The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

Those who are failing and falling in the world excite but little interest; and so it is at present with Jamaica. From time to time we hear that properties which used to bring five thousand pounds a year are not now worth five hundred pounds in fee simple. We hear it, thank our stars that we have not been brought up in the Jamaica line, and there's an end of it. If we have young friends whom we wish to send forth into the world, we search the maps with them at our elbows; but we put our hands over the West Indies—over the first fruits of the courage and skill of Columbus—as a spot tabooed by Providence. Nay, if we could, we would fain forget Jamaica altogether.

But there it is; a spot on the earth not to be lost sight of or forgotten altogether, let us wish it ever so much. It belongs to us, and must be in some sort thought of and managed, and, if possible, governed. Though the utter sinking of Jamaica under the sea might not be regarded as a misfortune, it is not to be thought of that it should belong to others than Britain. How should we look at the English politician who would propose to sell it to the United States; or beg Spain to take it as an appendage to Cuba? It is one of the few sores in our huge and healthy carcase; and the sore has been now running so long, that we have almost given over asking whether it be curable.

This at any rate is certain—it will not sink into the sea, but will remain there, inhabited, if not by white men, then by coloured men or black; and must unfortunately be governed by us English.

We have indulged our antipathy to cruelty by abolishing slavery. We have made the peculiar institution an impossibility under the British crown. But in doing so we overthrew one particular interest; and, alas! we overthrew also, and necessarily so, the holders of that interest. As for the twenty millions which we gave to the slave-owners, it was at best but as though we had put down awls and lasts by Act of Parliament, and, giving the shoemakers the price of their tools, told them they might make shoes as they best could without them; failing any such possibility, that they might live on the price of their lost articles. Well; the shoemakers did their best, and continued their trade in shoes under much difficulty.

But then we have had another antipathy to indulge, and have indulged it—our antipathy to protection. We have abolished the duty on slave-grown sugar; and the shoemakers who have no awls and lasts have to compete sadly with their happy neighbours, possessed of these useful shoemaking utensils.

Make no more shoes, but make something in lieu of shoes, we say to them. The world wants not shoes only—make hats. Give up your sugar, and bring forth produce that does not require slave labour. Could the men of Jamaica with one voice speak out such words as the experience of the world might teach them, they would probably answer thus:—"Yes; in two hundred years or so we will do so. So long it will take to alter the settled trade and habit of a community. In the mean time, for ourselves, our living selves, our late luxurious homes, our idle, softly-nurtured Creole wives, our children coming and to come—for ourselves—what immediate compensation do you intend to offer us, Mr. Bull?"

Mr. Bull, with sufficient anger at such importunity; with sufficient remembrance of his late twenty millions of pounds sterling; with some plain allusions to that payment, buttons up his breeches-pocket and growls angrily.

Abolition of slavery is good, and free trade is good. Such little insight as a plain man may have into the affairs around him seems to me to suffice for the expression of such opinion. Nor will I presume to say that those who proposed either the one law or the other were premature. To get a good law passed and out of hand is always desirable. There are from day to day so many new impediments! But the law having been passed, we should think somewhat of the sufferers.

Planters in Jamaica assert that when the abolition of slavery was hurried on by the termination of the apprentice system before the time first stipulated, they were promised by the government at home that their interests should be protected by high duties on slave-grown sugar. That such pledge was ever absolutely made, I do not credit. But that, if made, it could be worth anything, no man looking to the history of England could imagine. What minister can pledge his successors? In Jamaica it is said that the pledge was given and broken by the same man—by Sir Robert Peel. But when did Sir Robert Peel's pledge in one year bind even his own conduct in the next?

The fact perhaps is this, that no one interest can ever be allowed to stand in the way of national progress. We could not stop machinery for the sake of the hand-loom weavers. The poor hand-loom weavers felt themselves aggrieved; knew that the very bread was taken from their mouths, their hard-earned cup from their lips. They felt, poor weavers! that they could not take themselves in middle life to poking fires and greasing wheels. Time, the eater of things, has now pretty well eaten the hand-loom weavers—them and their miseries. Must it not be so also with the Jamaica planters?