Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 11

_Sugar, pounds. The _Sugar, pounds.

_Number of three years before the last three Immigrants._ Immigration._ years._ Mauritius 209,490 217,200,256 469,812,784 British Guiana 24,946 173,626,208 250,715,584 Trinidad 11,981 91,110,768 150,579,072

"With these are contrasted the results in Jamaica and Antigua, where there has been very little immigration:--

_Sugar, pounds. _Sugar, pounds. The last The three years after three years._ apprentices.h.i.+p._[69]

Jamaica 202,973,568 139,369,776 Antigua 63,824,656 70,302,736

Here, now, is presented the key to the mystery overhanging the British West Indies. Men, high in station, have a.s.serted that West India emanc.i.p.ation has been an economic success; while others, equally honorable, have maintained the opposite view. Both have presented figures, averred to be true, that seemed to sustain their declarations.

This apparent contradiction is thus explained. The first take the aggregate production in the whole of the islands, which, they say, exceeds that during the existence of slavery;[70] the second take the production in Jamaica alone, as representing the whole; and, thus, the startling fact appears, that the sugar crop of the last three years in Jamaica, has fallen 63,603,000 lbs., below what it was during the first three years of freedom. This argues badly for the free negroes; but it must be the legitimate fruits of emanc.i.p.ation, as no exterior force has been brought into that island to interfere, materially, with its workings. In Mauritius, Trinidad, and British Guiana, it will be seen that the production has greatly increased; but from a very different cause than any improvement in the industry of the blacks who had received their freedom--the increase in Mauritius having been more than double what it had been when the production depended upon them. The sugar crop, in this island, for the three years preceding the introduction of immigrant labor, was but 217,200,000 lbs.; while, during the last three years, by the aid of 210,000 immigrants, it has been run up to 469,812,000 lbs.

Taking all these facts into consideration, it is apparent that West India emanc.i.p.ation has been a failure, economically considered. The production in Jamaica, when it has depended upon the labor of the free blacks alone, has materially declined in some of the islands, since the abandonment of slavery, and is not so great now as it was during the first years of freedom; and, so far is it from being equal to what it was while slavery prevailed, and especially while the slave trade was continued, that it now falls short of the production of that period by an immense amount. In no way, therefore, can it be claimed, that the cultivation of the British West India islands is on the increase, except by resorting to the pious fraud of crediting the products of the immigrant labor to the account of emanc.i.p.ation--a resort to which no conscientious Christian man will have recourse, even to sustain a philanthropic theory.

But the Island of Barbadoes is an exception. It is said to have suffered no diminution in its production since emanc.i.p.ation, and that this result was attained without the aid of immigrant labor. The _London Economist_ must be permitted to explain this phenomenon; and must also be allowed to give its views on the subject of the effects of emanc.i.p.ation, after the lapse of a quarter of a century from the date of the pa.s.sage of the Emanc.i.p.ation Act:

"We are no believers in Mr. Carlyle's gospel of the 'beneficent whip' as the bearer of salvation to tropical indolence. But we can not for a moment doubt that the first result of emanc.i.p.ation was, in most of the islands, to subst.i.tute for the worst kind of moral and political evil, one of a less fatal but still of a very pernicious kind. The negroes had been treated as mere machines for raising sugar and coffee. They were suddenly liberated from that mechanical drudgery; they became free beings--but without the discipline needful to use freedom well, and unfortunately with a larger amount of practical freedom than the laboring cla.s.s of any Northern or temperate climate could by any possibility enjoy. They suddenly found themselves, in most of the islands, in a position in many respects a.n.a.lagous to that of a people possessed of a moderate property in England, who can supply their princ.i.p.al wants without any positive labor, and have no ambition to rise into any higher sphere than that into which they were born. The only difference was, that the negroes in most of the West India islands wanted vastly less than such people as these in civilized States,--wanted nothing in fact, but the plantains they could grow almost without labor, and the huts which they could build on any waste mountain land without paying rent for it. The consequence naturally was, that when the spur of physical tyranny was removed, there was no sufficient subst.i.tute for it, in most of the islands, in the wholesome hards.h.i.+ps of natural exigencies. The really beneficent 'whip' of hunger and cold was not subst.i.tuted for the human cruelty from which they had escaped. In Barbadoes alone, perhaps, the pressure of a dense population, with the absence of any waste mountain lands on which the negroes could squat, rent free, was an efficient subst.i.tute for the terrors of slavery. And, consequently, in Barbadoes alone, has the Emanc.i.p.ation Act produced unalloyed and conspicuous good. The natural spur of compet.i.tion for the means of living, took the place there of the artificial spur of slavery, and the slow, indolent temperament of the African race was thus quickened into a voluntary industry essential to its moral discipline, and most favorable to its intellectual culture."

