Compulsory manumission

by Alexander McDonnell

Strong as this instance appears to be, others equally forcible could be adduced, of the ruinous deterioration of West India property from the like cause; and they exemplify the nature of those boons which the writer of the “Remarks” affirms to have been accorded to the colonists, and “for which they should feel grateful.”

If a decline in the value of the capital has ensued, whilst the price of the produce has remained nearly the same, it is proof positive that the depreciation of West India property is not attributable to circumstances purely mercantile, but that it is owing to the proceedings of the British legislature.

It is essential to keep this circumstance in mind, and to examine the mode of appraisement prospectively, when the principle of supply and demand no longer exists, as regards the objects to be appraised.

It is apparent, that to allow of a properly-constituted market-price, there must be purchasers; but if the principle of compulsory manumission be admitted, after what has been just stated relative to the deterioration in the value of property already produced, will any purchaser of slaves be found? Under the manifold evils detailed in the preceding section, no capitalist henceforward would think of making investments upon West India securities, and all transfer of property would be at an end.

The appraisers are employed to fix a price between conflicting representations of master and slave. But can a criterion for equitable adjustment be formed? The slave himself is the only purchaser who appears in the market, and in this condition of things any mode of appraisement must be unjust and injurious to the capitalist which assumes that colonial cultivation will continue unchanged, in the event of the proposed measure being carried into effect; and which does not take into the account the aversion which every capitalist will then feel to making a precarious investment dependent upon the uncertain services of the slaves.

This is founded upon the most simple principle. If a decrease in the value of capital have already occurred beyond what is attributable to circumstances purely mercantile, and is solely occasioned by the threatened measures of Government, it is a fair inference that a further decrease would ensue if such threatened measures were put into execution; and the effects of that opinion prevailing throughout the colonies, must render the chance of fully withdrawing the fixed capital more and more precarious, as the evils of the measure became more widely developed.

Let us suppose a sugar-plantation, with two hundred negroes, worth 40,000l.; one-half sunk in lands and buildings, the other half the value of the slaves. Accordingly as the negroes progressively free themselves, the 20,000l. sunk in lands and buildings has to be apportioned among them, and added to the price of their manumission. Now it must be recollected, that the whole of the two hundred negroes are requisite to carry on profitable cultivation. The land and buildings cannot be disposed of, or circumscribed to suit a more limited business, as would be the case with premises in this country when a manufacturer reduced the number of his workmen.

After a number of men, then, are freed, the proprietor is left with a great concern upon his hands without people to carry it on. To be fully remunerated for the property sunk in that concern, the people remaining would have to pay, as he gradually becomes more and more short of hands, a prodigious sum for their freedom. Is it possible, from what has been stated, that he could receive full indemnification? Let it be recollected, that it will soon be, not a quota, but the entire of the fixed capital, which the efficient negroes, applying for freedom, will have to pay to indemnify their masters,—and in actual practice can this be done?

The writer of the “Remarks” illustrates the case by comparing a sugar-estate to a mill with a number of buckets! The reader, it is presumed, will be tempted to smile at the idea of considering the negroes as mere passive machines, devoid of those feelings, passions, and intelligence, which it is their master’s chief solicitude to call into existence.

But, to pass over the narrow and partial view of the subject here displayed, even were we to indulge the writer in his singular mode of illustration, it fails to establish his object. He says, if twenty buckets are attached to a wheel, and four be removed, the proprietor will be entitled to be remunerated for whatever loss of work this removal occasioned; and if the work turned off were diminished, from incompetency of power in the wheel, not only in the proportion of twenty to sixteen, being one-fifth, but in the proportion of two-fifths, then would the proprietor be entitled to receive, as equitable compensation, two-fifths of the value in place of one.