HOW SLAVERY GREW, AND HOW IT IS NOW MAINTAINED, IN THE WEST INDIES.
The system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the
West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from
the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the
colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still
less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was
that women and children could have no employment but that of the
field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower
in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the
lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one
of production. The next effect was, that as all were bound to remain
producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and
no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles.
Difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour,
even in agriculture itself. Indigo was tried, but of the price for
which it sold in England so large a portion was absorbed by
ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its
culture was abandoned. Coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it
grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have
been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of
indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received
by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was
saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a
shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. This amounted to about a
hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about
750 pounds of merchantable coffee;[26] and very much of it came out of
the producer--the poor negro. How enormously burdensome such a tax
must have been may be judged by the farmers who feel now so heavily
the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind
that the West India labourers were aided by the most indifferent
machinery of production. By degrees these various taxes rendered
necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the
sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as
the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that
single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the
great waste of life recorded in a former chapter.
Commerce, too, was interdicted, except with Great Britain and her
colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the
Spanish possessions on the continent; but this was brought to a close
by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[27] Slaves, however, might be
imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most
extensive scale, most of the demand for the Spanish colonies being
supplied from the British Islands. In 1775, however, the colonial
legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes,
imposed a duty of £2 per head, but this was petitioned against by the
merchants of England, and the home government directed the
discontinuance of the tax.[28] At this period the annual export of
sugar is stated,[29] to have been 980,346 cwt., the gross sales of
which, duty free, averaged £1 14s. 8d. per cwt., making a total of
£1,699,421,--so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by
freight, commissions, insurance, &e., that the net proceeds, of 775
sugar estates are stated to have been only £726,992, or less than
£1000 each. If to the £973,000 thus deducted be added the share of the
government, (12s. 3d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the
sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not
have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. The
planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of
slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the
government of Great Britain, by whom was absorbed the lion's share of
the produce of their labour. He was placed between the slave, whom he
was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the
merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to support, on
the other, and he could take for himself only what was left--and if
the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. The
consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years
following this period, there were sold for debt no less than 177
estates, while 92 remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and 55
were wholly abandoned. Seeing these things, it will not be difficult
to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited
in the British Islands. The planter could exist, himself, only by
overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less
than 324 out of 775 estates changed hands by reason of failure in the
short space of twenty years. Whatever might be his disposition to
improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible
while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price
of his commodity.
In the early years of the present century, land had become more
valuable. The price of sugar had risen about 80 per cent., and the
planters were gradually extricating themselves from their
difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable
amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better
fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[30] Slaves that had been as
low as £34, average price, had risen to £50, at which the 250,000 in
the island amounted to £12,500,000, and the real and personal
property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at £25,000,000.[31]
How great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters
still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as
it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive
effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association
which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of
plough and the harrow.
"I have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which
I am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but
reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the
weakness, I will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but
too apparent. These circumstances arise from the various modes of
agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in
possession, receiver in chancery, &c. The first of these characters
requires a definition. By the word attorney, in this sense, is meant
agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those
of a steward in England, that were it not for the dissimilarity of
executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, I should
pronounce them one and the same, But _as this colonial stewardship is
the surest road to imperial fortune_, men of property and
distinguished situation push eagerly for it. Attorneys are of two
sorts; six per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits
of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. on all the
produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are
paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have
lately discovered that a steward in Jamaica may be hired like a
steward in England, by which several thousand pounds a year are
saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their
own coffers. The office of both is to attend to the estates of their
employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them
that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in
Europe.
"Of all the evils in the island of Jamaica, which call for a remedy,
and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued,
the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain
description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession,
trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of
chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust
and impolitic law which allows six per cent. commission on the gross
produce of the estates under their charge and direction. The
iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have
long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to
reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable
principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the House of
Assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting
from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. That the
interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose
estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which I think you will be
convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. In
many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates
against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of
the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object
of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the
total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation
compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to
the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is
generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of
his debtor's estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to
compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of
his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c.
