THE BLACK AND WHITE QUESTION.
“The game is made, gentlemen, choose your colour.”
AMONGST the many important topics which at present excite a popular interest, must be reckoned the great question whether the West Indian apprentices ought or ought not to be considered ought of their time? A subject presenting such very strong lights and shadows, necessarily produces a powerful and Rembrandt-like effect on the public mind; nevertheless, it is only lately and accidentally, that I have been induced to look critically into the colouring and handling of the picture. It is not my wont to walk wilfully on Debatable Ground; but in the present instance, I was seduced involuntarily into the dangerous confines of “all we love and all we hate,” the borderland, where party contends with party.
A few days ago, I was giving an order to a tradesman in the Strand—not far from Warren’s—when, to the utter surprise and disconcertment of the master of the shop, a poor African stepped in from the street, and, with an obsequious bow, made an offer of his sable services for a term of years.
“MASSA, YOU WANT A ’PRENTICE?”
It would require a far better artist than myself to do justice to the scene which ensued on so unusual an application. The late Elia, in his Essay on “Imperfect Sympathies,” has alluded to the natural repugnance of the pale faces to the dark ones. “In the negro countenance,” he says, “you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces, or rather masks, that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls ‘these images of God cut in ebony.’ But I should not like to associate with them—to share my meals and my good-nights with them—because they are black.” Such a feeling is truly an imperfect sympathy, but my Strand shopkeeper evidently went beyond the essayist, and regarded “the nigger” with a positive antipathy. “A good horse,” says the proverb, “cannot be of a bad colour,” but I could not help feeling that a good man might be of an unfortunate complexion, howbeit, of a hue which wears well, washes well, does not fly, and, moreover, hides the dirt. So far from being able to endure a moor as his companion, the master tradesman could not look upon him as fit to be his subordinate. The mere possibility of such a connexion had never occurred to him, or assuredly, to the advertisement in the window for an apprentice, he would have added “a White will be preferred,” or “No African need apply.” In the meantime, it was sufficiently obvious that, even if indentured, a Hottentot would never be “treated as one of the family.” Whilst the master stared an unequivocal rejection, his wife looked over his shoulder at the applicant, with all the physical expression in her countenance, of the anticipation of a black dose; the little boy took fright and tried to bolt; the baby even set its infantine face against the adoption, and the very dog barked and growled at the intruder as at a breed that was vermin. The result of such a scrutiny needs hardly to be told; the poor candidate was unanimously blackballed to his face, and recommended, unceremoniously, to make himself as scarce as a swan of the same complexion.
It will do me no credit, I fear, with our active Abolitionists, to confess, that the above little incident set me seriously thinking, for the first time, on the condition of the Negro Apprentices. In addition to my dread of becoming a sidesman—and there is a spirit abroad which can convert even a black suit into a party-coloured one—I am too apt to take matters upon trust, and to suppose that the name stands for the thing. Thus, in my simple belief, the outward-bound and the homeward-bound apprentices, conformed to the same or nearly the same articles; and if I thought at all of the sable ones, it was as walking abroad on Sundays, drest in all their best, only with Phœbe or Miss Diana, instead of “Sally in our Alley.” A common sense of the eternal principles of justice helped, beside, to mislead me; for who, with a drachm of philosophy, or a scruple of Christianity, could suppose, that whilst the accidents of colour are overlooked in a good horse, the moral qualities of a human being were weighed down by such skin-deep casualties as occur every day in a baker’s oven? The scene in the Strand, however, aroused certain misgivings; and for the mere repose of my mind, it became necessary to procure further information, in order to come to a settled opinion on the subject. To this end, it was desirable to obtain the sentiments of a Black Apprentice, or at least of a Black, and of an Apprentice, and fortune favoured me in the search. Having delivered my instructions to the tradesman, it occurred to me to pay an overdue visit to a decayed kinswoman in the same neighbourhood, and in whose family affairs I took a friendly interest. She happened to be at home; and after a preliminary conversation on the weather, and Mr. Murphy, and the current news of the day, the discourse turned on her son Richard, whom she had recently articled to an architect; she had doubts, she said, of his being exactly comfortable in his situation, but it was no fault of hers, as he had been placed in it at his own urgent instances, in proof whereof she handed to me the following letter:—
MY DEAR MOTHER,
This is to say I am in good health and quite comfortable, and as happy as can be expected away from home. I like being an architect very much. All the work I have had to do for the last fortnight, has been to copy a drawing of a gate for a Porter’s Lodge, and to look over portfolios of nice prints. My master is very kind, and lets me fill up my time at over-hours how I like. I always dine with him and Mrs. G., and have plenty to eat of whatever I prefer. Last Sunday we had leg of lamb and asparagus, and a pigeon pie, and a tart, besides a glass of wine afterwards. I’m allowed to sit up to supper because I said I liked music, for Mr. G. plays on the flute, and Mrs. G. sings to the piano. He is a very good man, and she is a very motherly good woman; and the other night, because it was so cold, I had a tumbler of hot elder wine. For the present I sleep in the best spare bed till my own is got ready for me—and when company comes I’m not sent off to it, but played last night with the visitors till twelve o’clock, and they won all my pocket money. I do hope and pray you won’t forget to send me some more, as there’s another party next week. Altogether, I could not be better off for food, or amusement, or any thing, so that I needn’t be any longer on liking, as I like it very much, and am agreeable to be bound as soon as you and master think proper; and I do hope you won’t stick about the premium, as you seemed to think it a great deal—but consider the treatment. Give my kind love to everybody, and accept the same yourself, from, dear mother, your dutiful and affectionate son,
RICHARD RUGGLES.
P.S.—Mr. and Mrs. G. desire their best compliments—they are always asking about you in the most friendly way. Pray remember what I said about the premium, as I could never be so happy anywhere else, or make such progress in my profession.
It may be supposed that I did not read the above effusion throughout, without a smile on my countenance; but the mother gravely shook her head, and said she had now to submit to me a very different statement, whereupon with a sigh, and a reflection on the duplicity of the world in general, and of architects in particular, she placed in my hands, Protocol No. 2.
DEAR MOTHER,
I am very sorry to trouble your mind with anything unpleasant, but a great change has taken place since the articles were signed and the premium paid down. All the being on liking has come to a sudden end. Mr. and Mrs. G. have thrown off their masks, and he is a cruel tyrant; and instead of being another mother to me, she is quite the reverse. I little thought the moment I became an apprentice I should be a complete slave, and work like a horse. Nothing but drawing, drawing, drawing, as long as it’s light—and next week we begin lamps. I’ve no over-hours at all except in bed, and that’s up in the back garret, and nothing but an old flock as hard as wood. My being a parlour boarder is all over; and as to sitting up to music and supper, I can’t repeat, but I’m d—d up at night that I may be down in the morning. They have not sent me as yet to take my meals in the kitchen, but I would almost as soon, for I’m snubb’d if I open my lips at table; and the moment the wine comes on I’m expected to be off, and am reminded if I don’t. As for the visitors, they take no more notice of me than they do of the foot-boy; but what goes most to my heart is, Mr. and Mrs. G. never ask now after your delicate health. It’s very ungrateful after paying so handsomely, but it’s my belief he doesn’t know anything about architecture, and only takes in young gentlemen for the sake of their premiums. I can t help feeling very unhappy, when I think I’ve got to run seven years to come, and do wish you would ask Uncle William, as he’s a lawyer, whether I can’t be turned over by legal law, or cancelled and left to my liberty. Next to an architect, I should like, if was unbound, to be an author, and write books; which I hope you will approve of, as it doesn’t require any premium. But perhaps you would like to have me at home, and to be nothing at all, with which I remain,
My dear mother, your dutiful and affectionate son,
RICHARD RUGGLES.
As the above letters are genuine, it is probable that many of my readers, who are parents or guardians, have received similar epistles from their sons or wards before or after their being articled to a trade or a profession; at least there is reason to believe that the above case is one of ordinary occurrence. Taking it, therefore, as a fair sample of the practice in England, I was anxious to compare it with the course of a negro apprenticeship in the colonies; and with this view my next visit was paid to my old friend Colonel C., who had recently arrived from Jamaica with a black “turn-over” in his service. Having described the scene at the shop in the Strand, and explained my errand, which, of course, subjected me to some raillery, my request was acceded to, and Sambo was ordered to attend me to a private conference in the study. He was a stout good-humoured African, with rather more than the twilight intelligence allowed to the race by the late Monk Lewis; but with all the characteristic relish for a talk with Massa, ascribed to his brethren by the same pleasant authority. He entered therefore into the discussion with the greatest good-will; and the following, divested of his outlandish jargon, is the substance of his evidence.
