_Camden Town_, _May_ 20, 1844.
THOUGHTS, &c.
ELEVEN years have passed away since, at an enormous cost, slavery was
abolished in the British dominions. The day that witnessed the act is
one memorable in the annals of our country. It stands out conspicuously,
and throws into the shade much over which the Christian and the patriot
cannot choose but mourn. All honour be given to the men by whom it was
carried. Let the fame and name of such benefactors of their race as
Granville Sharp, Zachary Macaulay, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson,
ever live fresh and fair in the remembrances of an admiring posterity.
Theirs be the praise due to all who, through good and bad report, in
faith and sincerity, give battle for the right, when weaker men are cowed
down by might; and glorious is it to know that the words they spoke had
in them life and power—that they reached the heart of England’s millions,
so that the cry for justice to the sons of Africa was borne as by the
winds of heaven over the length and breadth of this thickly-peopled isle,
and was heard in morning light and evening’s shade, when man went forth
to his work, or when he rested from the labours of the day, till at
length Great Britain washed her hands of the stain she had contracted by
her sanction of the accursed traffic in flesh and blood, and proclaimed
freedom and manhood to the slave.
So far so good. Whatever imperfections may have attended it, it was a
noble act—one of which we may well be proud; on the part of the many, it
was done in sincerity and truth. The enlightened people of England
considered it almost as a boon to themselves. There was joy and
rejoicing at home as well as in the green islands of the west. When the
morning dawned on which the slave, the black, stepped forth unchained and
free, praise and thanksgivings burst from the lips of others than the
long-oppressed descendants of Ham. It was the triumph of humanity; and
man, wherever he lived, and whatever his lot, could well be glad.
Years have passed, and the people of England have not as yet reaped the
benefit to which they were fairly entitled by the sacrifices they made.
There is a monopoly in favour of West India produce, which deprives the
working man of this country of an essential article of food. Slavery
still remains, and, till that monopoly is abolished, will remain. Our
abolition of it was regarded as an experiment by slave-holding states—an
experiment which they now consider to have entirely failed. It is quite
natural they should arrive at such a conclusion. What we have done has
been but little. We have merely withdrawn from the slave-market our
demand for slaves. It remains for us to show, that economically as well
as morally we have made a change for the better; that the labour of free
men is more productive than that of slaves. By keeping up our monopoly
we practically declare the reverse. We supply the slave-holder with his
strongest arguments against abolition; and, by giving him an advantage
over us in the markets of the world, we afford a stimulus to slavery
itself; and thus commit what we profess to abhor. Slave-owners are not
remarkable for a high moral sense; could we show them that it was for
their interest to emancipate their slaves, they would not be long ere
they became our converts. As it is, we appeal to them in vain. To the
voice of the charmer they are deaf. Even Lord Brougham’s silvery tones
and gentle pleadings fail to move and win; nor does Joseph Sturge meet
with a better fate.
Slavery is a tremendous ill—an unmitigated curse; earth cannot produce
its equal. Where it rears its hideous head, all that raises man above
the beast, and makes life a thing to be desired, languishes and dies.
Its state is dark as night—dreary as death—terrible as hell. For putting
it down two plans have been proposed. It can be destroyed, it is said,
by government interference, by treaties, by armed power. This has been
tried; we shall now see with what effect. As soon as, in 1807,
Parliament had passed a bill abolishing the British slave trade, by doing
which we but did what was done in Denmark in 1792, the British ministers
at all foreign courts were ordered to negotiate treaties for the
abolition of the slave-trade. Mr. Laird tells us—{11}
“They commenced with Portugal, after nine years’ labour, concluding a
treaty in 1810. In 1815 Great Britain paid £300,000 for seizing
Portugal vessels engaged in the trade up to the 1st June, 1814; and
the same year gave up to her £600,000, for another treaty putting an
end to the Portuguese slave-trade,” except for the purpose of
supplying the transatlantic possessions belonging to the crown of
Portugal. “In 1817, a third treaty was made, under which the Mixed
Commission Courts and Preventive Squadron were established. In 1823,
another treaty was brought forth.” In the mean while the trade
carried on by miscreants of all nations, under the fraudulent cover
of the Portuguese flag, became a disgrace to Christendom. {12a} “In
1889, the British Parliament took the law into their own hands, and
passed an act authorising British cruisers to seize Portuguese
vessels engaged in the slave-trade, and constituting British
Vice-Admiralty Courts to condemn them. In 1842, this law was
repealed, and a fifth treaty has been made with Portugal. We are
therefore about to recommence the same round again with this power;
though the increase of the trade under our former treaties was from
25,000 slaves in 1807 to 56,000 in 1822; and in 1839, forty-eight
vessels, under the Portuguese flag (out of a total of sixty-one
slave-vessels) were condemned at Sierra Leone.”