The law allowing such enormous commissions for services so
inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it
establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which
is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon,
if ever known to the attorney. Hence, in the different accounts, the
charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from 20s. per cwt.
to 45s., and even 50s.; and in the same books of one and the same
attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his
connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to
the distress of the property and of the proprietor. To form some
notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their
injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their
creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can
do. In the first place, it has not always been the practice to select
him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate
estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is
frequently a resident in one of the towns, _with perhaps as little
knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the
sweeper of the chancery office_; and indeed it would not be
inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of
chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates
which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than,
in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it,
most likely to their own correspondents. _Whatever the estates clear
is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better
for them_; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a
thousand ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the
chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure
is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his
hands. While the different creditors of the estate are fighting the
battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management
of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. At length a
prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point,
remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal
accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a
sale. This may take place in five or six years time, when all
pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver
takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received,
turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his
banker's, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn _on his own
account_, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to
seventeen and a half per cent. The estate at last is advertised for
sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the
chancellor. The sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer,
till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the
master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for
an admission of the receiver's accounts such as they may be, and for
time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his
hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place _when
the next crop is over_. The sale then is actually concluded, the
accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further
propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no
other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of _an estate in
ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been
long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to
nobody_, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a
kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. Let us now
turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what
better he offers. The debt of the involved estate is due to a man of
large property, or to a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant
to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial
what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally
made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In
justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it
is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns
it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the
plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works
are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock,
more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with
these grand designs, _the poor plantation negroes are of course
overworked_. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is
made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which
the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six
per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest
by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions,
with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc.,
absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an
accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. _The greater the
distress, the more the attorney fattens_; in a war, for instance, a
considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant,
and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little
sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the
disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of
ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails
them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the
attorney at £18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the
estate for £45 per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property
has carried the rum to pay for them. _It is well known that the rum
made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that
frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one
thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of
the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum_:
here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself.
Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills
which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a
cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from
ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he
disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen,
distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit;
nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of
which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in
the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is
ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in
Great Britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have
committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages
to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they
give for the management of their own concerns. An island merchant, or
according to the West India appellation, storekeeper, in great
business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at
eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in
separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the
special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of
parcels at thirty pounds per head. This does not speak much in favour
of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he
would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have
been considered as righteous overmuch. There is a variety of smaller
advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with
butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes
for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit,
fattening horses, and a long _et cetera_. To the attorney the
commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as
they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their
good-will is not neglected. To the involved planter their language
often is, 'Sir, I must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;'
that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance
of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad
passage. When they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars,
but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the
upper tier."[32]
An examination made about this period proved that these persons, 193
in number, held in charge 606 sugar-works, producing about 80,000
hhds. of sugar, and 36,000 puncheons of rum, which at the selling
prices of that day in England yielded about £4,000,000, upon which
they were entitled to six per cent., or £240,000. We have here a most
extensive system of absenteeism, and absentees _must_ be represented
by middlemen, having no interest in the slave or in the plantation,
except to take from both all that can be taken, giving as little as
possible back to either.
Why, however, did this absenteeism exist? Why did not the owners of
property reside on their estates? Because the policy which looked to
limiting the whole population, male and female, old and young, to the
culture of sugar, and forbade even that the sugar itself should be
refined on the island, effectually prevented the growth of any middle
class that should form the population of towns at which the planter
might find society that could induce him to regard the island as his
home. Such was not the case in the French Islands, because the French
government had not desired to prevent the weaker class of the
population from engaging in the work of manufacture, as has been seen
in the case of Grenada, in which sugar was refined until the period of
its surrender to the British arms.[33] Towns therefore grew up, and
men of all descriptions came from France to make the islands _their
home_; whereas the English colonists looked only to realizing a
fortune and returning home to spend it. All this is fully shown in the
following extract, in which is given a comparative view of the British
and French Islands immediately before the emancipation act of 1832.
"The houses have more of a European air than in our English colonies,
and I must notice with praise the existence of four booksellers'
shops, as large and well furnished as any second-rate ones in Paris.
The sight of books to sell in the West Indies is like water in the
desert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our
islands. The cause is this. The French colonists, whether Creoles or
Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no
wistful looks toward France; they have not even a packet of their
own; they marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies and
the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is quite different; except
a few regular Creoles to whom gratis rum and gratis coloured mothers
for their children have become quite indispensable, every one regards
the colony as a temporary lodging-place, where they must sojourn in
sugar and molasses till their mortgage's will let them live
elsewhere. They call England their home, though many of them have
never been there; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique
themselves more on knowing the probable result of a contested
election in England than on mending their roads, establishing a
police, or purifying a prison. The French colonist deliberately
expatriates himself; the Englishman never. If our colonies were to
throw themselves into the hands of the North Americans, as their
enemies say that some of them wish to do, the planters would make
their little triennial trips to New York as they now do to London.
