." Properties which were formerly valued at
£40,000 would not now command £4000, and others, after having been
sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. of their former value, have been
finally abandoned.
The following is from a report made in 1849 and signed by various
missionaries:--
"Missionary efforts in Jamaica are beset at the present time with
many and great discouragements. Societies at home have withdrawn or
diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and
schools throughout this island. The prostrate condition of its
agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as
much as formerly for maintaining the worship of God and the tuition
of the young, and induces numbers of negro labourers to retire from
estates which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence
in the mountains, where they are removed in general from moral
training and superintendence. The consequences of this state of
matters are very disastrous. Not a few missionaries and teachers,
often struggling with difficulties which they could not overcome,
have returned to Europe, and others are preparing to follow them.
Chapels and schools are abandoned, or they have passed into the
charge of very incompetent instructors."--_Quoted in King's Jamaica_,
p. 111.
Population gradually diminishes, furnishing another evidence that the
tendency of every thing is adverse to the progress of civilization. In
1841, the island contained a little short of 400,000 persons. In 1844,
the census returns gave about 380,000; and a recent journal states
that of those no less than forty thousand have in the last two years
been carried off by cholera, and that small-pox, which has succeeded
that disease, is now sweeping away thousands whom that disease had
spared. Increase of crime, it adds, keeps pace with the spread of
misery throughout the island.
The following extracts from a Report of a Commission appointed in 1850
to inquire into the state and prosperity of Guiana, are furnished by
Lord Stanley in his second letter to Mr. Gladstone, [London, 1851.]
Of Guiana generally they say--
"'It would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin
which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary
body; but your Commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice
the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced
upon the colony at large. Where whole districts are fast relapsing
into bush, and occasional patches of provisions around the huts of
village settlers are all that remain to tell of once flourishing
estates, it is not to be wondered at that the most ordinary marks of
civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that in many districts of
the colony all travelling communication by land will soon become
utterly impracticable.'
"Of the Abary district--
"'Your Commissioners find that the line of road is nearly impassable,
and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents
now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive
of malignant fevers.'
"Nor are matters," says Lord Stanley, "much better farther south--
"'Proceeding still lower down, your Commissioners find that the
public roads and bridges are in such a condition, that the few
estates still remaining on the upper west bank of Mahaica Creek are
completely cut off, save in the very dry season; and that with regard
to the whole district, unless something be done very shortly,
travelling by land will entirely cease. In such a state of things it
cannot be wondered at that the herdsman has a formidable enemy to
encounter in the jaguar and other beasts of prey, and that the
keeping of cattle is attended with considerable loss, from the
depredations committed by these animals.
"It may be worth noticing," continues Lord Stanley, "that this
district, now overrun with wild beasts of the forest; was formerly
the very garden of the colony. The estates touched one another along
the whole line of the road, leaving no interval of uncleared land.
"The east coast, which is next mentioned by the Commissioners, is
better off. Properties once of immense value had there been bought at
nominal prices, and the one railroad of Guiana passing through that
tract, a comparatively industrious population, composed of former
labourers on the line, enabled the planters still to work these to
some profit. Even of this favoured spot, however, they report that it
'feels most severely the want of continuous labour.' The
Commissioners next visit the east bank of the Demerara river, thus
described:--
"'Proceeding up the east bank of the river Demerary, the generally
prevailing features of ruin and distress are everywhere perceptible.
Roads and bridges almost impassable are fearfully significant
exponents of the condition of the plantations which they traverse;
and Canal No. 3, once covered with plantains and coffee, presents now
a scene of almost total desolation.'
"Crossing to the west side, they find prospects somewhat brighter: 'a
few estates' are still 'keeping up a cultivation worthy of better
times.' But this prosperous neighbourhood is not extensive, and the
next picture presented to our notice is less agreeable:--
"'Ascending the river still higher, your Commissioners learn that the
district between Hobaboe Creek and 'Stricken Heuvel' contained, in
1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there
remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with
plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two
exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the
opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located
themselves, who avoid all communication with Europeans, and have
seemingly given themselves up altogether to the rude pleasures of a
completely savage life.'