We next come to Spain. In 1814, we offered her a bribe of £800,000 if
she would abolish the slave-trade at the end of five years. This she
refused, but promised to prohibit the trade, except for Spanish
possessions. In 1815 we got her to sign, with other powers, at the
Congress of Vienna, a declaration “that the slave trade is repugnant to
the principles of humanity and of universal morality.” In 1817, another
treaty was got, on our paying £400,000 for it; and in 1822, a third; and
“the sea swarmed with slave-ships, carrying on the slave-trade under the
flag of Spain.” {12b} And so it continued until 1836, when the fourth,
or Clarendon treaty was made; which Sir Fowell Buxton designates “an
impudent fraud,” but which Mr. Bandinell thinks perfection, or as near
perfection as a treaty can get. In it was embodied an equipment clause,
by which a vessel with certain articles and fittings on board is liable
to condemnation. This has had the effect of diminishing the trade
carried on under the Spanish flag, but the number of slaves landed in
Cuba does not appear to have been at all affected by it; forty-three
vessels entering the port of Havanna, after landing their slaves on the
coast of Cuba, in 1836; the annual average number in the next four years
being forty-five.
“It appears, therefore, that for our £400,000 paid in 1817 we have got
four treaties, under which the supply of the Spanish colonies with slaves
has gone on as regularly as that of any other article of commerce,
increasing and diminishing with the demand for them; that in the mean
time we have, as slave-catchers for them, handed over to their tender
mercies several thousand emancipados at the Havanna, who are a degree
worse off than the slaves themselves; and our consul having contrived an
ingenious plan to get back some of these poor people, has had his
‘exequatur’ withdrawn, and turned out of the colony.
“On the separation of Brazil from Portugal, negotiations were entered
into to induce the Brazilian government to abandon the slave trade; and,
in 1826, a treaty was entered into declaring it piracy, after 1830, when
a mixed British and Brazilian court were to adjudicate on seizures. The
greatest exertions were used to import slaves from the date of this
treaty, and the vessels were consequently much more crowded than usual;
yet, out of 150,587 slaves legally imported into Rio Janeiro between the
1st July, 1827, and 31st December, 1830, when it became a smuggling
trade, the mortality on the middle passage was _only eight per cent._ In
1831, the trade still going on, Don Pedro issued a decree, declaring all
slaves brought into Brazil FREE. In 1835, a new treaty was entered into
with Great Britain, similar to the Spanish one of the same date, which
the Brazilian legislature refused to ratify then, and repeated the
refusal in 1840.”
“The result of our treaty-making with Brazil, according to the source
of information, the Parliamentary Papers A and B, has been an
increase in the extent of her trade, accompanied with an increase in
the cruelty with which it is carried on; the mortality being raised
on the middle passage from 8 per cent. in 1830, to 25 per cent. in
1840.”—(Buxton, p. 174.) In the mean time our cruisers have captured
some thousand negroes; and “every account received from Brazil of the
state of the negroes, who had been _nominally_ emancipated by
sentence of the mixed commission courts, shows that in reality they
have continued to be slaves.”—(Bandinell, p. 235.)
As the vessels bearing Portuguese, Spanish, and Barbarian flags, are the
only ones employed in the conveyance of slaves from America within the
tropics, it is hardly necessary to allude to the treaties which
Government has, with a praiseworthy pertinacity, concluded with other
countries that never had any slave trade at all. For the same reason we
pass by those entered into with the enlightened chiefs who rule on the
coasts and rivers of Africa, and whose sanction has been purchased by
_scarlet_ coats, _cocked_ hats, and _plush unmentionables_. The
conclusion of the whole matter is, that our treaties have been in vain.