The consequence of this feeling is that every one, who can do so,
maintains some correspondence with England, and when any article is
wanted, he sends to England for it. Hence, except in the case of
chemical drugs, there is an inconsiderable market for an imported
store of miscellaneous goods, much less for an assortment of articles
of the same kind. A different feeling in Martinique produces an
opposite effect; in that island very little individual correspondence
exists with France, and consequently there is that effectual demand
for books, wines, jewelry, haberdashery, &c., in the colony itself,
which enables labour to be divided almost as far as in the mother
country. In St. Pierre there are many shops which contain nothing but
bonnets, ribbons, and silks, others nothing but trinkets and toys,
others hats only, and so on, and there are rich tradesmen in St.
Pierre on this account. Bridge Town would rapidly become a wealthy
place, if another system were adopted; for not only would the public
convenience be much promoted by a steady, safe, and abundant
importation, and separate preservation of each article in common
request, but the demand for those articles would be one hundred-fold
greater in Bridge Town itself than it now is on the same account in
London, Liverpool, or Bristol, when impeded or divided and frittered
away by a system of parcel-sending across the Atlantic. Supply will,
under particular circumstances, create demand. If a post were
established at Barbadoes, or a steamboat started between the islands,
a thousand letters would be written where there are one hundred now,
and a hundred persons would interchange visits where ten hardly do at
present. I want a book and cannot borrow it; I would purchase it
instantly from my bookseller in my neighbourhood, but I may not think
it worth my while to send for it over the ocean, when, with every
risk, I must wait at the least three months for it. The moral
consequences of this system are even more to be lamented than the
economical, but I will say more about that at some other time."[34]
In another part of the same work, the writer says--
"Schools for the children of the slaves are the first and chief step
toward amelioration of condition and morals in every class of people
in the West Indies."
Here, however, the same difficulty had existed. For the same reason
that no towns could arise there could be no schools, and the planter
found himself forced to send his children to England to be educated;
the consequence of which was that at his death his property passed
into the hands of agents, and his successors having contracted a
fondness for European and a dislike for colonial life, remained
abroad, leaving their estates to go to ruin, while their people
perished under the lash of men who had no other interest than to ship
the largest quantity of sugar, molasses, and rum. All this was a
natural result of the system that denied to the women and children the
privilege of converting cotton into cloth, or of giving themselves to
other in-door pursuits. The mechanic was not needed where machinery
could not be used, and without him there could grow up neither towns
nor schools.
The reader will have remarked, in the first extract above given, that
the export of rum generally brought the planter in debt, and yet the
price paid for it by the consumers appears to have been nearly a
million of pounds sterling--that is, the people of England gave of
labour and its products that large sum in exchange for a certain
product of the labouring people of Jamaica, not a shilling of which
ever reached the planter to be applied to the amelioration of the
condition of his estate, or of the people upon it. The crop sold on
its arrival at 3s. or 3s. 6d. a gallon, but the consumer paid for it
probably 17s., which were thus divided:--
Government, representing the British people at large... 11.3
Ship-owners, wholesale and retail dealers, &c.......... 5.9
Land-owner and labourer................................ 0.0
----
17.2
If we look to sugar, we find a result somewhat better, but of similar
character. The English consumer gave for it 80s. worth of labour, and
those shillings were nearly thus divided:--
Government............................................. 27
Ship-owner, merchant, mortgagee, &c.................... 33
Land-owner and labourer................................ 20
----
80
The reader will now see that Mr. _Joshua Gee_ was not exaggerating
when he gave it as one of the recommendations of the colonial system
that the colonists left in England three-fourths of all their
products,[35] the difference being swallowed up by those who made or
superintended the exchanges. Such was the result desired by those who
compelled the planter to depend on a distant market in which to sell
all he raised, and to buy all he and his people needed to consume. The
more he took out of his land the more he exhausted it and the less he
obtained for its products, for large crops made large freights, large
charges for storage, and enormous collections by the government, while
prices fell because of the size of the crop, and thus was he ruined
while all others were being enriched. Under such circumstances he
could not purchase machinery for the improvement of his cultivation,
and thus was he deprived of the power to render available the services
of the people whom he was bound to support. Master of slaves, he was
himself a slave to those by whom the labours of himself and his
workmen were directed, and it would be unfair to attribute to him the
extraordinary waste of life resulting necessarily from the fact that
the whole people were limited to the labours of the field.