"The west coast of Demerara--the only part of that country which
still remains unvisited--is described as showing _only_ a diminution
of fifty per cent. upon its produce of sugar: and with this fact the
evidence concludes as to one of the three sections into which the
colony is divided. Does Demerara stand alone in its misfortune? Again
hear the report:--
"'If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for
deep apprehension, your Commissioners find that Essequebo has
retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large
and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted
fields of this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to
fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.'"
Describing another portion of the colony--
"They say of one district, 'unless a fresh supply of labour be very
soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that it will become
completely abandoned.' Of a second, 'speedy immigration alone can
save this island from total ruin.' 'The prostrate condition of this
once beautiful part of the coast,' are the words which begin another
paragraph, describing another tract of country. Of a fourth, 'the
proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle
against approaching ruin. Again, 'the once famous Arabian coast, so
long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of
departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest
estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors
lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot
whence they derived them.' Once more, the lower part of the coast,
after passing Devonshire Castle to the river Pomeroon, presents a
scene of almost total desolation.' Such is Essequebo!"
"Berbice," says Lord Stanley, "has fared no better: its rural
population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from
the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to
enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of
example and sometimes of control. But, on the condition of the negro
I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of
property with which I have to do. What are the districts which
together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast--the Canje
Creek--East and West banks of the Berbice River--and the West coast,
where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To
each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order,
apply:--
"'The abandoned plantations on this coast,[17] which if capital and
labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are
either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters,
who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public
roads and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between
the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are
impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot-passengers they
are extremely dangerous. The number of villagers in this deserted
region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish
and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact,
the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.'
"'Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the
county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee
estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in
sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The
coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the
sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely
for want of labour, and being supported principally by African and
Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave
and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the
district will become abandoned.'
"'Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs
here,[18] that the two gentlemen whom your Commissioners have
examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting
"its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized
man first found it.'"
"'A district [19] that in 1829, gave employment to 3635 registered
slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600
labourers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although
it is estimated there are upwards of 2000 people idling in villages
of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water,
and perfect swamps; while in some places the bridges are wanting
altogether. In fact, the whole district is fast becoming a total
wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet
continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by
water.'
"'Except in some of the best villages,[20] they care not for back or
front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded,
and consequently the drainage is gone; while in many instances the
public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a
means of transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of
the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle
in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances
like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of
squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no
hope for the colony.'"
Under these circumstances it is that the London _Times_ furnishes its
readers with the following paragraph,--and as that journal cannot be
regarded as the opponent of the classes which have lately controlled
the legislation of England, we may feel assured that its information
is to be relied upon:--
"Our legislation has been dictated by the presumed necessities of the
African slave. After the Emancipation Act, a large charge was
assessed upon the colony in aid of civil and religious institutions
for the benefit of the enfranchised negro, and it was hoped that
those coloured subjects of the British Crown would soon be
assimilated to their fellow-citizens. From all the information which
has reached us, no less than from the visible probabilities of the
case, _we are constrained to believe that these hopes have been
falsified. The negro has not obtained with his freedom any habits of
industry or morality. His independence is little better than that of
an uncaptured brute_. Having accepted none of the restraints of
civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, and the wants
of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of
wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion.
_The blacks_, therefore, _instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen,
have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that
with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure
of its resources for instructing or controlling its population_. So
imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been
signed by classes of colonial society, hitherto standing aloof from
politics, _and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop,
clergy, and the ministers of all denominations in the island, without
exception, have recorded their conviction that in the absence of
timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the
island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrograde
to barbarism_."
The _Prospective Review_, (Nov. 1852,) seeing what has happened in the
British colonies, and speaking of the possibility of a similar course
of action on this side of the Atlantic, says--
"We have had experience enough in our own colonies, not to wish to
see the experiment tried elsewhere on a larger scale. It is true that
from some of the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of
negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has
not been diminished: it is true that in Jamaica and Demerara, the
commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the
planters--who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new
state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements
by a promise of fair wages. But we have no reason to suppose that the
whole tragi-comedy would not be re-enacted in the Slave States of
America, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of Congress
to-morrow. Property among the plantations consists only of land and
negroes: emancipate the negroes--and the planters have no longer any
capital for the cultivation of the land. Put the case of
compensation: though it be difficult to see whence it could come:
there is every probability that the planters of Alabama, accustomed
all their lives to get black labour for nothing, would be as
unwilling to pay for it as their compeers in Jamaica: and there is
plenty of unowned land on which the disbanded gangs might settle and
no one question their right. It is allowed on all hands that the
negroes as a race will not work longer than is necessary to supply
the simplest comforts of life. It would be wonderful were it
otherwise. A people have been degraded and ground down for a century
and a half: systematically kept in ignorance for five generations of
any needs and enjoyments beyond those of the savage: and then it is
made matter of complaint that they will not apply themselves to
labour for their higher comforts and more refined luxuries, of which
they cannot know the value!"