We are as far from the desired end as ever.
On the 26th of December, 1839, Lord John Russell, after referring to the
failure of treaties that had been concluded, stated, “That her Majesty’s
confidential advisers are therefore compelled to admit the conviction
that it is indispensable to enter upon some new preventive
system.”—(Parl. Papers, No. 57, 8th Feb. 1840.) In the same year Sir
Fowell Buxton made a confession of a similar character. “It is then,” he
writes, “but too manifest, that the efforts already made for the
suppression of the slave trade have not accomplished their benevolent
object. Millions of money and multitudes of lives have been sacrificed;
and, in return for all, we have only the afflicting conviction that the
slave trade is as far as ever from being suppressed.”—(Buxton, p. 203.)
“Once more, then, I must declare my conviction, that the slave trade will
never be suppressed by the system hitherto pursued.”
In 1821, her Majesty’s commissioners at Sierra Leone report only one case
brought before them, and that the trade was decreasing. Ten years
afterwards they report its increase. “There would then appear at
present, we regret to say, but little likelihood of the slave trade ever
being suppressed by the present restrictive measures employed to prevent
that traffic.”—(Parl. Paper, A., 1831.)
On the 31st of December, twenty years after the establishment of the
mixed commission courts, Messrs. Macaulay and Doherty made the following
statement to Lord Palmerston, in which they confessed the utter failure
of the means that had been pursued. After referring to the powers
possessed by England for the purpose of putting down the inhuman trade in
slaves, they observe:—
“But whatever other means may be necessary in a time of profound
peace to give effect to England’s interpretation of the law of
nations, those means she will not surely hesitate to adopt, when her
_only other alternative is_, _retiring at once from a contest which
she has long waged_, _baffled_, _beaten_, _and insulted by a set of
lawless and outcast smugglers_, _or wilfully continuing to sacrifice
thousands of valuable lives_, _and millions of money_, _with the full
knowledge that the only result of her further efforts will be fresh
triumphs to the slave traders_, _and the increased misery of their
victims_.
“Desirable as would be the concession by America of the right of
mutual search, experience has shown we can expect _no permanent
advantage from it_.
“Disappointment has followed every effort hitherto made, and stronger
measures are now imperatively called for—measures which, without
violating the laws of nations, or the faith of treaties, will at
length accomplish the earnest desire of the British nation by the
total abolition of the African slave trade.”—(Parl. Papers, A.,
Further Series, 1838 & 9.)
Our treaties have thus been powerless for good; and, what is worse, they
have been powerful for bad. The horrors of the middle passage have been
immeasurably increased. The more stringent the treaties the more inhuman
becomes the trade; and the only result will be aggravated sufferings to
the unfortunate victims of our well-meaning philanthropy. The greater
the risks the higher the profits; and there will always be desperate
men—men who have nothing to lose—who will expose themselves to any
dangers to win the gold they love. One successful voyage amply
compensates for the sufferings and dangers they endure. Instead of
having large roomy vessels, we have compelled the slave dealers to use
vessels the most unfit in character, and destitute of the most necessary
accommodation. In 1841, the Jesus Maria, of 85 tons size, with 278
slaves, and 19 passengers and crew, made the voyage across the Atlantic.
If the reader thinks of a Cowes pilot-boat, with 297 human beings beneath
the sun of the tropics, he may form some idea of the sufferings to which
the slaves must have been exposed. By our present system we cannot
destroy, though we can add, and that in no common degree, to the cruelty
of the voyage. The high profits will always attract the man of ruined
hopes and character, and such there always are to seize every project—to
encounter every risk. On the east coast of Africa negroes are usually
paid for in money, or coarse cottons. The men fetch 15 dollars, the boys
12. At Rio Janeiro their value may be estimated at 52_l._ for the men;
41_l._ 10_s._ for women, and 31_l._ for boys. Thus on a cargo of 500, at
the mean price, the profits will exceed 19,000_l._
Cost price of 500 at 15 dollars, or 3_l._ 5_s._ £1,625
each
Selling price at Rio of 500, at 41_l._ 10_s._ £20,750
Have our readers met with “Fifty Days on Board a Slaver,” by the Rev.
Pascoe Grenfell Hill? _That_ shows the value of armed suppression. Mr.