With inexhaustible supplies of timber, the island contained, even in
1850, not a single sawmill, although it afforded an extensive market
for lumber from abroad. Yielding in the greatest abundance the finest
fruits, there were yet no town's-people with their little vessels to
carry them to the larger markets of this country, and for want of
market they rotted under the trees. "The manufacturing resources of
this island," says Mr. Bigelow, "are inexhaustible;" and so have they
always been, but the people have been deprived of all power to profit
by them, and for want of that power there was lost annually a greater
amount of labour than would have paid, five times over, for the
commodities for which they were compelled to look to the distant
market. Of those who did not perish, because of the necessity for an
universal dependence on field employments, a large portion of the
labour was then, as it now must be, utterly wasted. "For six or eight
months of the year, nothing," says Mr. Bigelow, (Notes, p. 54,) "is
done on the sugar or coffee plantations." "Agriculture," he continues,
"as at present conducted, does not occupy more than half their time."
So was it fifty years ago, and it was because of the compulsory waste
of labour and consequent small amount of productive power that there
existed little opportunity for accumulating capital. Population
diminished because there could be no improvement of the condition of
the labourer who, while thus limited in the employment of his time,
was compelled to support not only himself and his master, but the
agent, the commission-merchant, the ship-owner, the mortgagee, the
retail trader, and the government, and this under a system that looked
to taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it. Of
the amount paid in 1831 by the British people for the products of the
320,000 black labourers of this island, the home government took no
less than £3,736,113 10s. 6d.,[36] or about eighteen millions of
dollars, being almost sixty dollars per head, and this for merely
superintending the exchanges. Had no such claim been made on the
product of the labour of those poor people, the consumer would have
had his sugar cheaper, and this would have made a large consumption,
and these eighteen millions would have been divided between the black
labourer on the one hand and the white one on the other. It would be
quite safe to assert that in that year each negro, old and young, male
and female, contributed five pounds--$24--to the maintenance of the
British government, and this was a heavy amount of taxation to be
borne by a people limited entirely to agriculture and destitute of the
machinery necessary for making even that productive. If now to this
heavy burden be added the commissions, freights, insurance, interest,
and other charges, it will readily be seen that a system of taxation
so grinding could end no otherwise than in ruin; and that such was the
tendency of things, was seen in the steady diminution of production.
Sugar, Rum, Coffee,
hhds. puncheons. lbs.
------ ---------- -------
In the three years
ending with 1802,
the average exports
were, of 113,000 44,000 14,000,000
Whereas those of the
three years ending
with 1829 were only 92,000 34,000 17,000,000
The system which looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage
of a market near at hand, to which he could carry his products, and
from which he could carry home the manure and thus maintain the powers
of his land, was thus producing its natural results. It was causing
the slave to became from day to day more enslaved; and that such was
the case is shown by the excess of deaths over births, as given in a
former chapter. Evidence of exhaustion was seen in every thing
connected with the island. Labour and land were declining in value,
and the security for the payment of the large debt due to mortgagees
in England was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the
people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation
because of the impossibility of competing with England in
manufactures. Sugar had declined to little more than a guinea a
hundred-weight, and rum had fallen to little more than two shillings a
gallon;[37] and nearly the whole of this must have been swallowed up
in commissions and interest. Under such circumstances a great waste of
life was inevitable; and therefore it is that we have seen
importations of hundreds of thousands of black men, who have perished,
leaving behind them no trace of their having ever existed. But on whom
must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that
here exhibited? Not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no
volition whatsoever. He was not permitted to employ his surplus power
in refining his own sugar. He could not legally introduce a spindle or
a loom into the island. He could neither mine coal nor smelt iron ore.
He could not in any manner repay his borrowings from the land, and, as
a matter of course, the loans he could obtain diminished in quantity;
and then, small as they were, the chief part of what his commodities
exchanged for was swallowed up by the exchangers and those who
superintend the exchanges, exercising the duties of government. He was
a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals,
intellect, and life; and upon them, and not upon him, must rest the
responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the
island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of
emancipation.
Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the
destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion--the public
opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the
product of negro labour--drove the government to the measure of
releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a
certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in
England, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land
delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a
shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. The
slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them
employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost
impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. The consequences are
seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its
value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation,
and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while
other land, far more productive than any in New England, may be had at
from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land
the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be
found on a perusal of the following paragraph:--
"They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of
work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural
labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and
reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the
coffee-berry, and tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all
the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years
during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made
less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have
promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some
consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate
under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped
his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills
and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on
this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world
would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the
natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the
hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever
been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men."
