The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4

by American Anti-Slavery Society

You will shortly, my friends, be released from your present state of bondage; in the course of a very few weeks you will receive the boon of freedom, and I would therefore impress deeply on your minds the necessity of your continuing the cultivation of the soil on the receipt of fair and equitable wages. I am not aware myself of any complete scale of wages having been drawn up, but I have been on 10 or 12 different properties, I have conversed with several proprietors, and I am glad to say that with some of them there appears to be a disposition to meet the charge fairly and honorably. Those who are more conversant with figures than I am, will be enabled to show what the owner can afford to give for the cultivation of his property. In the mean time I would say to you, do not make any hasty bargain: take time and consider the subject, for it is one of vital interest and importance to all! If you demand too high a rate of wages, the proprietors will be ruined; if you consent to take too low a sum, you will not be able to provide for the wants of yourselves and families. In making your arrangement, if there be an attempt to grind you down, resist the attempt by all legal means; for you must consider that you are not acting for yourselves alone, but for posterity. I desire to see every vestige of slavery completely rooted out. You must work for money; you must pay money to your employers for all you receive at their hands: a fair scale of wages must be established, and you must be entirely independent of any one. If you continue to receive those allowances which have been given during slavery and apprenticeship, it will go abroad that you are not able to take care of yourselves; that your employers are obliged to provide you with these allowances to keep you from starvation; in such a case you will be nothing more than slaves.--To be free, you must be independent; you must receive money for your work; come to market with money; purchase from whom you please, and be accountable to no one but that Being above, who I hope will watch over and protect you!--I sincerely trust that proper arrangements will be made before the 1st of August.--I have spoken to nearly four thousand persons connected with my church, and I have not yet learnt that there is any disposition among them to leave their present employers, provided they receive equitable wages. Your employer will expect from you good crops of sugar and rum; and while you labour to give him these, he must pay you such wages as will enable you to provide yourselves with wholesome food, good clothing, comfortable houses, and every other necessity of life. Your wages must be such as to enable you to do this; to contribute to the support of your church; the relief of the distressed; the education of your children, and to put by something for sickness and old age. I hail the coming of the 1st August with feelings of joy and gratitude. Oh, it will be a blessed day; a day which gives liberty to all; and my friends, I hope that the liberty which it will bring to you will by duly appreciated. I trust I may live to see the black man in the full enjoyment of every privilege with his white brethren, and that you may all so conduct yourselves as to give the lie direct to those who have affirmed that the only idea you have of liberty is that it will enable you to indulge in idle habits and licentious pursuits. When liberty casts her benignant smiles on this beautiful island, I trust that the employer and the laborer will endeavour to live on terms of friendship and good will with one another.--When the labourer receives a proper remuneration for his services--when the employer contemplates the luxuriance of his well-cultivated fields, may they both return thanks to a merciful God, for permitting the sun of liberty to shine with bright effulgence! I need scarcely assure you, my friends, that I will be at all times ready to protect your rights. I care not about the abuse with which I may probably be assailed; I am ready to meet all the obloquy and scorn of those who have been accustomed to place the most unfavourable constructions on my actions. I am willing to meet the proprietors in a spirit of candour and conciliation. I desire to see you fairly compensated for your labor; I desire also to you performing your work with cheerful industry: but I would warn you not to be too hasty in entering into contracts. Think seriously before you act, and remember, as I have already old you, that you have now to act not only for yourselves, but for posterity."

We give numerous documents from these gentlemen, as among the best if not the greatest part of our fellow citizens; we trust their testimony will be deemed the best that could be offered.

LETTER OF EIGHT BAPTIST MISSIONARIES.

To the Right Hon. Lord GLENELG, &c.

My Lord--We feel assured that no apology is necessary, in requesting your attention to the subject of this letter. The official connection which you hold with the colony, together with the peculiar circumstances in which its newly-emancipated population are placed, render it an imperative duty we owe to ourselves to lay before you our sentiments.

Having labored in the island for many years, and having been in daily intercourse with the objects of our solicitude, we do feel devoutly thankful to ALMIGHTY GOD, that he has spared us to see the disenthralment of our beloved flocks; while it gives us increased pleasure to assure your lordship that they received the boon with holy joy, and that the hour which made them men beheld them in thousands humbly prostrate at the footstool of mercy, imploring the blessing of HEAVEN upon themselves and their country, while, during the night and joyful day, not a single case of intoxication was seen.

To us, as their pastors, they naturally looked for advice, both as to the labor they should perform and the wages they should receive. The importance of this subject was deeply felt by us, and we were prepared to meet it with a full sense of the responsibility it involved, and happily succeeded in inducing them to accept of a sum lower than that which the representatives of the landowners had formerly asserted was fair and just.

We regret to state, that a deep combination was formed by many of these middlemen to grind the peasantry to the dust, and to induce, if possible, the acceptance of remuneration which, by affording no inducement to the peasant cheerfully to labor, would have entailed pauperism on him and his family, and ruin on the absentee proprietor. It was to this circumstance, and not in the least to any unwillingness in the free negro to work, or to demand more for his labor than it was fairly worth, that for one or two weeks, in some places, the cultivation of the soil was not resumed. Upon the planting attorneys, so long accustomed to tyranny and oppression, and armed with a power over the land which must prove inimical to the full development of the resources of this valuable colony, the blame entirely rests.

We suppose that your lordship is fully aware, that the laws under which the laborer is now placed are tyrannical and unjust in the extreme; laws, we hesitate not to affirm, which are a disgrace to those who framed them, and which, if acted upon by a local magistracy, will entail upon the oft-cheated, over-patient negro some of the worst features of that degrading state of vassalage from which he has just escaped. We particularly refer to "An Act to enlarge the Powers of Justices in determining complaints between Masters and Servants, and between Masters, and Apprentices, Artificers, and others," which passed the Assembly the 3rd day of July, 1834, while by police acts, especially one regulating the town of Falmouth, our people will be daily harassed and annoyed.

We think it right to inform your lordship, that the greater part of those who hold the commission of magistrates are the very persons who, by their connection with the soil, are the most unfit, because the most interested, honestly to discharge their important duties; while their ignorance of the law is, in too many cases, equalled only by their love of tyranny and misrule. Time must work a mighty change in the views of numbers who hold this office, ere they believe there is any dereliction of duty in daily defrauding the humble African. We cannot but entreat your lordship to use those means which are in your power to obtain for the laborer, who imploringly looks to the Queen for protection, justice at the hands of those by whom the law is administered. We must, indeed, be blind to all passing events, did we not see that, without the watchful care of the home government, the country district courts, held sometimes in the very habitations of those who will have to make the complaints, will be dens of injustice and cruelty, and that our hearts will again be lacerated by the oppressions under which our beloved people will groan.