Hill has done good service by exposing the horrors of British mercy. Mr.
Hill was chaplain on board her Majesty’s ship the Cleopatra, when she
captured the Progresso last April twelvemonth, in the Mozambique channel.
When she fell in with the Progresso, the slave vessel had been laden but
a few hours, and there had been no time to generate disease. However a
change soon took place, and we must borrow Mr. Hill’s words:—
“A squall approached, of which I and others who had laid down on the
deck received warning by a few heavy drops of rain. Then ensued a
scene the horrors of which it is impossible to depict. The hands
having to shorten sail suddenly, uncertain as to the force of the
squall, found the poor helpless creatures lying about the deck an
obstruction to getting at the ropes, and doing what was required.
This caused the order to send them all below, which was immediately
obeyed. The night, however, being intensely hot and close, 400
wretched beings thus crammed into a hold, twelve yards in length,
seven in breadth, and only three feet and a half in height, speedily
began to make an effort to reissue to the open air. Being thrust
back, and striving the more to get out, the after hatch was forced
down on them. Over the other hatchway in the fore-part of the
vessel, a wooden grating was fastened. To this the sole inlet for
the air, the suffocating heat of the hold, and, perhaps, panic from
the strangeness of their situation, made them press, and thus great
part of the space below was rendered useless. They crowded to the
grating, and, clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance.
They strove to force their way through apertures in length fourteen
inches, and barely six inches in breadth, and in some instances
succeeded. The cries—the heat, I may say without exaggeration, the
smoke of their torment—which ascended, can be compared to nothing
earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning that the consequences
would be ‘many deaths.’ Thursday, April 13th, (Holy Thursday,) the
Spaniard’s prediction of last night was this morning fearfully
verified. Fifty-four crushed and mangled corpses lifted up from the
slave deck; some were brought to the gangway and thrown overboard;
some were emaciated from disease; many were bruised and bloody.
Antonio tells me that some were found strangled—their hands still
grasping each other’s throats—and tongues protruding from their
mouths. The bowels of one were crushed out; they had been trampled
to death, for the most part, the weaker under the feet of the
stronger, in the madness and torment of suffocation from crowd and
heat. It was a horrid sight as they passed one by one—the stiff
distorted limbs smeared with blood and filth—to be cast into the sea;
some still quivering were laid on the deck to die; salt water thrown
on them to revive them, and a little fresh water poured into their
mouths.”
But we hasten to the close of this scene of death.
“As soon as the Progresso anchored, we were visited by the health
officer, who immediately admitted us to pratique. My friend Mr.
Shea, then superintendent of the naval hospital, also paid us a
visit, and I descended with him, for the last time, to the slave
hold. Long accustomed as he has been to scenes of suffering, he was
unable to endure a sight surpassing, he said, ‘all he could have
conceived of human misery,’ and made a hasty retreat. One little
girl, crying bitterly, was entangled between the planks, wanting
strength to extricate her wasted limbs, till assistance was given
her.”
In a voyage of fifty days, there occurred one hundred and sixty-three
deaths! Can slavery be worse than this? if this melancholy tale teaches
anything, it is evidently the uselessness of armed suppression.
And yet this wretched, this utterly inefficient system, is to be
continued and extended. A new remedy has been proposed by the Honourable
Captain Denman, which it appears Sir Robert Peel is about to sanction.
Colonel Nicolls says, it will put the slave trade down in ten or twelve
months,—this we more than doubt. A blockade which, to be effectual, must
extend over six thousand miles of coast, is not so easy a thing as it may
seem on paper. With Lord John Russell we believe, “that to suppress the
slave trade by a marine guard is impossible, were the whole British navy
employed in the attempt.” A British force may burn the baracoons, but as
long as the demand exists, a supply from some quarter or other will be
procured. To show that the Colonel’s logic is not absolutely perfect, we
quote the following fact. It was thought the destruction of the
baracoons at Gallinas, in 1840, would have prevented their re-formation,
but this does not appear to have been the case. The commissioners
observe, “We have received information that, during the last rains, no
less than three slave factories were settled in the Gallinas, whither the
factors and goods had been conveyed by an American vessel.”—(Slave Trade
Papers, 1843.) Destroy the nests, and the birds will not breed, says
Colonel Nicolls. The gallant colonel forgets that the demand for slaves,
and not the existence of baracoons, creates the slave trade; to borrow an
illustration from Adam Smith, a man is not rich because he keeps a coach
and four horses; but he keeps a coach and four horses because he is rich.