_Bigelow's Jamaica_, p. 156.
The artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist in his
contest with the trader and the government, as is shown in the whole
history of the world. The first desires to tax him by buying cheaply
and selling dearly. The second desires to tax him for permitting him
to make his exchanges, and the more distant the place of exchange, the
greater the power of taxation. The artisan comes near to him, and
enables him to have the raw materials combined on the spot, the
producer of them exchanging directly with the consumer, paying no tax
for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission merchants, or
shopkeepers.
In a piece of cloth, says Adam Smith, weighing eighty pounds, there
are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also "several
thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people," and
it is the wool and the corn that travel cheaply in the form of cloth.
What, however, finally becomes of the corn? Although eaten, it is not
destroyed. It goes back again on the land, which becomes enriched; and
the more that is taken from it; the more there is to be returned, the
more it is enriched, the larger are the crops, and the greater is the
ability of the farmer to make demands on the artisan. The reward of
the latter increases with the growth in the value of the land and with
the increase in the wealth of the land-owners by whom he is
surrounded; and thus it is that all grow rich and free together, and
that the community acquires from year to year power to resist attempts
at taxation beyond that really needed for the maintenance of the
rights of person and property. The greater the power to make exchanges
at home, the greater will always be found the freedom of man in
relation to thought, speech, action, and trade, and the greater the
value of land.
The object of the policy pursued toward the colonies was directly the
reverse of all this, tending to prevent any diversification whatsoever
of employments, and thus not only to prevent increase in the value of
land, but to diminish its value, because it forbade the return to the
earth of any portion of its products. It forbade association, because
it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. It forbade the
immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, the establishment of
schools, and consequently forbade the growth of intellect among the
labourers or their owners. It forbade the growth of population,
because it drove the women and the children to the culture of sugar
among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the islands. It thus
impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and
weakened the community, thus making it a mere instrument in the hands
of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges--the
merchants and the government--the class of persons that, in all ages,
has thriven at the cost of the cultivator of the earth. By separating
the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown,
to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole sales of the
commodities consumed, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the
land and labour that had produced it. They, of course, grew strong,
while the sugar-producing land and labour grew weak, and the weaker
they became, the less was the need for regarding the rights of either.
In this state of things it was that the landholder was required to
accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his
claim to demand of the labourer the performance of the work to which
he had been accustomed. Unfortunately, however, the system pursued has
effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste needed to
produce in the latter desires for any thing beyond a sufficiency of
food and a shirt. Towns and shops not having grown, he had not been
accustomed even to see the commodities that tempted his
fellow-labourers in the French Islands. Schools not having existed,
even for the whites, he had acquired no desire for books for himself,
or for instruction for his children. His wife had acquired no taste
for dress, because she had been limited to field labour. Suddenly
emancipated from control, they gratified the only desire that had been
permitted to grow up in them--the love of perfect idleness, to be
indulged to such extent as was consistent with obtaining the little
food and clothing needed for the maintenance of existence.
Widely different would have been the state of affairs had they been
permitted to make their exchanges at home, giving the cotton and the
sugar for the cloth and the iron produced by the labour and from the
soil of the island. The producer of the sugar would then have had all
the cloth given for it by the consumer, instead of obtaining
one-fourth of it, and then the land would have increased in value, the
planter would have grown rich, and the labourer would have become
free, by virtue of a great natural law which provides that the more
rapid the augmentation of wealth, the greater must be the demand for
labour, the greater must be the _quantity_ of commodities produced by
the labourer, the larger must be his _proportion_ of the product, and
the greater must be the tendency toward his becoming a free man and
himself a capitalist.[38]
As a consideration for abstaining from converting their own sugar and
cotton into cloth, it had been provided that their products should
enjoy certain advantages in the ports of the mother country; and the
understanding at the date of emancipation was that the free negro
should continue in the enjoyment of the same privileges that had been
allowed to the slave and his master. It was soon, however, discovered
that the negro, having scarcely any desire beyond the food that could
be obtained from a little patch of land, would not work, and that,
consequently, the supply of sugar was reduced, with a large increase
of price, and that thus the ship-owner suffered because of diminished
freights, the merchant because of reduced consumption, and the
government because of reduced revenue. Instead of obtaining, as
before, one-fourth of the product, the cultivator had now perhaps
one-half, because the taxes did not rise with the rise of price.