In further commenting on the figures quoted, the _Economist_ remarks:

"These results, do not of course, necessarily represent in any degree the fresh spur to diligence on the part of the old population, caused by the new labor. In islands like Trinidad, where the amount of unredeemed land suited for such production is almost unlimited, the new labor introduced cannot for a long time press on the old labor at all. But wherever the amount of land fitted for this kind of culture is nearly exhausted, the presence of the new compet.i.tion will soon be felt. And, in any case, it is only through this gradual supply of the labor market that we can hope to bring the wholesome spur of necessity to act eventually on the laboring cla.s.ses. Englishmen, indeed, may well think that at times the good influences of this compet.i.tive jostling for employment are overrated and its evil underrated. But this is far from true of the negro race. To their slow and unambitious temperament, influences of this kind are almost unalloyed good, as the great superiority in the population of Barbadoes to that of the other islands sufficiently shows."

The _Economist_, in further discussing this question, favors the introduction of a permanent cla.s.s of laborers, not only that the cultivation may be increased, but because there is "no doubt at all that if a larger supply of labor could be attained in the West Indies, without any very great incidental evils, the benefit experienced even by the planters would be by no means so great as that of the negro population themselves;" and thinks that "the philanthropic party, in their tenderness for the emanc.i.p.ated Africans, are sometimes not a little blind to the advantages of stern industrial necessities;" and that, "what the accident of population and soil has done for Barbadoes, it cannot be doubted that a stream of immigration, if properly conducted, might do in some degree for the other islands."

Lest it should be thought that the _Economist_ stands alone in its representations in relation to the failure of negro free labor in Jamaica, we quote a statement of the Colonial Minister, which recently appeared in the _New York Tribune_, and was thence transferred to the _American Missionary_, February, 1859:

"The Colonial Minister says: 'Jamaica is now the only important sugar producing colony which exports a considerable smaller quant.i.ty of sugar than was exported in the time of slavery, while some such colonies since the pa.s.sage of the Emanc.i.p.ation Act have largely increased their product.'"

Time is thus casting light upon the question of the capacity of the African race for voluntary labor. Jamaica included 311,692 negroes, at the time of emanc.i.p.ation, out of the 660,000 who received their freedom in the whole of the West Indian islands. This was but little less than half of the whole number. It was a fair field to test the question of the willingness of the free negro to work. But what is the result? We have it admitted by both the _Economist_ and the Colonial Minister, that there has been a vast falling off in the exports from Jamaica, and that a spur of some kind must be applied to secure their adopting habits of industry. The spur of the "whip" having been thrown away, the remedy proposed is to press them into a corner, by immigration from India and China, so that the securing of bread shall become the great necessity with them, and they be compelled to labor or starve, as has been the case in Barbadoes. This is the opinion of the _Economist_, always opposed to slavery, but now convinced that the "slow, indolent temperament of the African race" needs such a "spur" to quicken it "into a voluntary industry essential to its moral discipline, and most favorable to its intellectual culture."

The West India emanc.i.p.ation experiments have demonstrated the truth of a few principles that the world should fully understand. It must now be admitted that mere personal liberty, even connected with the stimulus of wages, is insufficient to secure the industry of an ignorant population.

It is intelligence, alone, that can be acted upon by such motives.

Intelligence, then, must precede voluntary industry. And, hereafter, that man, or nation, may find it difficult to command respect, or succeed in being esteemed wise, who will not, along with exertions to extend personal freedom to man, intimately blend with their efforts adequate means for intellectual and moral improvement. The results of West India emanc.i.p.ation, it must be further noticed, fully confirm the opinions of Franklin, that freedom, to unenlightened slaves, must be accompanied with the means of intellectual and moral elevation, otherwise it may be productive of serious evils to themselves and to society. It also sustains the views entertained by Southern slaveholders, that emanc.i.p.ation, unaccompanied by the colonization of the slaves, could be of little value to the blacks, while it would entail a ruinous burden upon the whites. These facts must not be overlooked in the projection of plans for emanc.i.p.ation, as none can receive the sanction of Southern men, which does not embrace in it the removal of the colored people. With the example of West India emanc.i.p.ation before them, and the results of which have been closely watched by them, it can not be expected that Southern statesmen will ever risk the liberation of their slaves, except on these conditions.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Mr. Wilson, the Missionary at St. Catharines, still remained there, but not under the care of the a.s.sociation.