Men make but an indifferent hand at reasoning when they are unable to
tell which is the cause, and which the effect.
Had this system been attended by any the smallest amount of good, we
should have kept out of account altogether the last item in this part of
our subject, to which we shall refer the reader—that of expense; but when
we find the money thus squandered has produced no earthly good whatever,
when all parties confess that past measures have ended in utter failure,
and that the slave trade, so far from being put down in all its forms of
abomination and cruelty, is more vigorous than before; it is but right
that we should exclaim against the waste of money that has been so
lavishly incurred. Sir Fowell Buxton estimates the expense, on the part
of Great Britain, in carrying out the slave trade preventive system up to
1839, at £15,000,000. We here quote from Mr. Laird:
“Her Majesty’s late commissioner of inquiry on the coast of Africa,
estimates the expense incurred there, _independently of the salaries and
contingencies at home_, _of officers connected with the Anti-Slavery
Treaty Department_, at £229,090 per annum; and by the finance accounts, I
find, that for the year ending 5th January, 1842, £57,024 was paid out of
the consolidated fund, to the officers and crews of her Majesty’s ships,
for bounty on slaves, and tonnage on slave vessels. These gallant men,
however, do not think they get what they ought to do; for there is a long
correspondence about what they lose by the way the prizes are measured
for tonnage-money; but it must be consolatory to them to know that they
have, in one year, received £1,000 more prize money than their
predecessors did in nine; the amount of prize money paid for capturing
slaves, from 1814 to 1822, being only £56,017. In fact the African
station has been improving in value, as a naval command, since the slave
trade treaties; it is now the _bonne bouche_ of the Admiralty, and as
such was given to the last first lord’s brothers. The mixed commission
courts cost the country about £15,000 per annum; and as any dispute
between the Portuguese, Spanish, or Brazilian judges is settled by an
appeal to the dice box, the monotony of their lives is agreeably
diversified; having retiring salaries, the patronage is valuable. The
whole annual cost may be taken at £300,000.” {20}
So much for this part of our subject. We may fairly conclude, that such
a system is evidently vicious in principle: it has certainly failed to
answer the end proposed, and the sooner it is given up the better. But
let it not be for one moment understood that we consider slavery always
will remain the curse and shame of humanity. We believe that it can be
extinguished,—that it must be extinguished,—that, sooner or later, God’s
sun shall shine every where upon the _free_, and that slavery shall
remain alone in the dark records of earth’s misery and crime.
Freedom is the antagonist of slavery. Free labour must drive out of the
market the labour of the slave. We were told before emancipation, that
the former was cheaper than the latter: we have yet to learn that it is
not. A glance at the present condition of the sugar-producing countries
will convince any one that the West India planter has immense advantages
over his rival of Cuba or Brazil.
There is a great amount of misunderstanding on this subject. The soil of
the West India Islands is always represented as exhausted, which is far
from being actually the case. In Cuba, according to an estimate made by
the patriotic society of Havanna, it appears that two hundred and fifteen
acres of _new_ land are expected to produce, in cane cultivation,
thirteen hundred boxes of sugar, or 2172 lbs. per acre. We may
reasonably infer, that the production in Brazil does not equal this. We
find that the exports of sugar from the latter country have rather
declined, while those of Cuba have been nearly doubled within the last
few years; while from the evidence taken by a committee of the House of
Commons, it appears that with the present imperfect system of
cultivation, the following results have been obtained, including
ratroons, or canes cut for several years successively. {21}
Jamaica, about 2000 per acre.
St. Vincent, „ 3000 „
Antigua, „ 3000 „
Barbadoes, „ 3000 „
A pretty fair result, it must be confessed, considering the exhausted
condition of the soil. Another advantage the West India Islands possess
over Brazil, arises from their facilities for water carriage. Their
limited extent is anything but a drawback,—it makes them all sea coast.