Nevertheless, the land-owners and labourers of the island were weaker
than before, for all power of association had disappeared; and now it
was that the trader and the government discovered that if they would
continue to draw from the sugar producers of the world their usual
supplies of public and private revenue, they must resort again to
slave labour, putting the poor free negro of Jamaica, with his
exhausted soil, on the same footing with the slave of Brazil and Cuba,
on a virgin soil; and this, too, at a moment when the science of
Europe had triumphed over the difficulty of making sugar cheaply from
the beet-root, and Germany, France, and Belgium were threatening to
furnish supplies so abundant as almost to exclude the produce of the
cane. They, too, had the sugar-refinery close at hand, whereas the
poor free negro was not permitted to refine his product, _nor is he so
even now_, although it is claimed that sugar might still be grown with
advantage, were he permitted to exercise even that small amount of
control over his labour and its products.
What was the character of the machinery with which they were to enter
on this competition will be seen by the following extract:--
"I could not learn that there were any estates on the island decently
stocked with implements of husbandry. Even the modern axe is not in
general use; for felling the larger class of trees the negroes
commonly use what they call an axe, which is shaped much like a
wedge, except that it is a little wider at the edge than at the
opposite end, at the very extremity of which a perfectly straight
handle is inserted. A more awkward thing for chopping could not be
well conceived--at least, so I thought until I saw the instrument in
yet more general use about the houses in the country, for cutting
firewood. It was, in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer
half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than
any thing else I can compare it to: with this long knife, for it is
nothing else, I have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for
several minutes, to accomplish what a good wood-chopper, with an
American axe, would finish at a single stroke. I am not now speaking
of the poorer class of negro proprietors, whose poverty or ignorance
might excuse this, but of the proprietors of large estates, which
have cost their thousands of pounds."[39]
Cuba, too, had its cities and its shops, and these it had because the
Spanish government had not desired to compel the people of the island
to limit themselves to cultivation alone. Manufactures were small in
extent, but they existed; and the power to make exchanges on the spot
had tended to prevent the growth of absenteeism. The land-owners were
present to look after their estates, and every thing therefore tended
toward improvement and civilization, with constantly increasing
attraction of both capital and labour. Jamaica, on the contrary, had
but a seaport so poor as not to have a single foot of sidewalk paved,
and of which three-fourths of the inhabitants were of the black race;
and among them all, blacks and whites, there were no mechanics. In the
capital of the island, Spanishtown, with a population of 5000, there
was not to be found, in 1850, a single shop, nor a respectable hotel,
nor even a dray-cart;[40] and in the whole island there was not a
stage, nor any other mode of regular conveyance, by land or water,
except on the little railroad of fifteen miles from Kingston to the
capital.[41]
Such was the machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, by
aid of which the free people of Jamaica were to maintain "unlimited
competition" with Cuba, and its cities, railroads, and virgin soil,
and with Europe and its science. What is to be the ultimate result may
be inferred from the following comparative view of the first four
years of the century, and the last four for which we have returns:--
Sugar, Rum, Coffee,
hhds. puncheons. lbs.
------ ---------- -------
1800 to 1803,
average export, 124,000 44,000 14,600,000
1845 to 1848,
average export 44,000 17,000 6,000,000
The consequence of this is seen in the fact that it requires the wages
of two men, for a day, to pay for a pound of butter, and of two women
to pay for a pound of ham, while it would need the labour of eighty or
a hundred men, for a day, to pay for a barrel of flour.[42] The London
_Times_ has recently stated that the free labourer now obtains less
food than he did in the days of slavery, and there appears no reason
to doubt the accuracy of its information. This view would, indeed,
seem to be fully confirmed by the admission, in the House of Commons,
that the cost of sugar "in labour and food" is less now than it was
six years since.[43]
How indeed can it be otherwise? The object sought for is cheap sugar,
and with a view to its attainment the production of sugar is
stimulated in every quarter; and we all know that the more that is
produced the larger will be the quantity poured into the market of
England, and the greater will be the power of the people of that
country to dictate the terms upon which they will consent to consume
it. Extensive cultivation and good crops produce low prices, high
freights, large commissions, and large revenue; and when such crops
are made the people of England enjoy "cheap sugar" and are
"prosperous," but the slave is rendered thereby more a slave,
obtaining less and less food in return for his labour. Nevertheless,
it is in that direction that the whole of the present policy of
England points. The "prosperity" of her people is to be secured by aid
of cheap sugar and high-priced cloth and iron; and the more
exclusively the people of India and of Brazil can be forced to devote
themselves to the labours of the field, the cheaper will be sugar and
the greater will be the tendency of cloth and iron to be dear. What,
however, becomes of the poor free negro? The more sugar he sends the
more the stocks accumulate, and the lower are the prices, and the
smaller is his power to purchase clothing or machinery, as will now be
shown.
The London _Economist_, of November 13, furnishes the following
statement of stocks and prices of sugar in the principal markets of
Europe:--
1849. 1850. 1851. 1852.
----- ----- ----- -----
Stocks.... cwt.. 3,563,000 2,895,000 3,810,000 3,216,000
Prices--duty free.
Havana Brown... 17 to 24s. 20 to 27s. 16 to 22s. 19 to 26s.
Brazil Brown... 16 to 20s. 18 to 22s. 12 to 17s. 16 to 20s.
The stocks of 1849 and 1852 were, as we see, nearly alike, and the
prices did not greatly differ. Taking them, therefore, as the
standard, we see that a _diminution_ of supply so small as to cause a
diminution of stock to the extent of about 400,000 cwts., or only
_about three per cent. of the import_, added about _fifteen per cent._
to the prices of the whole crop in 1850; whereas a similar _excess_ of
supply in 1851 caused a reduction of prices almost as great. The
actual quantity received in Europe in the first ten months of the last
year had been 509,000 cwts. less than in the corresponding months of
the previous one. The average monthly receipts are about a million of
cwts. per month, and if we take the prices of those two years as a
standard, the following will be the result:--
1851...... 12,000,000 cwts. Average 16s. 9d.... £10,050,000
1852...... 11,500,000 " " 20s. 3d.... 11,643,750
----------
Gain on short crop ............................. 1,593,750
If now we compare 1850 with 1851,
the following is the result:--
1851 as above .................................. 10,050,000
1850...... 11,000,000 cwts. Average 21s. 9d.... 11,971,250
----------
1,921,250
Now if this reduction of export had been
a consequence of increased domestic
consumption, we should have to add the
value of that million to the product,
and this would give............................. 1,187,500
----------
£3,108,750
==========
We have here a difference of thirty per cent., resulting from a
diminution of export to the amount of one-twelfth of the export to
Europe, and not more than a twenty-fourth of the whole crop. Admitting
the crop to have been 24,000,000 of cwts., and it must have been more,
the total difference produced by this abstraction of four per cent.
from the markets of Europe would be more than six millions of pounds,
or thirty millions of dollars. Such being the result of a difference
of four per cent., if the people of Cuba, Brazil, India, and other
countries were to turn some of their labour to the production of
cloth, iron, and other commodities for which they are now wholly
dependent on Europe, and thus diminish their necessity for export to
the further extent of two per cent., is it not quite certain that the
effect would be almost to double the value of the sugar crop of the
world, to the great advantage of the free cultivator of Jamaica, who
would realize more for his sugar, while obtaining his cloth and his
iron cheaper? If he could do this would he not become a freer man? Is
not this, however, directly the reverse of what is sought by those who
believe the prosperity of England to be connected with cheap sugar,
and who therefore desire that competition for the sale of sugar should
be _unlimited_, while competition, for the sale of cloth is to be
_limited_?
"Unlimited competition" looks to competition for the sale of raw
produce in the markets of England, and to the destruction of any
competition with England for the sale of manufactured goods; and it is
under this system that the poor labourer of Jamaica is being
destroyed. He is now more a slave than ever, because his labour yields
him less of the necessaries and comforts of life than when a master
was bound to provide for him.
Such is a brief history of West India slavery, from its commencement
to the present day, and from it the reader will be enabled to form an
estimate of the judgment which dictated immediate and unconditional
emancipation, and of the humanity that subsequently dictated unlimited
freedom of competition for the sale of sugar. That of those who
advocated emancipation vast numbers were actuated by the most praise
worthy motives, there can be no doubt; but unenlightened enthusiasm
has often before led almost to crime, and it remains to be seen if the
impartial historian, will not, at a future day, say that such has been
here the case. As regards the course which has been since pursued
toward these impoverished, ignorant, and, defenceless people, he will
perhaps have less difficulty; and it is possible that in recording it,
the motives which led to it, and the results, he may find himself
forced to place it among crimes of the deepest dye.