The systematic degradation here referred to is probably quite true as
regards the British Islands, where 660,000 were all that remained of
almost two millions that had been imported; but it is quite a mistake
to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now
found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by
gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the
reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of
Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he
does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as
to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical,
moral, and intellectual condition. Had he been more fully informed in
relation to the proceedings in the British colonies, and in these
colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to assert that
"the responsibility of having degraded the African race rests upon the
American people,"--the only people among whom they have been improved.
Nevertheless, it is right and proper to give due weight to all
opinions in regard to the existence of an evil, and to all
recommendations in regard to the mode of removal, let them come from
what source they may; and the writer of the article from which this
passage is taken is certainly animated by a somewhat more liberal and
catholic spirit than is found animating many of his countrymen.
That the English system in regard to the emancipation of the negro has
proved a failure is now admitted even by those who most warmly
advocated the measures that have been pursued. "There are many," says
the London _Times_, "who think that, with proper regulations, and
particularly with a system for the self-enfranchisement of slaves, we
might have brought about the entire emancipation of the British West
Indies, with much less injury to the property of the planter and to
the character of the negro than have resulted from the Abolition Act.
Perhaps," it continues, "the warning will not be lost on the
Americans, who may see the necessity of putting things in train for
the ultimate abolition of slavery, and thereby save the sudden shock
which the abolitionists may one day bring on all the institutions of
the Union and the whole fabric of American society."
The Falmouth [Jamaica] _Post_, of December 12, 1852, informs us that,
even now, "in every parish of the island preparations are being made
for the abandonment of properties that were once valuable, but on
which cultivation can no longer be continued." "In Trelawny," it
continues, "many estates have been thrown up during the last two
years, and the exportation to the United States of America, within a
few months, of upward of 80,000 tons of copper, which was used for the
manufacture of sugar and rum, is one of the 'signs of the times,' to
which the attention of the legislature should be seriously directed,
in providing for the future maintenance of our various institutions,
both public and parochial. Unless the salaries of all official
characters are reduced, it will be utterly impossible to carry on the
government of the colony."
Eighty thousand tons of machinery heretofore used in aid of labour, or
nearly one ton for every four persons on the island, exported within a
few months! The _Bande Noire_ of France pulled down dwelling-houses
and sold the materials, but as they left the machinery used by the
labourers, their operations were less injurious than have been those
of the negroes of Jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish
with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the
destruction of machinery. Under such circumstances we can feel little
surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is
it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be
suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it
enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn
them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found
them?"[21] It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom.
"Immediate emancipation," as he says, "solves only the simplest forms
of the problem."
The land-owner has been ruined and the labourer is fast relapsing into
barbarism, and yet in face of this fact the land-owners of the
Southern States are branded throughout the world as "tyrants" and
"slave-breeders," because they will not follow in the same direction.
It is in face of this great fact that the people of the North are
invited to join in a crusade against their brethren of the South
because they still continue to hold slaves, and that the men of the
South are themselves so frequently urged to assent to immediate and
unconditional emancipation.
In all this there may be much philanthropy, but there is certainly
much error,--and with a view to determine where it lies, as well as to
show what is the true road to emancipation, it is proposed to inquire
what has been, in the various countries of the world, the course by
which men have passed from poverty to wealth, from ignorance and
barbarism to civilization, and from slavery to freedom. That done, we
may next inquire for the causes now operating to prevent the
emancipation of the negro of America and the occupant of "the
sweater's den" in London; and if they can once be ascertained, it will
be then easy to determine what are the measures needful to be adopted
with a view to the establishment of freedom throughout the world.