With labour and capital, they would be put in a position that would
enable them to under-sell slave-grown sugar. The great disadvantage
under which they suffer, is scarcity of labour. Antigua alone has, in
this respect, a sufficient supply, and let us hear the result. The first
witness we shall call is Captain Larlyle, governor of French Guiana. The
captain was sent by the French government to visit most of the British
West India Islands, and to see the working of the present system; the
report he made has been published by government, in a work, entitled,
“Abolition de l’Esclavage dans les Colonies Anglaises.” Evidently his
prejudices are for the continuance of slavery, but with respect to
Antigua, he was forced to bear witness of a contrary character. He
observes, (our quotations are from the Anti-Slavery Reporter, of May 1st,
1844,) that “it has maintained, during the last seven years, a state of
prosperity, which every impartial person cannot fail to acknowledge.” p.
189. “The exports have rather increased than diminished since
emancipation.” pp. 194, 5. “If, under the system of slavery, labour had
been as complete and productive as it ought to have been, if the negroes
had employed the time to their best advantage, there is no doubt but they
would have produced more than at present, when, in consequence of
freedom, the fields have lost a third of their labourers. But I have had
occasion to say, in my former reports, that forced labour has never
answered the expectations that have been formed respecting it; and I find
a new proof of this in the table of production in Antigua during fifteen
years.” p. 196. Again, Captain Larlyle says, “If the colonists are to be
believed, the plantations are worth, without the negroes, as much as they
were worth formerly with their gangs of slaves.” Equally favourable is
the evidence of a lady who resided in Antigua, both before and after the
emancipation of the slaves, and who possessed the most ample
opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of the working of either system.
After referring to the depressed state of the island before the abolition
of slavery, she observes:
“But this oppression did not long continue; for no sooner was the
deed done, and the chain which bound the negro to his fellow-man
irrecoverably snapped asunder, than it was found, even by the most
sceptical, that free labour was decidedly more advantageous to the
planter than the old system of slavery; that, in fact, an estate
could be worked for less by free labour than it could when so many
slaves, including old and young, weak and strong, were obliged to be
maintained by the proprietors. Indeed, the truth of this assertion
was discovered even before the negroes were free; for no sooner did
the planters feel that no effort of theirs could prevent emancipation
from taking place, than they commenced to calculate seriously the
probable result of the change, and to their surprise found, upon
mature deliberation, that their expenses would be diminished, and
their comforts increased, by the abolition of slavery.”
Again, we are told, although there are some few persons who deny that
free labour is less expensive than slavery, yet the general voice
pronounces it a system beneficial to the country.
It has been proved to demonstration that estates which, under the old
system, were clogged with debts they never could have paid off, have,
since emancipation, not only cleared themselves, but put a handsome
income into the pockets of their proprietors. Land was also increased
greatly in value. Sugar plantations that would scarcely find a purchaser
before emancipation, will now command from £10,000 sterling; {23} while
many estates that were abandoned in days of slavery, are now once more in
a state of cultivation, and the sugar-cane flourishes in verdant beauty
where nothing was to be seen but rank and tangled weeds, or scanty
herbage.
To put down slavery, then, we have only to let free labour have fair
play. It is not the continuance of monopoly, but emigration, that is
wanted. The first consequence of emancipation was the formation of a
middle class where it had not before existed, which middle class was
entirely subtracted from the agricultural population. 718,525 human
beings were emancipated in our sugar colonies, including the Mauritius,
of whom one-fourth were immediately absorbed in the formation of a middle
class. Hence the deficiency in labour which at present affects the West
India Islands. We believe, with Mr. Laird, {24} “that it is the
_quantity_, not the quality, of labour that is wanting.” Indeed it has
been shown that a free negro in Guiana creates double the amount of sugar
that his enslaved countryman in Cuba does.