[50] 11th Annual Report, pages 36, 37.

[51] _American Missionary_, October, 1858.

[52] _African Repository_, October, 1859.

[53] _African Repository_, January, 1858.

[54] Page 170.

[55] Extract from the report of a missionary, quoted in the Report, page 172.

[56] Extract from the report of another missionary, page 171, of the Report.

[57] The average exports from the Island of Jamaica, omitting cotton, during the three epochs referred to--that of the slave trade, of slavery alone, and of freedom--for periods of five years, during the first two, and for the three years separately, in the last, will give a full view of this point:

_Years of Exports._ _lbs. Sugar._ _P. Rum. lbs._ _Coffee._

Annual average, 1803 to 1807,[A] 211,139,200 50,426 23,625,377 Annual average, 1829 to 1833,[A] 152,564,800 35,505 17,645,602 Annual average, 1839 to 1843,[A] 67,924,800 14,185 7,412,498 Annual exports, 1846,[B] 57,956,800 14,395 6,047,150 Annual exports, 1847,[B] 77,686,400 18,077 6,421,122 Annual exports, 1848.[B] 67,539,200 20,194 5,684,921

[A] _Blackwood's Magazine_ 1848, p. 225.

[B] _Littel's Living Age_, 1850, No. 309, p. 125.--_Letter of Mr.

Bigelow_.]

[58] Macgregor, London ed., 1847.

[59] _De Bow's Review_, August, 1855.

[60] Macgregor, London ed., 1847.

[61] Ibid.

[62] _De Bow's Review_, 1855.

[63] 1800.

[64] 1840.

[65] 1847.

[66] American Missionary a.s.sociation's Report, 1857, p. 32.

[67] The West Indies as they were and are--_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1859.--The article said to be by Mr. C. Buxton.

[68] The statement was made at a meeting which met to consider the evils of the Chinese and coolie system of immigration into the West Indies and Mauritius. It is not stated whether the amounts given are the whole production or only the exports.

[69] The reader will remember that the Emanc.i.p.ation Act, of 1833, left the West India blacks in the relation of apprentices to their masters, but that the system worked so badly that total emanc.i.p.ation was declared in 1838.

[70] They must refer to slavery in its later years, after the suppression of the slave trade. Previous to that event, the production of Jamaica was more than seventy-five per cent. greater than at present.

CHAPTER XV.

Moral condition of the free colored people in United States--What have they gained by refusing to accept Colonization?--Abolition testimony on the subject--Gerrit Smith--New York Tribune--Their moral condition as indicated by proportions in Penitentiaries--Census Reports--Native whites, foreign born, and free colored, in Penitentiaries--But little improvement in Ma.s.sachusetts in seventy years--Contrasts of Ohio with New England--Antagonism of Abolitionism to free negroes.

In turning to the condition of our own free colored people, who rejected homes in Liberia, we approach a most important subject. They have been under the guardians.h.i.+p of their abolition friends, ever since that period, and have cherished feelings of determined hostility to colonization. What have they gained by this hostility? What has been accomplished for them by their abolition friends, or what have they done for themselves? Those who took refuge in Liberia have built up a Republic of their own; and with the view of encouraging them to laudable effort, have been recognized as an independent nation, by five of the great governments of the earth. But what has been the progress of those who remained behind, in the vain hope of rising to an equality with the whites, and of a.s.sisting in abolis.h.i.+ng American slavery?

We offer no opinion, here, of our own, as to the present social and moral condition of the free colored people in the North. What it was at the time of the founding of Liberia, has already been shown. On this subject we might quote largely from the proceedings of the Conventions of the colored people, and the writings of their editors, so as to produce a dark picture indeed; but this would be cruel, as their voices are but the wailings of sensitive and benevolent hearts, while weeping over the moral desolations that, for ages, have overwhelmed their people. Nor shall we multiply testimony on the subject; but in this, as in the case of Canada and the West Indies, allow the abolitionists to speak of their own schemes. The Hon. Gerrit Smith, in his letter to Governor Hunt, of New York, in 1852, while speaking of his ineffectual efforts, for fifteen years past, to prevail upon the free colored people to betake themselves to mechanical and agricultural pursuits, says: