The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

New York: JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET, (FOR THE PROPRIETORS.) 1863.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by JOHN F. TROW, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York.
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NEW YORK: JOHN F. TROW 50 GREENE STREET (FOR THE PROPRIETORS). HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY. WASHINGTON, D. C.: FRANCK TAYLOR.
This Number of the Continental contains an article by the Hon. Robert J. Walker, written from Ireland. All communications, whether concerning MSS. or on business, should be addressed to JOHN F. TROW, Publisher, 50 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by John F. Trow, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER.
The luminous summary of statistical facts published in the March number of the Atlantic Monthly for 1862, has, in a few pages, conclusively settled the question whether emancipation in the smaller islands of the British West Indies has been a success or a failure. It applies the standard of financial results, which, though the lowest, is undoubtedly the best; for the defenders of slavery would hardly choose its moral advantages as their strong position, and if its alleged economical advantages turn out also an illusion, there is not much to be said for it. Indeed, of late they have been growing shy of the smaller islands, which furnish too many weapons for the other side, and too few for their own; and have chosen rather to divert attention from these by triumphant clamors about the forlorn condition of Jamaica. This magnificent island, once the fairest possession of the British crown, now almost a wilderness, has been the burden of their lamentations over the fatal workings of emancipation. And truly if emancipation has really done so much mischief in Jamaica as they claim, it is a most damaging fact. Testimony of opposite results in the smaller islands would hardly countervail it. Such testimony would be good to prove that the freedom of the negro works well in densely peopled insular communities, where the pressure of population compels industry. The opponents of emancipation are willing sometimes to acknowledge that where the laboring population are, as they say, in virtual slavery to the planters, by the impossibility of obtaining land of their own, their release from the degradation of being personally owned may act favorably upon them. But they maintain that where the negro can easily escape from the control of the planter, as in Jamaica, where plenty of land is obtainable at low rates, his innate laziness is there invincible. This very representation I remember to have seen a few years ago in a Jamaica journal in the planting interest, which maintained that unless the negroes of that island were also reduced to 'virtual slavery'—using those very words—by an immense importation of foreign laborers, it would be impossible to bring them to reasonable terms.