JAMAICA--SUGAR.
That Jamaica was a land of wealth, rivalling the East in its means
of riches, nay, excelling it as a market for capital, as a place in
which money might be turned; and that it now is a spot on the earth
almost more poverty-stricken than any other--so much is known almost
to all men. That this change was brought about by the manumission of
the slaves, which was completed in 1838, of that also the English
world is generally aware. And there probably the usual knowledge
about Jamaica ends. And we may also say that the solicitude of
Englishmen at large goes no further. The families who are connected
with Jamaica by ties of interest are becoming fewer and fewer.
Property has been abandoned as good for nothing, and nearly
forgotten; or has been sold for what wretched trifle it would
fetch; or left to an overseer, who is hardly expected to send home
proceeds--is merely ordered imperatively to apply for no subsidies.
Fathers no longer send their younger sons to make their fortunes
there. Young English girls no longer come out as brides. Dukes and
earls do not now govern the rich gem of the west, spending their
tens of thousands in royal magnificence, and laying by other tens of
thousands for home consumption. In lieu of this, some governor by
profession, unfortunate for the moment, takes Jamaica with a groan,
as a stepping-stone to some better Barataria--New Zealand perhaps, or
Frazer River; and by strict economy tries to save the price of his
silver forks. Equerries, aides-de-camp, and private secretaries no
longer flaunt it about Spanish Town. The flaunting about Spanish Town
is now of a dull sort. Ichabod! The glory of that house is gone. The
palmy days of that island are over.
Those who are failing and falling in the world excite but little
interest; and so it is at present with Jamaica. From time to time we
hear that properties which used to bring five thousand pounds a year
are not now worth five hundred pounds in fee simple. We hear it,
thank our stars that we have not been brought up in the Jamaica line,
and there's an end of it. If we have young friends whom we wish
to send forth into the world, we search the maps with them at our
elbows; but we put our hands over the West Indies--over the first
fruits of the courage and skill of Columbus--as a spot tabooed
by Providence. Nay, if we could, we would fain forget Jamaica
altogether.
But there it is; a spot on the earth not to be lost sight of or
forgotten altogether, let us wish it ever so much. It belongs to us,
and must be in some sort thought of and managed, and, if possible,
governed. Though the utter sinking of Jamaica under the sea might
not be regarded as a misfortune, it is not to be thought of that
it should belong to others than Britain. How should we look at the
English politician who would propose to sell it to the United States;
or beg Spain to take it as an appendage to Cuba? It is one of the
few sores in our huge and healthy carcase; and the sore has been now
running so long, that we have almost given over asking whether it be
curable.
This at any rate is certain--it will not sink into the sea, but will
remain there, inhabited, if not by white men, then by coloured men or
black; and must unfortunately be governed by us English.
We have indulged our antipathy to cruelty by abolishing slavery.
We have made the peculiar institution an impossibility under the
British crown. But in doing so we overthrew one particular interest;
and, alas! we overthrew also, and necessarily so, the holders of
that interest. As for the twenty millions which we gave to the
slave-owners, it was at best but as though we had put down awls and
lasts by Act of Parliament, and, giving the shoemakers the price
of their tools, told them they might make shoes as they best could
without them; failing any such possibility, that they might live on
the price of their lost articles. Well; the shoemakers did their
best, and continued their trade in shoes under much difficulty.
But then we have had another antipathy to indulge, and have indulged
it--our antipathy to protection. We have abolished the duty on
slave-grown sugar; and the shoemakers who have no awls and lasts have
to compete sadly with their happy neighbours, possessed of these
useful shoemaking utensils.
Make no more shoes, but make something in lieu of shoes, we say to
them. The world wants not shoes only--make hats. Give up your sugar,
and bring forth produce that does not require slave labour. Could
the men of Jamaica with one voice speak out such words as the
experience of the world might teach them, they would probably answer
thus:--"Yes; in two hundred years or so we will do so. So long it
will take to alter the settled trade and habit of a community. In
the mean time, for ourselves, our living selves, our late luxurious
homes, our idle, softly-nurtured Creole wives, our children coming
and to come--for ourselves--what immediate compensation do you intend
to offer us, Mr. Bull?"
Mr. Bull, with sufficient anger at such importunity; with sufficient
remembrance of his late twenty millions of pounds sterling; with some
plain allusions to that payment, buttons up his breeches-pocket and
growls angrily.
Abolition of slavery is good, and free trade is good. Such little
insight as a plain man may have into the affairs around him seems to
me to suffice for the expression of such opinion. Nor will I presume
to say that those who proposed either the one law or the other
were premature. To get a good law passed and out of hand is always
desirable. There are from day to day so many new impediments! But the
law having been passed, we should think somewhat of the sufferers.
Planters in Jamaica assert that when the abolition of slavery was
hurried on by the termination of the apprentice system before the
time first stipulated, they were promised by the government at
home that their interests should be protected by high duties on
slave-grown sugar. That such pledge was ever absolutely made, I do
not credit. But that, if made, it could be worth anything, no man
looking to the history of England could imagine. What minister can
pledge his successors? In Jamaica it is said that the pledge was
given and broken by the same man--by Sir Robert Peel. But when did
Sir Robert Peel's pledge in one year bind even his own conduct in the
next?
The fact perhaps is this, that no one interest can ever be allowed to
stand in the way of national progress. We could not stop machinery
for the sake of the hand-loom weavers. The poor hand-loom weavers
felt themselves aggrieved; knew that the very bread was taken from
their mouths, their hard-earned cup from their lips. They felt, poor
weavers! that they could not take themselves in middle life to poking
fires and greasing wheels. Time, the eater of things, has now pretty
well eaten the hand-loom weavers--them and their miseries. Must it
not be so also with the Jamaica planters?
In the mean time the sight, as regards the white man, is a sad one to
see; and almost the sadder in that the last three or four years have
been in a slight degree prosperous to the Jamaica sugar-grower; so
that this question of producing sugar in that island at a rate that
will pay for itself is not quite answered. The drowning man still
clings by a rope's end, though it be but by half an inch, and that
held between his teeth. Let go, thou unhappy one, and drown thyself
out of the way! Is it not thus that Great Britain, speaking to him
from the high places in Exeter Hall, shouts to him in his death
struggles?
Are Englishmen in general aware that half the sugar estates in
Jamaica, and I believe more than half the coffee plantations, have
gone back into a state of bush?--that all this land, rich with the
richest produce only some thirty years since, has now fallen back
into wilderness?--that the world has hereabouts so retrograded?--that
chaos and darkness have reswallowed so vast an extent of the most
bountiful land that civilization had ever mastered, and that too
beneath the British government?
And of those who are now growing canes in Jamaica a great portion are
gentlemen who have lately bought their estates for the value of the
copper in the sugar-boilers, and of the metal in the rum-stills. If
to this has been added anything like a fair value for wheels in the
machinery, the estate has not been badly sold.
Some estates there are, and they are not many, which are still worked
by the agents--attorneys is the proper word--of rich proprietors
in England; of men so rich that they have been able to bear the
continual drain of properties that for years have been always
losing--of men who have had wealth and spirit to endure this. It is
hardly necessary to say that they are few; and that many whose spirit
has been high, but wealth insufficient, have gone grievously to the
wall in the attempt.
And there are still some who, living on the spot, have hitherto
pulled through it all; who have watched houses falling and the
wilderness progressing, and have still stuck to their homes and
their work; men whose properties for ten years, counting from the
discontinuance of protection, have gradually grown less and less
beneath their eyes, till utter want has been close to them. And yet
they have held on. In the good times they may have made five hundred
hogsheads of sugar every year. It has come to that with them that in
some years they have made but thirty. But they have made that thirty
and still held on. All honour at least to them! For their sake, if
for that of no others, we would be tempted to pray that these few
years of their prosperity may be prolonged and grow somewhat fatter.