In many parts of the East labourers may be hired at three-halfpence and
two-pence a day. From the evidence given before the West African
Committee, we learn, that wages average from two-pence to four-pence a
day in our three settlements on the coast of Africa. The cost of the
slave in Cuba or Brazil equals this. Let the experiment be fairly tried,
and it will soon be evident that slave labour must be driven out of the
market. That becomes still plainer when we look at the actual condition
of the slave-grown sugar. From Cuba every fresh post brings a
continuance of bad news. There is a want of capital and skill—a blight
rests upon the land—property and life are insecure. On March 6th, a
statement appeared in the _Anti-Slavery Reporter_, giving an account of
the wretched condition of the slaves. “We are credibly informed,”
observes the editor, “that on some of the sugar plantations in Cuba the
slaves are in a most miserable condition—not less than the half of a gang
being sickly, covered with sores, and even cripples—the whip supplying
virtue and strength, health and numbers. Unable to ‘trot’ to the field,
they are placed on carts and carried to it, there to creep and toil by
the help of the lash. No description can exhibit the neglect, cruelty,
and inhumanity, with which they are treated. In crop-time they have no
holiday—no Sunday—and no sleep!” The _Times_ gave the following, as from
Havanna, under date of February 17:—“A slaver, with 1200 negroes, has
arrived on our coast. They have been offered at 340 dollars a-head, and
our planters has determined to buy no more, and none of this cargo has
been disposed of. _No one is now inclined to encourage this abominable
traffic_, _which begins to be considered as highly injurious to the
welfare of the island_. Several corporations and planters have given in
reports favourable to the total abolition of the slave trade; it is
understood these will be sent forthwith to the Spanish Government.”
The negroes have imbibed ideas of freedom which at no distant time will
produce, by fair means or foul, a change in their condition. The planter
already begins to perceive, that it is far better to be the employer of
faithful and contented labourers, than the lord of men who feel their
wrongs, and who wait but the first moment of revenge. Capital, the
life-blood of industry, will never flow into a country till the
capitalist has a pledge—a pledge no land of slaves can ever give—that the
life he hazards, and the money he invests, are alike secure. Were the
duty on sugar so reduced to-morrow as to put it in the power of the
working man to consume as much as he required, an impulse would be given
to the production of sugar which would create a demand for capital—which
capital would alone be safely invested where labour is free. With a
plentiful supply of labourers, no one can deny that Jamaica would be a
far more eligible country for the capitalist than Cuba or Brazil; and
hence the slave-trade dealers would be thrown for ever out of the markets
of the world.
To put down slavery, then, we must under-sell the slave dealer.
Emigration from the coast of Africa to the West Indies must be
encouraged. At present wages in these islands are unnaturally high.
They cannot, however, long remain so. We are glad to learn that the
negroes are well off; but it cannot be expected that the West India
monopoly should be continued merely that the emancipated slave may drink
at his ease his Madeira or Champagne. It will be well for him if he
prepares himself for the change that must shortly come. It is not to be
expected that the proprietor who cultivates his estate at a loss, should
continue to employ his capital without return. Unless there is a change,
that capital must be withdrawn; and, thrown upon his own resources, the
negro labourer will sink into a state of degradation hopeless and
complete. {26a} Should it be found that the emigration scheme will not
work well, it by no means follows that our only alternative is to
continue the monopoly. A late writer, {26b} on the state of Jamaica,
expresses it as his opinion _that the resources of the island are not
above half developed_; he declares that the implements used in the
cultivation of the cane are in the most primitive state imaginable; and
that were but the improvements in machines introduced there, which have
obtained elsewhere, there would be no need whatever for additional
labourers.
This may be true of Jamaica, but it will not apply equally to other parts
of the West Indies, where labourers are needed; and Africa is the quarter
to which we must naturally turn for a supply. We find men in a state of
practical slavery—sunk in the lowest scale of being; and we maintain the
way to humanise them, to give them habits of industry and ideas of trade,
is to bring them into contact with the advanced civilisation of the west.
Thanks to the labours of the missionaries, they will find their
emancipated fellow-countrymen intelligent, moral, and religious men.
They will become subject to the same ameliorating influences—old things
will be put away, principles of good will be formed—the savage will be
lost in the advancing dignity of the man.
Let the West Indian proprietor, then, take the degraded savage and
convert him into a useful member of society, and in the same manner let
the free-trader go and convert the slave-owner into an honest man. In
both cases a restrictive policy has been found to be fraught with
inevitable ill. It were time that they both should retire. Our aim
should be to create in slave states a public opinion against the vile
system that stains the land, and not to excite feelings of enmity against
ourselves because we exclude them from our market, and seek to brand them
as outcasts from society. Not by such pharisaical modes of procedure
shall we obtain our end. If we would do a man good, we must teach him to
look upon us as friends, and not foes. We have no right to shut up a man
in his guilt; and, as a nation is but an aggregate of individuals, the
principles of action that obtain in the one case must be equally valid
with respect to the other. We heap contumely and scorn on the heads of
the American slaveholders, and refuse to do business with the merchants
of Brazil, and by such conduct directly deprive ourselves of what
influence for good we might otherwise have it in our power to wield. It
is time that we turn over a new leaf; that we act more in accordance with
Him who makes his sun to shine, and his rain to descend, upon the good
and the bad; that we speak in friendship to our fellow-man, however
degraded he may be, and win him over to the adoption of that which is
just and true. Experience, the great teacher of mankind, has shown in a
thousand instances that in our efforts to put down slavery by restrictive
policy and armed suppression, we have, at the most lavish expenditure of
treasure and life, done nothing but create misery and ill-will. It is
the part of a wise man to abandon a plan which he sees has entirely
failed. We may, by so doing, expose ourselves to the charge of
inconsistency,—the stupid sneer, the unmeaning laugh, of men to whom
experience may preach in vain, may be ours; but we shall have the
consolation, the sure reward, of men who, seeking that which will promote
the happiness of the family of man, when they find themselves in the
wrong course, immediately abandon it for the right.
* * * * *
In the preceding pages we have endeavoured to advocate Free Trade, as the
only one thing by which slavery can be destroyed. We now come to a
subject of equal importance—the claims of our countrymen at home. We
plead not for the Manchester warehouseman, cribbed, cabined, and confined
by our wretched system of commercial policy, but we plead for the
overtaxed and under-fed hard-working men and women of Great Britain. It
is well to be tenderly alive to the concerns of the West Indian negro,
but the charity that exhausts itself on them partakes of the same mongrel
character as that sensibility which sheds floods of tears over the
feigned distresses of the stage, and looks unmoved upon the miseries of a
world. A reduction in the price of sugar would most certainly be an
inestimable boon to the working man. Such a step taken by government
would produce no increase in the consumption of sugar on the part of the
middle or higher classes, but it would enable the poorer classes at once
to use one of the most nutritious and essential articles of food. If you
would preserve a man from drunkenness, make his home happy; let him have
something better than the meagre fare which too generally awaits him. On
the government which, by its interference, deprives the operative of the
fair fruit of his labour, which drives him to the alehouse, to avoid the
home rendered wretched by their accursed agency, rest the blame and guilt
occasioned by the degradation and destruction of the body and soul of
man. Different is the judgment of Heaven from that of the world. Could
our voice reach the ears of our senators, we would ask them to pause ere
they continued in a course of legislation which has been a fruitful
source of vice—a course of legislation which, like the destroying angel,
has spread death through the land. We would say to them, “Law-makers,
see there the wretched slave of vice; the fault is not his, but yours.
From your costly clubs, from your glittering saloons, flushed with
revelry and wine, you have gone to the House, and, in the fulness of your
power and pride, declared that his hearth should be desolate—that the
crust he gnaws he should earn at the price of his life—that misery and
want, like attendant handmaids, should follow on his steps; and if he has
shrunk abashed from their presence—if his heart has failed him in the
hour of need—if he has forgotten his manhood and his immortality—if he
has joined in the hideous orgies of the drunken and the desolate—if he
has sunk into the condition of the beast—the crime, and shame, and curse,
be yours. And you may well shudder with an unwonted fear at the thought
of the hour when Heaven shall require an account at your hands—when it
shall be asked you why you laid on your brother a burden greater than he
could bear, and why you blotted out the image of divinity that was
planted there.”
Let us just look at the history of the sugar trade,—we shall soon see how
well protection has worked. In 1824, the duty on sugar was—
West India 27_s._ per cwt.
East India 37_s._ „
Foreign 63_s._ „
In 1830, the West India duty was reduced to 24_s._, the East India to
32_s._, which, as the editor of the _Economist_ has well remarked, was
“just so much more put into the pockets of the producers, so long as the
63_s._ on foreign sugar was continued.” In 1836, a slight change was
introduced. The duty on East India was equalised, so that the duty was—
British possessions 24_s._ per cwt.
Foreign 63_s._ „