APPRENTICE ON LIKING.
To my first question, whether he had ever betrayed any original inclination to go into the rice, sugar, and tobacco line, he gave a decided negative. He had no occasion, he said, to labour for a livelihood, having been in his own country an independent black prince, and heir-apparent, as I understood him, to the king of the Eboes. He acknowledged, however, that he could neither read nor write, and consequently had never applied personally, or by letter, post paid, to any Transatlantic A. B. C. or X. Y. Z., in answer to an advertisement for an “Articled Pupil.” He was taken, he affirmed, at unawares, and he was positive that no premium was required with him. It appeared, however, that he had been regularly bound, but on explanation it turned out that it had been done with rope-yarn, and the only indentures he knew of, were on his wrists and ankles, from the pressure of his fetters. He had a decided impression that his parents or guardians were never applied to for their concurrence; indeed he had no recollection of being asked for his own assent to the arrangement. He would “take his dam” he was never carried before the Chamberlain or any official personage invested with similar functions, and denied ever having received the slightest hint that the binding him was necessary to entitle him to take up his freedom. In short, contrary to the experience of Richard Ruggles, his very first step appeared to have been into slavery, and it was only after a long term of severe service in the rice-field and the cane-piece that he was constituted an apprentice. This being the point to which the public interest is mainly directed, my enquiries here became naturally more minute, and the evidence was proportionably circumstantial. Taking the Ruggles letters for my guide, I was at great pains to make out something analogous to the state of being what is called “upon liking,” but I failed to elicit anything of the sort; and from the solemnity, not to say awfulness, of Sambo’s asseverations, there appeared no reason to suspect his veracity. He denied most positively and repeatedly his dining, in any one solitary instance, with his master and mistress, and by consequence the pleasure of taking wine with them after the social repast. He was equally firm in disclaiming any invitation to sit up to supper; and instead of being asked if he liked music, he declared indignantly that his favourite instruments the kitty-katty and the ganby had been continually broken over his own head. He totally repudiated the notion of playing at Pope Joan with the company that came to his master’s house; and insisted that the only notice he ever obtained from the visitors was his being “larrupped” by every gentleman that got drunk, and none of them ever went away sober. On the whole he would not allow himself to have received any personal benefit from his metamorphosis by Act of Parliament into an apprentice; no, not even to the extent of sparing him one single cut of the cowhide. He rather thought, on the contrary, that the prospect of his being out of his time in so many years had operated to the prejudice of the negro, by tempting the owner in the interim to get as much out of him, and pitch as much into him, as possible. To conclude, I charged Sambo very home with a question which has been much dwelt upon by certain members of both Houses; namely, whether the blacks were “properly prepared” to enter into a state of liberty? to which he answered very candidly, that he had not formally examined them on the subject, but judging by himself he should say they were quite as fit and prepared for freedom as they had been for slavery, to which they had mostly been introduced at an unfashionably short notice. For his own part he had been rather suddenly emancipated by simply stepping on English ground; but the only effect had been to inspire him with profound feelings of veneration and gratitude towards the soil, and a most fervent wish that he could send over a barrowful of the same earth for Black Juno and de pickaninnies to put him foot upon in Jamakey.
Such was the result of my conference with Sambo; and it served to account for the conduct of the tradesman in the Strand, by proving, that instead of being treated as one of the family, in a limited sense, the Negro is hardly looked upon as a member of that great domestic circle which has a circumference of 360 degrees. It appears from the facts, that an apprenticeship in Jamaica or Barbadoes has little or nothing in common except the name, with an apprenticeship on our own side of the Atlantic;—that under the same title there exists two diametrically opposite systems, literally as different as light and dark; and of course, as the hand said of the pair of gloves, “They cannot both be right.” As the collective wisdom of the country has decided that the Black style of binding is the correct pattern, and that the Negroes are properly “done up,” it necessarily follows, that our home-made articles are very loosely stitched, and without a due provision for rough usage and durability. Assuming the sable race to be subject to only a wholesome severity, it results that our London Prentices and their kind, are held by indentures shamefully lax in their conditions, and are allowed a most culpable latitude and indulgence. To place this gross partiality in the strongest light and shade, let the servitude of the born Blacks be compared with that of those “Africans of our own growth,” as Elia calls them, who derive their nigritude not from nature but from soot. Simply because they have once been whites, and are still white, or nearly white, once a year, like the hawthorns in May, they are protected and even pampered by laws, the framers of which have assuredly considered their own crows as the fairest. Let any one turn to the Statute Anno Quarto et Quinto Gulielmi IV. Regis, cap. 35, intituled “An Act for the Better Regulation of Chimney Sweepers and their Apprentices,” and he will find that the Climbing Boy, compared with the African, is almost a spoiled child. Instead of allowing him to be nabbed or grabbed, anyhow and willynilly, like our friend Sambo, the statute insists, by article 9, that the binding shall not take place without the concurrence of “a parish officer, or the parent, or next friend.” Article 10 provides, that instead of rope-yarn, as in the case of Sambo aforesaid, the binding shall only be effected with “paper or parchment,” and even before enduring such very mild ligatures, article 13 declares, that the boy is to be regularly “asked out,” before two Justices of the Peace, and in case such boy shall be unwilling to be bound with “paper and parchment,” “such Justices shall, and they are hereby required to refuse, to sanction or approve of such binding.” The 12th clause allows the practice of “liking,” or what, in electioneering cases, would be called “treating;” and before any boy shall be bound as an apprentice, “it shall be lawful for the intended master of such boy to have, and receive such boy in such master’s house, on trial—or ‘liking’—for any time not exceeding two calendar months.” In plain English, it shall be lawful for the said master elect to tempt and bribe the said apprentice, like Richard Ruggles, during eight weeks, by dinners of “delicate cow-heel, with the sauce His Grace is so fond of,” and suppers of hot sausages. And that the cow-heel and sausages may not be too minutely subdivided, clause 14 enacts, that Mr. or Mrs. Chimney Sweeper shall not have more than two apprentices on trial or “liking” at the same time. The same considerate clause forbids Mr. or Mrs. C. S. to have more than four apprentices at once, so that nothing like the close packing, which so often incommodes the race of Africa in a ship’s hold, may inconvenience the favoured sooterkins in the cellar. A taste for music is not specially mentioned or protected: but as clause 17 empowers any two or more magistrates to hear “all complaints” of hard or ill usage, the breaking of a fife or his pan’s pipes, over the head of an apprentice, would be certain to be listened to, and in all probability entail on the master a forfeit, fixed, by clause 16, at “not exceeding 10l. nor less than 40s.” The 18th clause enjoins, on all builders and bricklayers, under extremely heavy penalties, to construct safe and comfortable chimneys that shall not be “hard to climb;” and finally, as if a sweeper on such very eligible terms could have anything to weep for, article 15 forbids, somewhat superfluously, his crying about the streets!!! The incredulous reader who may wish to verify this statement by reference to the Act itself, will find it at full length, and shown “all up” in a well-conceived little volume, called “The Mechanics of Law Making,” by a Member of Symond’s Inn. He will there find too truly that, compared with the genuine black, the sweeper is treated by law with as much tenderness as if each climbing-boy were, like the stolen Montague, a well-born white young gentleman in disguise. The tendency of such over-indulgent enactments to spoil the youth of this country is evidenced in the fact, that whilst the planter will give a considerable sum for a black assistant, a white articled pupil is hardly acceptable as a present, and in most cases, like Richard Ruggles, must have a handsome premium given along with him to purchase him a master. As a mere matter of economy, therefore, the matter is worth the consideration of parents and guardians, and parish officers; whilst the advocates of equal justice to all will imperatively insist that if the blacks cannot be treated like whites, the whites ought to be treated as blacks. For my own part, as a simple admirer of consistency, I cannot help thinking that the whole system of apprenticeship, as regards its home practice, requires to undergo a rigorous revision, and above all, that the act Anno Quarto et Quinto Gulielmi IV. Regis, cap. 35, with all its sweeping clauses, ought to be immediately repealed.
SNIFFING A BIRTHDAY.