The exported produce of Jamaica consists chiefly of sugar and rum.
The article next in importance is coffee. Then they export also
logwood, arrowroot, pimento, and ginger; but not in quantities to
make them of much national value. Mahogany is also cut here, and
fustic. But sugar and rum are still the staples of the island. Now
all the world knows that rum and sugar are made from the same plant.
And yet every one will tell you that the cane can hardly be got to
thrive in Jamaica without slave labour; will tell you, also, that the
land of Jamaica is so generous that it will give forth many of the
most wonderful fruits of the world, almost without labour. Putting
these two things together, would not any simple man advise them to
abandon sugar? Ah! he would be very simple if he were to do so with a
voice that could make itself well heard, and should dare to do so in
Jamaica.
Men there are generally tolerant of opinion on most matters, and
submit to be talked to on their own shortcomings and colonial
mismanagement with a decent grace. You may advise them to do this,
and counsel them to do that, referring to their own immediate
concerns, without receiving that rebuke which your interference might
probably deserve. But do not try their complaisance too far. Do not
advise them to give over making sugar. If you give such advice in a
voice loud enough to be heard, the island will soon be too hot to
hold you. Sugar is loved there, whether wisely loved or not. If not
wisely, then too well.
When I hear a Jamaica planter talking of sugar, I cannot but think
of Burns, and his muse that had made him poor and kept him so. And
the planter is just as ready to give up his canes as the poet was to
abandon his song.
The production of sugar and the necessary concomitant production of
rum--for in Jamaica the two do necessarily go together--is not, one
would say, an alluring occupation. I do not here intend to indulge my
readers with a detailed description of the whole progress, from the
planting or ratooning of the cane till the sugar and the rum are
shipped. Books there are, no doubt, much wiser than mine in which
the whole process is developed. But I would wish this much to be
understood, that the sugar planter, as things at present are, must
attend to and be master of, and practically carry out three several
trades. He must be an agriculturist, and grow his cane; and like all
agriculturists must take his crop from the ground and have it ready
for use; as the wheat grower does in England, and the cotton grower
in America. But then he must also be a manufacturer, and that in a
branch of manufacture which requires complicated machinery. The wheat
grower does not grind his wheat and make it into bread. Nor does the
cotton grower fabricate calico. But the grower of canes must make
sugar. He must have his boiling-houses and trash-houses; his water
power and his steam power; he must dabble in machinery, and, in fact,
be a Manchester manufacturer as well as a Kent farmer. And then, over
and beyond this, he must be a distiller. The sugar leaves him fit
for your puddings, and the rum fit for your punch--always excepting
the slight article of adulteration which you are good enough to add
afterwards yourselves. Such a complication of trades would not be
thought very alluring to a gentleman farmer in England.
And yet the Jamaica proprietor holds faithfully by his sugar-canes.
It has been said that sugar is an article which for its proper
production requires slave labour. That this is absolutely so is
certainly not the fact, for very good sugar is made in Jamaica
without it. That thousands of pounds could be made with slaves where
only hundreds are made--or, as the case may be, are lost--without it,
I do not doubt. The complaint generally resolves itself to this, that
free labour in Jamaica cannot be commanded; that it cannot be had
always, and up to a certain given quantity at a certain moment; that
labour is scarce, and therefore high priced, and that labour being
high priced, a negro can live on half a day's wages, and will not
therefore work the whole day--will not always work any part of the
day at all, seeing that his yams, his breadfruit, and his plantains
are ready to his hands. But the slaves!--Oh! those were the good
times!
I have in another chapter said a few words about the negroes as at
present existing in Jamaica, I also shall say a few words as to
slavery elsewhere; and I will endeavour not to repeat myself. This
much, however, is at least clear to all men, that you cannot eat your
cake and have it. You cannot abolish slavery to the infinite good
of your souls, your minds, and intellects, and yet retain it for
the good of your pockets. Seeing that these men are free, it is
worse than useless to begrudge them the use of their freedom. If
I have means to lie in the sun and meditate idle, why, O my worthy
taskmaster! should you expect me to pull out at thy behest long
reels of cotton, long reels of law jargon, long reels of official
verbosity, long reels of gossamer literature--Why, indeed? Not having
means so to lie, I do pull out the reels, taking such wages as I
can get, and am thankful. But my friend and brother over there, my
skin-polished, shining, oil-fat negro, is a richer man than I. He
lies under his mango-tree, and eats the luscious fruit in the sun;
he sends his black urchin up for a breadfruit, and behold the family
table is spread. He pierces a cocoa-nut, and, lo! there is his
beverage. He lies on the grass surrounded by oranges, bananas, and
pine-apples. Oh, my hard taskmaster of the sugar-mill, is he not
better off than thou? why should he work at thy order? "No, massa, me
weak in me belly; me no workee to-day; me no like workee just 'em
little moment." Yes, Sambo has learned to have his own way; though
hardly learned to claim his right without lying.
That this is all bad--bad nearly as bad can be--bad perhaps as
anything short of slavery, all men will allow. It will be quite
as bad in the long run for the negro as for the white man--worse,
indeed; for the white man will by degrees wash his hands of the whole
concern. But as matters are, one cannot wonder that the black man
will not work. The question stands thus: cannot he be made to do
so? Can it not be contrived that he shall be free, free as is the
Englishman, and yet compelled, as is the Englishman, to eat his bread
in the sweat of his brow?
I utterly disbelieve in statistics as a science, and am never myself
guided by any long-winded statement of figures from a Chancellor
of the Exchequer or such like big-wig. To my mind it is an
hallucination. Such statements are "ignes fatui." Figures, when they
go beyond six in number, represent to me not facts, but dreams, or
sometimes worse than dreams. I have therefore no right myself to
offer statistics to the reader. But it was stated in the census taken
in 1844 that there were sixteen thousand white people in the island,
and about three hundred thousand blacks. There were also about
seventy thousand coloured people. Putting aside for the moment
the latter as a middle class, and regarding the black as the free
servants of the white, one would say that labour should not be so
deficient But what, if your free servants don't work; unfortunately
know how to live without working?
The political question that presses upon me in viewing Jamaica, is
certainly this--Will the growth of sugar pay in Jamaica, or will it
not? I have already stated my conviction that a change is now taking
place in the very blood and nature of the men who are destined to be
the dominant classes in these western tropical latitudes. That the
white man, the white Englishman, or white English Creole, will ever
again be a thoroughly successful sugar grower in Jamaica I do not
believe. That the brown man may be so is very probable; but great
changes must first be made in the countries around him.
While the "peculiar institution" exists in Cuba, Brazil, Porto
Rico, and the Southern States, it cannot, I think, come to pass. A
plentiful crop in Cuba may in any year bring sugar to a price which
will give no return whatever to the Jamaica grower. A spare crop in
Jamaica itself will have the same result; and there are many causes
for spare crops; drought, for instance, and floods, and abounding
rats, and want of capital to renew and manure the plants. At present
the trade will only give in good years a fair profit to those who
have purchased their land almost for nothing. A trade that cannot
stand many misfortunes can hardly exist prosperously. This trade has
stood very many; but I doubt whether it can stand more.
The "peculiar institution," however, will not live for ever. The time
must come when abolition will be popular even in Louisiana. And when
it is law there, it will be the law in Cuba also. If that day shall
have arrived before the last sugar-mill in the island shall have been
stopped, Jamaica may then compete with other free countries. The
world will not do without sugar, let it be produced by slaves or free
men.
But though a man may venture to foretell the abolition of slavery in
the States, and yet call himself no prophet, he must be a wiser man
than I who can foretell the time. It will hardly be to-morrow; nor
yet the next day. It will scarcely come so that we may see it. Before
it does come it may easily be that the last sugar-mill in poor
Jamaica will in truth have stopped.